[It is worth noting]... the Talmudic ruling that one of the duties of a parent is to teach your child a craft or trade through which he can earn a living. More pointed still was Maimonides’ famous statement that “The highest degree of charity, exceeded by none, is that of one who assists a poor person by providing him with a gift or a loan or by accepting him into a business partnership or by helping him to find employment – in a word, by putting him where he can dispense with other people’s aid.” The supreme act of welfare is to help people into work so that they no longer need the help of others.

Judaism recognises that unemployment has a psychological as well as economic dimension. Jewish law represents the sustained attempt to create a society that honours human dignity, and an essential part of this is that everyone should have the opportunity to contribute to the common good through their own endeavour. As Psalm 128 says, “When you eat from the labour of your hands, you will be happy and it will be well for you.”

As a matter of religious principle, job creation must be at the centre of any long-term welfare policy. Human dignity requires no less.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poverty • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

When Hungarian radical right-wingers rallied against a Jewish conference in Budapest in early May, a well-known Protestant pastor hid behind the stage while his wife stepped up to the podium to denounce Jews and Israel.

Lorant Hegedus could have preached the same anti-Semitism as his wife, a deputy for the populist Jobbik party in parliament. But his part in launching the rally may cost him his role as the far-right's favorite clergyman.

With anti-Semitism on the rise here, Christian churches are working with the Jewish community to counter the provocations against Jews and the Roma minority that have won Jobbik support among voters fed up with the country's economic crisis.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Hungary • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Judaism

The Jews of Corpus Christi knew a decade ago they had to act fast to save their two synagogues.

With at most 1,000 Jews left in the Texas town and only 60 families making up its membership, the 60-year-old Conservative synagogue was in shaky financial shape. So in 2005, B’nai Israel Synagogue merged with Temple Beth El, a Reform shul, to form Congregation Beth Israel, combining customs and sharing sacred spaces to preserve Jewish life in an area that saw its heyday around World War II.

The combined synagogue, and a small but growing number of others like it, makes a concerted effort to be inclusive despite denominational differences in liturgy and theology. Friday night services are tailored to Reform-minded members, while Saturday morning is conducted in the more traditional Conservative style, according to Kenneth Roseman, Beth Israel’s Reform-ordained rabbi.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The two men grew up on separate continents, speaking their own languages. One was not yet 20; the other was bearing down on 100.

Yet within half an hour of meeting each other this week for the first time, Henry Kabiyona and Sol Rosenkranz knew each other’s stories before the words reached their lips.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Rwanda • Europe • Poland • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

A national Holocaust monument is to be erected near the Canadian War Museum on LeBreton Flats, the government announced Tuesday.

The memorial, on federal land at Wellington and Booth streets, will honour the approximately six million Jews and others persecuted and murdered by Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War.

It “will be a testament to the importance of ensuring that the memory of the Holocaust is never lost,” Tim Uppal, minister of state for democratic reform, said in a statement after announcing the location during a ceremony at the neighbouring Canadian War Museum. The monument will go across the street, on the northeast corner of Booth Street.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Canada • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

If you ask me, I think it’s time we stop walking on eggshells with Islam.

It’s not healthy. This notion that any critique of Islam equates to Islamophobia is absurd and patronizing. It says to Muslims: “We criticize Judaism and Christianity because we think they can handle it, but we don’t think you can.” That’s insulting to Islam and to Muslims.

Every religion needs a good dose of criticism. That’s how they improve and become more human. That’s how they shed their outdated and immoral layers, like slavery and oppression of women. Where would Judaism be today without the centuries of relentless self-reflection and self-criticism that goes on to this day?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

Erica Brown, a prominent rabbi in Washington, recently wrote an article complaining about a "customer service" problem in the Jewish community. "We walk into synagogues and schools . . . and no one says hello. Few know our names (maybe for months or years). A friend in an interfaith marriage says that when he takes his wife to shul, no one talks to them. When he goes to his wife's church, everyone comes over to greet them."

David Polonsky, director of communications at Adas, tells me that when he moved to Washington a few years ago and called around to find out about high-holiday services, he was told they would cost him hundreds of dollars. "I'm a young person calling them and asking them for a Jewish experience," he recalls, yet no one asked for his name, let alone invited him to the synagogue. Shabbat-Hopping at least makes people feel welcome.

The conservative Adas Israel, the reform Washington Hebrew Congregation, and the nondenominational Sixth & I Historic Synagogue have all made a big deal of welcoming young professionals—even when there is no Shabbat-Hopping event.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Speaking to a group of ultra-Orthodox men shortly before he officially entered politics, Yair Lapid, a proudly secular talk-show host, declared that in a century-long competition to define Israel’s character, “we lost and you won.”

“Not only in terms of numbers,” Mr. Lapid said in late 2011 at a college for religious students, but also in politics “and as a consumer force and in the streets and in the culture and in the educational system — you won in all these places.”

Now, Mr. Lapid’s stunning success in last week’s election, in which his new Yesh Atid became Israel’s second largest party, is being viewed by many voters, activists and analysts here as a victory for the secular mainstream in the intensifying identity battle gripping the country.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

On a dark and cold morning last month, 19-year-old Aaron Liberman woke at his apartment and walked a block and a half to a two-story, redbrick synagogue in West Rogers Park, a predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in northwest Chicago. Inside, he was met by the hum of worship and a smattering of older men — some in black hats, some wrapped in prayer shawls — seated at long tables, surrounded by shelves packed with books, Hebrew letters on their spines.

Liberman removed his jacket and unpacked his worn prayer book. He unfurled his tefillin, small boxes holding prayers printed on parchment, and bound them to his left arm and his forehead with black leather straps. Then he prayed.

