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Jerusalem Post Interview
with Charles Krauthammer

by Hilary Leilea Krieger, JPost Correspondent, Washington

Krauthammer, a columnist for The Washington Post, is a winner of the Irving Kristol award.

Jerusalem Post, June 10, 2009:

Can you talk a little bit about your own Jewish upbringing and sense of Jewishness, and how that influences you? I assume it’s a factor in this particular project.

I grew up in a Modern Orthodox home [in Montreal]. I went to Jewish day school right through high school, so half of my day was spent speaking Hebrew from age six to 16. I studied thousands of hours of Talmud. My father thought I didn’t get enough Talmud at school, so I took the extra Talmud class at school and he had a rabbi come to the house three nights a week. One of those nights was Saturday night, so in synagogue Saturday morning my brother and I would pray very hard for snow so he wouldn’t be able to come on Saturday night and we could watch hockey night in Canada. That’s where I learned about prayer.

That didn’t seem to you to be a prayer that was likely to go unanswered?

Yeah, I was giving it a shot to see what side God was on.

And what did you determine?

It rarely snowed.

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More on Krauthammer’s Canadian childhood:

“His parents were Orthodox and sent him to
 Hebrew day school. He also took
 private Gomorrah lessons twice a week.”

— “Charles Krauthammer: Prize Writer,”
     by Mitchell Bard

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Also in the Jerusalem Post interview:

“…. In literature it’s an interesting question, what’s a Jewish novel?”