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Chapter 5 - To Look Upon His Face and Yet Not Die
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- By Jacob Taubes
- Piotr Nowak
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- Book:
- After Jews
- Published by:
- Anthem Press
- Published online:
- 13 May 2022
- Print publication:
- 08 March 2022, pp 63-80
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Rabbi Ben Levi, on the Sabbath, read
A volume of the Law, in which it said,
“No man shall look upon my face and live.”
And as he read, he prayed that God would give
His faithful servant grace with mortal eye
To look upon His face and yet not die.
Poseur, scribbler, provocateur, seducer, trifler, uncompromising theologian, thinker of such broad scope that the shrewdest rabbis of his time could not follow—these are all masks, costumes in which Jacob Taubes chose to dress up his uninhibited thought, his unique way of being. A little kitschy, always provocative, undoubtedly a genius, he saw everywhere “signs of the approaching End”; at the same time, as one can tell from his chaotic writing, he wanted—like Rabbi Ben Levi—to capture the first moment of the apocalypse, to spot the rising tide and even to outstrip it.
Curriculum Vitae
He was born in 1923 in Vienna into a rabbinical family. In 1936 the whole family moved to politically neutral Switzerland where Taubes's father was appointed chief rabbi. He completed his education in Basel and Zurich. In 1947 in Zurich he defended a doctoral thesis on Messianic ideas in Western culture (Abendländische Eschatologie), which he then published as a book—the only one published in his lifetime. He became friends with Armin Mohler, the author of the term “conservative revolution,” a would-be SS man (they did not want him), later the secretary of Ernst Jünger. At the same time he maintained close intellectual ties with the Protestant theologian Karl Barth and with Hans Urs von Balthasar, the influential Catholic priest and prominent theologian. In 1949 he was employed at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He attended Leo Strauss's seminar held at the New School for Social Research. While in the United States, he also met Hannah Arendt and Paul Tillich. It's a small world.
In 1951 Taubes was awarded the Warburg scholarship and went to work at a university in Jerusalem. He was admitted by the rector of the Hebrew University, Hugo Bergman, who would later describe Taubes's intellectual abilities as “absolutely exceptional” while pointing to his characteristic “disreputable behavior […] his chutzpah and his verve.”
Eighteen years of paediatric extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and ventricular assist devices: insight regarding late outcomes
- Shawn M. Shah, David W. Kays, Sharon R. Ghazarian, Tom R. Karl, Plato Alexander, Nathaniel Sznycer-Taub, Jason Parker, Molly Oldeen, Melvin C. Almodovar, Gary Stapleton, James A. Quintessenza, Alfred Asante-Korang, Vyas Kartha, Jade Hanson, Ernest Amankwah, Joeli Roth, Jeffrey P. Jacobs
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- Journal:
- Cardiology in the Young / Volume 28 / Issue 11 / November 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 17 September 2018, pp. 1316-1322
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- Article
- Export citation
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Background
We reviewed all patients who were supported with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and/or ventricular assist device at our institution in order to describe diagnostic characteristics and assess mortality.
MethodsA retrospective cohort study was performed including all patients supported with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and/or ventricular assist device from our first case (8 October, 1998) through 25 July, 2016. The primary outcome of interest was mortality, which was modelled by the Kaplan–Meier method.
ResultsA total of 223 patients underwent 241 extracorporeal membrane oxygenation runs. Median support time was 4.0 days, ranging from 0.04 to 55.8 days, with a mean of 6.4±7.0 days. Mean (±SD) age at initiation was 727.4 days (±146.9 days). Indications for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation were stratified by primary indication: cardiac extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (n=175; 72.6%) or respiratory extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (n=66; 27.4%). The most frequent diagnosis for cardiac extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients was hypoplastic left heart syndrome or hypoplastic left heart syndrome-related malformation (n=55 patients with HLHS who underwent 64 extracorporeal membrane oxygenation runs). For respiratory extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, the most frequent diagnosis was congenital diaphragmatic hernia (n=22). A total of 24 patients underwent 26 ventricular assist device runs. Median support time was 7 days, ranging from 0 to 75 days, with a mean of 15.3±18.8 days. Mean age at initiation of ventricular assist device was 2530.8±660.2 days (6.93±1.81 years). Cardiomyopathy/myocarditis was the most frequent indication for ventricular assist device placement (n=14; 53.8%). Survival to discharge was 42.2% for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients and 54.2% for ventricular assist device patients. Kaplan–Meier 1-year survival was as follows: all patients, 41.0%; extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients, 41.0%; and ventricular assist device patients, 43.2%. Kaplan–Meier 5-year survival was as follows: all patients, 39.7%; extracorporeal membrane oxygenation patients, 39.7%; and ventricular assist device patients, 43.2%.
ConclusionsThis single-institutional 18-year review documents the differential probability of survival for various sub-groups of patients who require support with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation or ventricular assist device. The indication for mechanical circulatory support, underlying diagnosis, age, and setting in which cannulation occurs may affect survival after extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and ventricular assist device. The Kaplan–Meier analyses in this study demonstrate that patients who survive to hospital discharge have an excellent chance of longer-term survival.