During the service, a man walked over, politely interrupting Liberman’s meditation, asked how he was, and then, rather proudly, said: “We’re going to get tickets for one of your games. My kids, they are very excited.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Men • Religion & Culture • Sports • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

For the past two decades, in a small town in southern Italy, a pianist and music teacher has been hunting for and resurrecting the music of the dead.

Francesco Lotoro has found thousands of songs, symphonies and operas written in concentration, labor and POW camps in Germany and elsewhere before and during World War II.

By rescuing compositions written in imprisonment, Lotoro wants to fill the hole left in Europe's musical history and show how even the horrors of the Holocaust could not suppress artistic inspiration.

You can read it but it is a must-listen-to it all entry. Stunningly powerful.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Music • Psychology • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Not while the snow-shroud round dead earth is rolled,
And naked branches point to frozen skies.—
When orchards burn their lamps of fiery gold,
The grape glows like a jewel, and the corn
A sea of beauty and abundance lies,
Then the new year is born.

Look where the mother of the months uplifts
In the green clearness of the unsunned West,
Her ivory horn of plenty, dropping gifts,
Cool, harvest-feeding dews, fine-winnowed light;
Tired labor with fruition, joy and rest
Profusely to requite.

Blow, Israel, the sacred cornet! Call
Back to thy courts whatever faint heart throb
With thine ancestral blood, thy need craves all.
The red, dark year is dead, the year just born
Leads on from anguish wrought by priest and mob,
To what undreamed-of morn?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Poetry & Literature • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The new law passed by an overwhelming majority in Bundestag lower house said the operation could be carried out, as long as parents were informed about the risks.

Jewish groups welcomed the move.

"This vote and the strong commitment shown ... to protect this most integral practice of the Jewish religion is a strong message to our community for the continuation and flourishing of Jewish life in Germany," said Moshe Kantor, President of the European Jewish Congress....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

SUSAN BRAUNSTEIN (The Jewish Museum, New York): The rabbis associated a miracle with the holiday that when the ancient soldiers came to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem and they lit the menorah that was in the Temple, they only had one cruse of oil to burn for one day, but miraculously it burned for eight, and so that’s why we call it the festival of lights and why we light the Hanukkah lamp. The rabbis going back to Maimonides and earlier felt that the lights of the Hanukkah lamp were sacred.

The rabbis actually did specify a list of materials that were preferable to use for the Hanukkah lamps. Gold and silver, of course, being the best, if you could possibly afford that. Most people couldn’t. If you were poor and couldn’t afford a permanent Hanukkah lamp, you could use an egg shell, or a nut shell, or a potato carved out.

The lamps used in homes for most of the centuries that Hanukkah has been celebrated were actually using oil. And then over time in the 19th century and into the 20th century, candles became more popular for home use. It’s pretty messy to use oil; we’ve tried it.

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Andy Statman stood in the narrow basement of an Orthodox synagogue improbably wedged among the boîtes and boutiques of Greenwich Village. He wore a plain blue suit and white shirt, and from his waist hung tzitzit, the fringes meant to remind an observant Jew of the 613 commandments. Twisting together the pieces of his clarinet, he ran through a glissando that seemed to corkscrew through the air.

Four rows of folding chairs were arranged before Mr. Statman, and in them sat about 15 people, several in yarmulkes, one an Australian woman whose music teacher back home had instructed her to find and hear Andy Statman. The basement’s shelves bore Talmudic volumes and Sabbath candlesticks, and the room was so chilly on this November night that nearly all the listeners had kept on their coats.

“This is concert probably, what, 6-something, 650?” Mr. Statman asked his drummer, Larry Eagle.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Music • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

One of the holiest sites in Christendom has also been one of the most contested. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem lies on the site where Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified and buried.

Multiple Christian denominations share the church uneasily, and clerics sometimes come to blows over the most minor of disputes. The Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox all have a presence in the church.

But the most recent conflict at the 4th century church was over something entirely different: an unpaid water bill.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Judaism

There are still far too many children in need today and I find it moving that Judaism and Christianity focus on their holiest days on the birth of a child. On the first day of the Jewish year we tell the story of the birth of the first Jewish child, to the elderly Abraham and Sarah who had almost given up hope. And Christmas tells the Christian story in a very similar way through the birth of a child – because nothing more powerfully symbolises the miracle of every new human life, and at the same time its intense vulnerability. Children more than anything else evoke our sense of compassion, but their very powerlessness places them at the great risk of our neglect.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Advent • * Culture-Watch • Children • History • Marriage & Family • Poverty • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Anthropology

This book is a teaser. It's an appetizer. It's meant to propose to Jews in Israel, in America and everywhere, and it means to propose to non-Jews, to relate to a wonderful line of texts full of wisdom, full of humor. And we are trying to seduce people - Jews and non-Jews alike - to seduce people to this wonderful heritage.

Read it all (audio version highly recommended if you prefer listening).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • History • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Women • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Lord Sacks has described religion as "the redemption of our solitude" during a parliamentary debate on the role of faith in society.
The chief rabbi, who will retire from his post in less than a year, suggested that while in secular times religion was often misunderstood as "a strange set of beliefs and idiosyncratic rituals", it could be better understood for its teachings about "making sacrifices for the sake of others, through charity".
"Long before these functions were taken over by the state, religious groups, here and elsewhere, were building schools and hospitals and networks of support," he said, referring to Harvard sociologist Robert Putnam's research on the role of faith groups in society.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • Sociology • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The idea of Abrahamic religion is usually tied up with the notion of Abraham as the first monotheist. To the best-selling author Bruce Feiler, Abraham was "the first person to understand that there is only one God," and this insight is "the shared endowment of the Abrahamic faiths."

