An Act of Affirmation
It is traditional to begin a new magazine with brave declarations. If we do not, we trust we shall be forgiven.
We begin at a moment heavy with a sense of human destiny. Every schoolboy who listens to the radio knows that 1945 marks an epoch in world history. World War II has ended; the United Nations have won the greatest military victory of the…
Elliott E. Cohen wrote “An Act of Affirmation” as the introductory editorial for the inaugural issue of Commentary magazine in November 1945. Recognizing the enormity of the Holocaust and the shock of the atomic age, he established ideas and priorities that would define one of the most influential intellectual journals in American history. As editor of Commentary from 1945 until his death in 1959, Cohen turned the magazine into an important platform for American Jewish writers and thinkers. He encouraged Jewish writers to see themselves not as outsiders, but as full participants in Western civilization. Through this vision, Cohen helped spark a golden age of American Jewish thought and literature, bringing it from an immigrant subculture into the center of American cultural life.
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