“Is it good for the Jews?” The conversion of Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary magazine, from the New Left to neoconservativism

Chapter 2 describes the path that led Norman Podhoretz (b. 1930) to transform as the editor of Commentary magazine from the New Left to a neoconservative position – a change that took place in the late 1960s in the United States. My discussion of Podhoretz contains previously unpublished sources clarifying the spiritual nature of his political transformation, which included a mystical and life-changing experience in the early spring of 1970.