But the familiar image of Abraham as the discoverer of the true God and the uncompromising opponent of idolatry isn't found in Genesis or anywhere else in the Hebrew Bible. It is an idea that originated in Judaism after most of the Hebrew Bible had been composed, and from there it spread into the literature of the Talmudic rabbis and later into the Quran, forming an important commonality between Judaism and Islam.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

It seems to me that Niebuhr's appeal to many nonreligious people was because he treated idolatry as the root of the injustice they felt was so wrong and had to be opposed. Niebuhr did not require them to make a theological commitment in order to be more coherently opposed to injustice. He did not require them to first affirm "the God of Justice" (Isaiah 30:18) in order to then appreciate how injustice is not only an assault on humans, but it is an assault on truth itself.

What Niebuhr did try to persuade them was that their opposition to injustice would be more coherent if they understood that the injustice they opposed is not just the result of human error at the epistemological level, but that it is the result of human deceit at the ontological level - substituting a false god for the true God, even if they could now only affirm the possibility that there is such a God. And to affirm what is clearly a desirable possibility is the essence of hope. Hence Niebuhr gave their moral instinct a deeper and more hopeful intentionality.

So when Stanley Hauerwas criticizes Niebuhr for promulgating "an ethic for everyone," I think Niebuhr would have taken that criticism as a compliment, for an ethic for everyone is precisely what ethics must be in order to have a voice in an idolatrous world. Clearly, Niebuhr would have liked for his nonreligious hearers to move into a position of faith in the God of the Bible, but he did not present that move as some sort of logical necessity. He knew full well that no one can be argued into faith, yet they can be argued into opposition against idolatrous injustice.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church History • * Culture-Watch • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Established by Jewish philanthropists Charles Bronfman and Michael Steinhardt, among others, in collaboration with the Israeli government and various Jewish communal organizations, Birthright's goal is "to strengthen Jewish identity, Jewish communities and solidarity with Israel." As the generation that experienced the Holocaust and the creation of Israel grew older and died, younger Jews began to view the issue of a Jewish state with less and less urgency.

Birthright's founders wanted to counter the waning interest in Judaism among the young. So far, the organization has sent more than 300,000 Jews from 59 countries to Israel—mostly from the U.S. and Canada.

Mark Shapiro, a former consultant for McKinsey & Co. who worked on the original plans for Birthright, says that some of the impetus for the project came from the 1990 Jewish Population Survey that showed an intermarriage rate for American Jews of greater than 50%....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

A 19th century copy of the U.S. Constitution in Yiddish and Hebrew. A 15th century Hebrew book from Italy open to a page of passages that had been censored by the Catholic Church during the Inquisition. A 20th century “Curious George” children’s book translated into Yiddish.

Spanning across the centuries and the globe, they’re all part of a new exhibit, “Words Like Sapphires,'' which celebrates 100 years of Hebraica at the Library of Congress.

The exhibit features some 60 objects, religious and lighter fare, drawn from the Library of Congress’ more than 200,000-piece Hebraica collection....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Several recent incidents in Berlin have escalated tensions between Muslims, Jews, and the city's secular majority. Over a month ago, a rabbi wearing a kippa, or yarmulke, was beaten by four "Arab-looking" youths after being asked if he and his daughter were Jewish. Public outcry led to a large demonstration in support of Berlin's Jews, including a flash mob of Jews and non-Jews wearing kippot. Tensions escalated days later when a second incident, in which Jewish school girls were harassed by a group of youths that included a girl wearing a head scarf, led to an exchange of harsh words between Jewish and Muslim leaders, though in neither case were the attackers caught or identified definitively. After being advised to urge greater religious tolerance, Muslim leaders denied responsibility for the attacks and pointed out their own experiences of intolerance in the city.

Then on Yom Kippur, two more anti-Semitic incidents took place—the first when a young white man threatened a local Jewish leader and told him to go back where he came from, and the second when a mother and her daughter were forced out of a taxi after telling the "German" driver they were going to synagogue. Diedre Berger of the Berlin office of the American Jewish Committee has now intervened, asking the German government to develop an action plan to combat anti-Semitism.

Meanwhile, a contrasting alliance between Jews and Muslims has formed in the aftermath of a regional court ruling against circumcision.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism • Secularism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

[Ludwig ] Guttmann was a refugee from Nazi Germany. Born into an orthodox Jewish family, by 1933 he was Germany’s leading brain surgeon. Then Hitler came to power and in 1939 he came to Britain where his skill in neurology led to his being asked by the government to set up the National Spinal Injuries Centre at Stoke Mandeville hospital, which he did in 1943.

At that time it was assumed that paraplegics would never be able to live any kind of normal life. The best that could be done for them was to keep them sedated by high doses of drugs, and left hospitalized and bed-ridden until they died.

Guttmann was appalled. He believed that they each had a life ahead of them, not just behind them. With faith and determination, they could leave their beds, go out into the world, have jobs, marry,find happiness and the dignity of achievement. The film tells how, by sheer will and unshakable obstinacy, he gave paraplegics back their life.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Life Ethics • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

They are in their 80s now, the last living links to Janusz Korczak, the visionary champion of children’s rights who refused to part with his young charges even as they were herded to the gas chambers.

When they speak of him, the old men are young again: transported to their days in his orphanage, a place they remember as a magical republic for children as the Nazi threat grew closer.

“It was a utopia,” said Shlomo Nadel, 85, one of the surviving orphans who managed to flee Poland before the Jewish orphanage was forced into the ghetto.

Read it all

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Poland • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Herewith the blurb about the show:

Dr. Janucz Korczak (1878-1942) was a Polish-Jewish pediatrician who had revolutionary ideas about humanism for children, and was one of the first proponents of children's rights. He established the first progressive orphanages in Poland, and wrote numerous books on child psychology, including How to Love a Child and the Child's Right to Respect. Pediatrician Dr. Susan Weisberg describes how Dr. Korczak has inspired her life's work, and tells the story of Dr. Korczak's tragic but noble Holocaust death. Dr. Michael Greenberg hosts.

