Apropos of nothing, but every ten years or so I crack open my heavily abridged copy of the Talmud and jump right in, just as every fifteen years or so I jump into “Finnegans Wake,” and every time I do the pages open to this passage

Rabbi Akiva said: Everything is foreseen yet freedom of choice is given.

The religious right, who constantly rail about “Judeo-Christianity,” could learn a thing or two or three from the ol’ Talmud.