Irving Kristol, Born Jewish

This week in Mosaic we are celebrating the release of our new ebook On Jews and Judaism, a collection of Irving Kristol’s essential writings on the Jews. Here, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb introduces the book and reflects on her husband’s Jewish legacy.

“Is there such a thing as a ‘neo’ gene?” With this query Irving Kristol opens his 1995 essay, “An Autobiographical Memoir.” His life, he recalls, has been a series of such “neo’s”: neo-Marxist, neo-Trotskyite, neo-socialist, neo-liberal, and, finally, neo-conservative. “No ideology or philosophy,” he explains, “has ever been able to encompass all of reality to my satisfaction. There was always a degree of detachment qualifying my commitment.”