You can play it or get it via podcast (last about 14 and 1/2 minutes and requires [free] registration). This was the highlight of the week for me--KSH [Hat tip: Elizabeth Harmon]. If you are unable or unwilling to access this recent ReachMD show, do take the time to explore this NPR piece from 2007 here (full transcript there).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Poland • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Jews are in the midst of a period known as the Days of Awe, which began on Sunday night with Rosh Hashanah and culminates next Wednesday with Yom Kippur. It seems almost a misnomer to call them "holidays," though the first marks the Jewish New Year. Rather, they are deeply personal events whose aim is self-reflection, self-improvement and repairing what is broken in daily relationships.

It's striking how much this most important period on the Jewish calendar shares with that most essential exercise in American democracy. Walt Whitman wrote in the late 1800s that "a well-contested American national election" was "the triumphant result of faith in human kind." This country's unique sense of optimism—the view that the future is unwritten and full of possibility, that anything can be achieved—is also the sensibility underpinning the Days of Awe.

On a cosmic level, Rosh Hashanah commemorates the birth of the world. On an individual level, it marks the rebirth of the soul as Jews examine their faults and ask forgiveness from those they have wronged. At heart, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are deeply optimistic events.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

To return to Lord Sacks: his book, according to Andrew Marr – not an oracle, admittedly, but still a good barometer of liberal taste – is “the most persuasive argument for religious belief I have ever read.” Sacks argues, not that Dawkins is the “latest pub bore” but that questions of religion and science concern different hemispheres of the brain: science (the left hemisphere) “takes things apart to see how they work”; religion (the right hemisphere) “puts things together to see what they mean”; both activities are vital.

Come to think of it, it is a great pity that the Chief Rabbi can’t, for obvious reasons, apply for the job of being the next Archbishop of Canterbury: he is an intellectual – but with a gift for clear exposition; he believes in God, marriage, the family; he is conciliatory rather than divisive; and from his own religious and historical perspective he sees the marginalisation of faith for what it is.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • --Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Berlin's senate said doctors could legally circumcise infant boys for religious reasons in its region, given certain conditions, ending months of legal uncertainty after a court banned the practice this year.

The ruling in June by a district court in Cologne outraged Muslims and Jews and sparked an emotional debate in the country.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

Hebrew scripture is a "message in a bottle," says Yoram Hazony, and in The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, he tries to decipher that message. Hazony's new book makes the case for a different reading of the ancient texts — and argues that the Hebrew Bible is a work of philosophy in narrative form.

Hazony says the five books of Moses — which Christians speak of as the Old Testament — should not be thought of as discrete narrative but, rather, considered together with the books of Judges, Samuel and Kings. All of those books form a history of Israel, from the creation story to the dissolution and dismemberment of a decadent monarchy. It is a cautionary tale, an epic that advocates wariness of great imperial powers and individualism in the face of authority.

Read or listen to it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Philosophy • Poetry & Literature • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

A column on the Obama-Romney race by political and social commentator David Brooks in the August 20 New York Times bore the caption “Guide for the Perplexed.” Brooks was trying to give some helpful counsel to undecided voters trying to make up their minds, and either he or the editors of the column thought this would make a good title. If it came from Brooks, I have no doubt that, a man of cultivation, he was aware that it is also the name of a greatly influential, late 12th-century work of Jewish religious philosophy by Maimonides or Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, widely known among Jews by his acronym of “Rambam.” If it came from the editors of the columns page, I’m not so sure.

I say this because, lately, “guides for the perplexed” have been popping up everywhere, like mushrooms after a rain. Recently, the British Daily Telegraph published an article on “Cancer Cure: A Guide for the Perplexed.” August’s Jewish World Review has a contribution called “A Parenting Guide for the Perplexed.” This past June, The New Yorker ran a piece on the euro crisis, titled “The Spanish Bailout: A Guide for the Perplexed.” Last January, American film historian David Bordwell reviewed the movie version of John le Carré’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” under the title “Tinker Tailor: A Guide for the Perplexed.” Among books appearing in the past several years, you can find “Christian Bioethics: A Guide for the Perplexed,” “China Energy: A Guide for the Perplexed,” “Egypt and Islamic Sharia: A Guide for the Perplexed” and “A Guide for the Perplexed: Translations of All Non-English Phrases in Patrick O’Brian’s Sea-Tales.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • History • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Four years ago, when the longtime rabbi of Beth El Synagogue here retired, a member named Barak D. Richman joined the committee searching for a successor. Everything went smoothly enough until the congregation reached outside Conservative Judaism, its formal affiliation, to consider candidates from the Reform and Reconstructionist branches, and to place a few online advertisements.

Several months into the process, one of Mr. Richman’s colleagues on the search committee delivered some unexpected information. Under the rules of the Conservative movement, Beth El had two choices: either look at Conservative rabbis put forward by the movement’s placement office, and do not so much as whistle at anybody else; or, look outside the movement and be denied access to any of its rabbis.

Being a law professor at Duke University with an expertise in antitrust, Mr. Richman responded in a unique way. He recalled a 1975 Supreme Court case, Goldfarb v. Virginia State Bar, which successfully challenged the controlled market for lawyers doing real estate title searches. And he thought of the word “cartel.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Consider the facts. In the past forty years there has been an explosion of leadership programmes, courses, institutes and studies....At the same time, respect for leaders has fallen to an unprecedented low. In 2011 only 15 per cent of Americans expressed trust in the government to do what is right most of the time, down from almost 70 per cent in the 1960s. 77 per cent said they believed that the United States has a leadership crisis. Sharp declines in confidence can be traced, sector by sector, in leadership in politics, business, finance, the media, sports, education and faith-based organisations. A mere 7 per cent of American corporate employees trust their employers to be both honest and competent.

