“That’s not going to happen,” Peretz said. His latest column argued against pardoning Jonathan Pollard, calling the incarcerated Israeli spy a “viper.” He printed out some hate mail and showed it to me. “Look, now I’m being called an anti-Semite!” He still didn’t regret his “Muslim life is cheap” remark. “Arab columnists write the same stuff all the time,” Peretz said. “I need to hire a researcher and prove it.” But he had made one concession. “Now I’m using ‘Islamists’ instead of Muslims in my writing. I’m not sure what’s the difference. It is sort of cynical, but people seem less offended.”

ON A JANUARY afternoon in his Tel Aviv apartment, I asked Peretz about his run-ins at the magazine. He has been in therapy for 20 years, but there are psychological mountains he can’t climb. “I lost millions and millions on the magazine, no one can say I didn’t care,” Peretz said. “It was because of me they still had jobs.” Then the bravado faded, and tears filled his eyes. “I’ve had to battle my whole life with my father’s anger,” Peretz said. “I think I have defeated it.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “More or less.”

The next day, six students showed up. Most had done the reading. It was from Frederick Douglass’s autobiography, about how Douglass, as a young slave, was separated from his mother and never told his real age. “Can you see how you could be stripped of your humanity if you were denied the things that make you you?” Peretz asked. The kids nodded. Then a mop-topped boy named Ben Ben, the only native Israeli in the class, asked a question. “Marty, why do you make us read only things where everyone is unhappy?”

Peretz laughed and shrugged his shoulders. As a reward, he invited his students to dinner the next night. We met at an organic restaurant run by a celebrity chef. The kids chowed down on cow’s esophagus, fresh tomatoes and hamburgers. Ben Ben was still thinking of Douglass’s autobiography. “Marty, Albert Einstein wrote that darkness is just the absence of light. That’s what I believe. No one is born into darkness. What do you think?”

Peretz didn’t hesitate. “I don’t believe that,” he said quietly. “Sometimes there’s darkness.”

The kids’ conversation quickly veered to Facebook and Seth Rogen movies. Dessert was ordered. The students were served first. Then Peretz’s order arrived — a paper bag filled to the top with chocolate ice cream. Peretz dug in with gusto until his cellphone rang. It was the film director Ed Zwick, yet another Peretz disciple.

“Ed, I have to call you back,” Peretz said.

He closed his phone and hungrily rejoined the conversation. He still had a lot to say.