Something large is happening, not just in America but throughout much of the world. Kellerman traces it to three factors. First is the long, historic march to toward ever-greater democracy. Second is the collapse of traditional authority structures within the family that took place in the West in the 1960s, sending ripples throughout society in the form of “the death of deference.” Third is the impact of instantaneous global communication and social networking that has led to the Arab Spring, the Occupy Wall Street movement, Wikileaks and other assaults on the citadels of power. In the hyper-democracy of cyberspace, everyone has a voice, all the time.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • --Social Networking • Books • Globalization • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The Orthodox community's engagement and population, meanwhile, continue to grow. Orthodox households now make up a third of the Jewish population in New York and its suburbs. The ultra-Orthodox birthrate, meanwhile, is three times that of non-Orthodox Jewish New Yorkers.

But what about the rest of the Jewish population? How can they be offered a sense of community and meaning? What learning could galvanize non-Orthodox Jewish minds, stir our hearts, nourish our souls? How can we include the voices of all those who want to engage in Jewish study, women and men?

I propose a different page for Jewish learning, one that is open to the larger world and bears the impact of modern thinking. It would cleave faithfully to texts, rituals, history and faith while being informed by art, music, drama, poetry, politics and law.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The sixth meeting of the Anglican-Jewish Commission of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and office of the Archbishop of Canterbury was hosted by the latter, at Mansfield College Oxford, on 31st July and 1st August 2012 / 12th and 13th ....

The Commission’s mandate is taken from the provisions of the joint declaration of the Archbishop and the Chief Rabbis made at Lambeth Palace on 6th September 2006 and confirmed at their subsequent meeting in Jerusalem.

The meeting opened with the reading of a message from the Archbishop of Canterbury expressing his appreciation of the important ongoing relationship that the Commission represents and his own warm relationship with the Chief Rabbis of Israel with whom he had met earlier in the year in Jerusalem.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • - Anglican: Primary Source • -- Reports & Communiques • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism

The world must “never forget” the terrorist attacks that killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, David Cameron has said.

On the 40th anniversary of the attack, the Prime Minister led tributes to the 11 men who lost their lives on “one of the darkest days in the history of the Olympic Games”.

He said Britain understands the terrible impact of terrorism as the London 2012 Olympics were announced the day before the bombings on July 7, 2005.

Read it all and then please take the time to read the whole speech.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Sports • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe • Germany • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Run by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute, which is affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Orthodox Jewry, “Money Matters” is offered at more than 350 locations in 22 countries this year, and is proving to be one of the most popular courses JLI has ever offered, said Rabbi Efraim Mintz, JLI’s executive director.

“When students first come to the course, they may respect the Torah (the Hebrew Bible) and the Talmud (a 2,000 year-old compendium of Jewish oral law and biblical commentary), but few see it as something relevant to the here and now,” Mintz said.

“But soon, they are mesmerized and surprised by its applicability to the business issues of the day.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Stewardship • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Corporations/Corporate Life • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • Stock Market • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

A Cologne court has decreed that a child's circumcision is "bodily harm" and thus verboten. Unless the German Bundestag intervenes, which it has pledged to do, about four million Muslims and 100,000-plus Jews will have to practice a central part of their religion in the catacombs of Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich.

It is all God's fault. "This is my covenant," He ordered in Genesis 17:10, "which ye shall keep, and thy seed after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised." The original criminal was Abraham, who laid hand on himself—without sterile equipment, let alone novocaine. Then he inflicted the same on his son Isaac on the eighth day after his birth, circa 4,000 years ago....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

A controversial German court ruling on circumcision has outraged Muslim and Jewish groups in Germany and abroad. German commentators say the decision was misguided and could have devastating consequences.

The ruling came nearly two weeks ago, but the reaction is getting increasingly vocal. At a meeting of the orthodox Conference of European Rabbis in Berlin on Thursday, the group's head warned that a June 26 court decision making a case of circumcision a crime had been the "worst attack on Jewish life since the Holocaust". Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt also threatened that Jews might leave Germany if the country doesn't move to provide legal certainty that the tradition of circumcision can continue.

In a case involving a Muslim boy, the Cologne regional court ruled that the doctor performing the circumcision had committed bodily injury to a child, thus criminalizing the act. The ruling has no legal bearing on other cases, but some fear it could be used as a precedent by other courts.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

A Yiddish play with the title “Toyt fun a Salesman” opened at the Parkway Theater in Brooklyn early in 1951. As most of the audience recognized from the name alone, the show was a translation of Arthur Miller’s drama “Death of a Salesman.” It seemed a mere footnote to the premiere production, which had completed its triumphal run on Broadway several months earlier, having won the Pulitzer Prize.

Even so, a theater critic in Commentary magazine, George Ross, declared of the Brooklyn version, “What one feels most strikingly is that this Yiddish play is really the original, and the Broadway production was merely Arthur Miller’s translation into English.”

History, it must be said, has not exactly ratified Mr. Ross’s judgment. In an enduring way, however, he framed a penetrating question about Miller’s masterpiece, which has echoed from the 1949 debut to the celebrated revival now on Broadway. Is Willy Loman Jewish?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Theatre/Drama/Plays • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Although Pope Paul VI had already taken decisive steps towards rapprochement with Judaism, the engagement in this issue by the leadership of the Catholic Universal Church was only really apprehended by the wider public in the form of Pope John Paul II. His passionate endeavours for Jewish–Christian dialogue surely have their roots initially in his personal biography. Karol Wojtyla grew up in the small Polish town of Wadowice which consisted to at least one quarter of Jewish. Since everyday contact and friendship with Jews was taken for granted already in his childhood it was for him as Pope an important concern to maintain his friendship with a Jewish school friend, and to intensify the bonds of friendship with Judaism in general.

Beyond that, John Paul was able to give visible expression to his concern for reconciliation with Judaism through grand public gestures. Already in the first year of his pontificate on 7 June 1979 he visited the former concentration camp of Auschwitz–Birkenau, where in front of the memorial stone with its Hebrew inscription he recalled the victims of the Shoah in a particular manner with the moving words: “This inscription awakens the memory of the People whose sons and daughters were intended for total extermination. This People draws its origin from Abraham, our Father in faith (cf. Rom 4:12) as was expressed by Paul of Tarsus. The very People that received from God the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” itself experienced in a special measure what is meant by killing. It is not permissible for anyone to pass by this inscription with indifference.”[15] Even more attention was paid by the public media to the visit by Pope John Paul II to the Roman synagogue on 13 April 1986, which is also accorded special significance because there was a Jewish community in Rome long before the Christian faith was brought to Rome. The historical significance of this event however is based above all on the fact that it was the first time in history the Bishop of Rome has visited a synagogue, to bear testimony to his respect for Judaism before the whole world. The gesture of the embrace of the Chief Rabbi Elio Toaff and Pope John Paul II remains an indelible memory.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Other Faiths • Judaism

The Jewish celebration in Djerba went ahead without a hitch on May 9. Several hundred worshipers danced with Torah scrolls in a small procession outside El Ghriba synagogue. Men played the darbuka, sang songs, and prayed inside the ancient house of worship. The gathering was surrounded at all times by a small army of policemen to ensure nothing went wrong.

"To me, there is something magical about Jews and Arabs living together like they do here," said Guy Tzinmann, a French Jew who came from Paris to take part in the event. "If you don't come with an Israeli passport, they don't give you any trouble. And unlike Algeria, where my mother is from, I can come here to visit."

To be sure, turnout could have been stronger; only a few dozen people came from overseas, a far cry from the thousands who attended over the past decade. But it's hard to see the event as anything other than a success.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Tunisia • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

Overheard next to me last week while getting a facial on West 72nd Street on the Upper West Side:

Woman in her 80s reclining next to me with green cream on her visage asking her facialist: “So, do you Russians have brisket for Passover?”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Urban/City Life and Issues • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Some people suggest that faith should be confined to the home and the house of worship, and play no role in public life. I believe that every person has a right, really a responsibility, to contribute his or her perspectives to the public forum, including perspectives of faith. But faith must never be the final word when it comes to writing the law.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

On my late summer visits to Bubbie Birshtein in Norfolk Virginia, my mother’s mother, a surprise was in store for me. The Titanic words became real when I was introduced to a man in his forties, Mr. Aks, a family friend, and I was told that he was one of the babies who survived the sinking of the Titanic in 1912.

Amazingly, he was taken from his mother’s arms that terrible night as the ship began to carry its passengers under water and thrown overboard.

He was caught by a woman in a lifeboat, whose last name was Astor. She wrapped him in a blanket since he was only nine months old. Later he was returned to his mother, who did survive.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

...if there’s one element of Judaism I’d love to share with everyone it’s this: If you want to survive and thrive as a people, a culture, a civilization, celebrate the family. Hold it sacred. Eat together. Tell the story of what most matters to you across the generations. Make children the most important people. Put them centre stage. Encourage them to ask questions, the more the better. That’s what Moses said thirty three centuries ago and Judaism is still here to tell the tale having survived some of the most brutal persecutions in human history, yet as a religious faith were still young and full of energy.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

In the service lay a story of black Christians and white Jews who once shared a kind of promised land, a peacefully integrated section of Indianapolis called Southside. Its decades of harmony were a rebuke to the Southern-style racial divisions that characterized Indiana for much of the 20th century, from the Ku Klux Klan’s heyday in the interwar years to George Wallace’s popularity with the state’s voters in the 1960s.

Upward mobility, Interstate 70 and the construction of a football stadium hollowed out the neighborhood starting in the late 1960s, scattering its residents and severing bonds of commerce and friendship. But in the last four years, an anthropology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, Susan B. Hyatt, has set about finding former Southsiders and restoring those ties through social events and reciprocal worship services at South Calvary and the Etz Chaim Sephardic synagogue.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Race/Race Relations • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Baptists • Other Faiths • Judaism

On Easter Sunday, the great hall of Grace Episcopal Church was quiet. The choir wasn't singing, the Rector wasn't preaching and Sunday school wasn't ending because it hadn't begun in the 166-year-old building in almost a year.

Last August, an earthquake centered in Virginia shook the congregation out of their home at Grace Episcopal in downtown Charleston.

Instead of pews, there's scaffolding. Red 'danger, do not enter' tape covers the hall instead Easter decorations.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * General Interest • Natural Disasters: Earthquakes, Tornadoes, Hurricanes, etc. • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism • * South Carolina

Today is the first day of Passover, the most celebrated Jewish holiday, commemorating the Exodus of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

Families and congregations gather en masse for the observances. But many look past the details, the preparations and the moments that deepen the experience.

“We feel that if you go for Palm Sunday and Easter, you miss the (sorrow) of Holy Week,” said Barbara Manaker, James Island Presbyterian Church music director. “If you experience more of what Jesus went through, Easter Sunday becomes more meaningful. Without that, you go from one celebration to another.”

Read it all from the local paper.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Holy Week • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * South Carolina

During the month leading up to Passover, which this year begins April 6 at sundown, Chevy Weiss, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish mother with five kids and a demanding career, scrubs and vacuums almost everything in her Baltimore home.

In keeping with their strict interpretation of Jewish law, which forbids Jews from possessing and consuming chametz (fermented grains) during the eight-day festival, Weiss and her husband, Yoel, clean every one of their five children's toys by hand, with bleach.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

“New Haggadahs will be written until there are no more Jews to write them. Or until our destiny has been fulfilled, and there is no more need to say, ‘Next year in Jerusalem,’” according to the preface to the New American Haggadah. Watch our interviews at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC with writers Jonathan Safran Foer and Nathan Englander about the new Haggadah edited by Foer, translated by Englander, designed by Oden Ezer, and published by Little, Brown. Interviews by Julie Mashack. Edited by Fred Yi.

Watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

So how do Melbourne, London and Montreal maintain economically affordable, academically excellent Jewish schools? Simple: The government picks up part of the tab, often by covering the cost of the school's secular subjects. If American Jews want our Jewish schools to flourish, we must push our government to do the same.

Doing so would constitute a radical shift. Outside the Orthodox community, American Jewish organizations have for decades opposed government funding for religious schools. The most common objection is that by intertwining church and state, such funding threatens religious liberty, a deep concern for a religious group that comprises roughly 2% of the U.S. population.

But that fear is overblown. Government aid to Jewish schools in Australia, Britain and Canada doesn't mean that Jews in those countries enjoy less religious liberty than their American counterparts. Even in America, state and local governments already pay for the cost of special education in religious schools.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the 92nd Street Y in New York, Vanderbilt Divinity School professor Amy-Jill Levine is making the case that Jews and Christians alike need to pay more attention to the Jewishness of Jesus, and the best way to do that, she believes, is by reading the New Testament from a Jewish perspective.

PROFESSOR LEVINE: If I want to understand Jewish history, the New Testament is one of the best sources that I’ve got.

LAWTON: Levine, who is an observant Jew, is co-editor of The Jewish Annotated New Testament, a version of the Christian scripture with footnotes and commentaries written entirely by Jewish scholars.

Read or watch it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Christology • Theology: Scripture

French police are linking the shootings of four people at a Jewish school in Toulouse to the killings of three soldiers of North African descent in two separate incidents last week.

The same gun and the same stolen scooter were used in all three attacks, sources close to the investigation say.

A teacher and three children were shot dead at the Ozar Hatorah school, and a teenage boy was seriously injured.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Religion & Culture • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Europe • France • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The greater New York City area (including Brooklyn, and central and northern New Jersey) is home to millions of atheists, including many who still engage in religious activities, including Jewish and Muslim rituals. While we have little interest in arguing against cultural affirmations, we are eager to question the false foundations for religious ideas – and to call out atheists who're helping keep irrationality alive.

Atheism needs the involvement of atheists, deserves the support of atheists – and that's every bit as true of atheists who read Hebrew or Arabic, as it is of anyone else.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Atheism • Islam • Judaism

A man aged 20 has been arrested in northern Italy on suspicion of plotting an attack on a synagogue in Milan.

The suspect, described as Moroccan-born, was said to have had details of the synagogue and plans for an attack on his computer.

Police in London said a 40-year-old woman was also arrested on suspicion of collecting information useful to terrorism.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Police/Fire • Violence • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Italy • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Pope Benedict has condemned violence committed in God’s name and personally exonerated Jews of responsibility for Jesus’ death in his latest book, released on Thursday. The book, the second in a planned three-part series on the life of Jesus, is a detailed, highly theological and academic recounting of the last week in Jesus’ life.

Publishers have printed 1.2 million copies of the book in seven languages. A blaze of international publicity included teleconferences with the media in several countries.

In one section, Benedict writes that there can be no justification for violence carried out in God’s name, an assertion as applicable to Islamist militancy today as to violence that the Catholic Church itself committed in the past as it spread the faith.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Primates • * Culture-Watch • Books • Violence • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Christology • Theology: Scripture

A technological crackdown, telegraphed by Mormon leaders, has effectively blocked the pre-eminent whistle-blower of controversial proxy baptisms from accessing the LDS Church’s database that chronicles so-called baptisms for the dead.

LDS officials defend the move, saying it helps prevent overzealous Mormons and mischief-makers from violating church policy by submitting the names of prominent Jewish figures, such as Anne Frank and Daniel Pearl, both discovered on the baptism rolls in recent weeks.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism • Mormons • * Theology • Eschatology • Sacramental Theology • Baptism

...[Middle Eastern Christians] share of the region's population has plunged from 20% a century ago to less than 5% today and falling. In Egypt, 200,000 Coptic Christians fled their homes last year after beatings and massacres by Muslim extremist mobs. Since 2003, 70 Iraqi churches have been burned and nearly a thousand Christians killed in Baghdad alone, causing more than half of this million-member community to flee. Conversion to Christianity is a capital offense in Iran, where last month Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani was sentenced to death. Saudi Arabia outlaws private Christian prayer.

As 800,000 Jews were once expelled from Arab countries, so are Christians being forced from lands they've inhabited for centuries.

The only place in the Middle East where Christians aren't endangered but flourishing is Israel. Since Israel's founding in 1948, its Christian communities (including Russian and Greek Orthodox, Catholics, Armenians and Protestants) have expanded more than 1,000%.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Muslim-Christian relations • Judaism

Ever since their mad dash out of Egypt bound for the Promised Land, Jews have been on the move — and they continue to be, far more than any other religious group, according to a new study.

One in four of the world's Jews has migrated from one country to another, compared to 5% of Christians and 4% of Muslims who have left their native lands.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • History • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Although the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints promised in 1995 to stop including Holocaust victims in its ritual, the church admitted last week that Anne Frank had been “baptized” in a Mormon church in the Dominican Republic. On Wednesday, The Boston Globe reported that Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was kidnapped and killed by terrorists in Pakistan in early 2002, was baptized last June in Twin Falls, Idaho; Mr. Pearl was Jewish.

Also on Wednesday, the church released a letter reiterating its policy that “without exception, church members must not submit for proxy temple ordinances any names from unauthorized groups, such as celebrities and Jewish Holocaust victims.”

In proxy baptism, a living Mormon immerses himself or herself in a baptismal font on behalf of a dead person. A church spokesman, Michael Otterson, said Friday that the ritual was done in the spirit of love, and that people’s souls were free not to become Mormons.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism • Mormons • * Theology • Eschatology

What do George Washington, Albert Einstein and Stanley Ann Durham (Barack Obama's mother) have in common? Mormons have baptized each of them by proxy, performing a temple rite they believe gives human beings a posthumous opportunity to obtain salvation.

Researchers recently discovered that Mormons had similarly baptized the parents of famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, whose mother died in a Nazi extermination camp in 1942. And one Mormon recently proposed for proxy baptism the still-living Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel.

This esoteric practice doesn't always provoke complaints—President Obama refused to comment on his mother's case, for instance—but it has strained Mormon-Jewish relations over the past two decades.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • Mormons • * Theology • Eschatology • Sacramental Theology • Baptism

With Passover just a month away a new app aims to help consumers keep kosher throughout the eight-day Jewish festival and to stay up to date on kosher products throughout the rest of the year.

Released by the Orthodox Union (OU), which promotes the values of the Orthodox Jewish community, the app called OU Kosher provides consumers with updates on products that have been certified by the OU, which is the world’s largest kosher certification agency.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

For six years, Rabbi [Shais] Taub, 37, has been teaching and writing about the spiritual component of recovery from addiction. He had begun within the Jewish community, specifically the Chabad movement, and yet providence or serendipity or destiny has brought him increasing recognition and influence well beyond it.

So it was that Father [Steven] Boes asked him to address a half-dozen staff members, some of them clergy and some of them therapists, who lead recovery programs at Boys Town. Once a refuge for children neglected or abandoned due primarily to poverty, it now deals extensively with boys and girls who have abused alcohol and drugs. And while Boys Town from its origin had been nondenominational and opposed to religious compulsion of any kind, it has always considered faith a central element for repairing damaged lives.

Over the course of 90 minutes with the Boys Town staff members, Rabbi Taub spoke of the Talmud, “Hamlet,” the Exodus narrative and the metaphor of the canary in the coal mine.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Other Faiths • Judaism

"As business capital is assumed to be both outside the intent of the prohibition and an indispensable element of the modern economy, it was considered appropriate to find a method to allow it," says Rabbi Daniel Feldman of Yeshiva University. While some authorities historically opposed the heter iska, which is only to be used for business purposes, it is widely accepted as meeting both the letter and the spirit of the law, says Rabbi Feldman.

In our difficult economic times, interest-free loans may be more important than ever. In Dallas, the local Hebrew Free Loan Association offers a variety of them, including for life-cycle events, adoptions, home health care and education. And Hebrew free-loan societies boast inordinately low default rates of less than 1%. "There is a sense of religious obligation on both sides," says Mr. Sarna.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Personal Finance • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the news.

"We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a spokesman at the centre.

The Mormon religion allows baptism after death, and believes the departed soul can then accept or reject the baptismal rites.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism • Mormons • * Theology • Eschatology • Sacramental Theology • Baptism

I conclude from all this – which could of course be spelled out at much more length – that we can only understand early Christianity as a movement that emerges from within first-century Judaism, but that it is so unlike anything else we know in first-century Judaism (and the unlikenesses bear no resemblance to anything in the pagan world) that we are forced to ask what caused these mutations. The only plausible answer is that they were caused by the actual bodily resurrection, into a transformed physicality, of Jesus himself. Put that in place, and everything is explained. Take it away, and everything remains puzzling and confused. Of course, there is a cost. One cannot simply say, ‘Well, it looks as though Jesus of Nazareth was raised from the dead’ and carry on with business as usual. If it happened, it means that a new world has been born. That, ultimately, is the good news of Easter, the good news which the rationalism of the Enlightenment has tried to screen out and which the church, tragically, has often forgotten as well. But to address this we need to move to the next section of this lecture.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Christology • Eschatology

Coverage of this story has almost invariably been framed as a conflict between the federal government and the Catholic bishops. Zeroing in on the word "contraception," many commentators have taken delight in pointing to surveys about the use of contraceptives among Catholics, the message being that any infringement of religious freedom involves an idiosyncratic position that doesn't affect that many people.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The Catholic Church's teaching on contraception (not to mention abortion and surgical sterilization) has been clear, consistent and public. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's decision would force Catholic institutions either to violate the moral teachings of the Catholic Church or abandon the health-care, education and social services they provide the needy. This is intolerable.

And while most evangelicals take a more permissive view of contraception, they share with Catholics the moral conviction that the taking of human life in utero, whether surgically or by abortifacient drugs, violates the basic human right to life.

Read it all (it has different authorship and is in a different publication than the one post earlier today).

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Health & Medicine • --The 2009 American Health Care Reform Debate • Law & Legal Issues • Life Ethics • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • Roman Catholic • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams met with Chief Rabbis Yona Metzger and Shlomo Amar on Thursday during a week-long personal pilgrimage to Israel and the West Bank.

The office of the Diocese of Jerusalem of the Anglican Church said that during Williams’ visit he emphasized “the importance of constructive dialogue and co-existence between all religions,” and the need to “consolidate the peace process between the people of this region.”

Invited by the head of the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem Bishop Suheil Dawani, Williams was on a private tour and so did not make any public statements.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism

I think of the heroes of my lifetime, leaders from Martin Luther King to Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma, who gave the hopeless hope; people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett who taught us that the best thing you can do with money is give it away in a noble cause; and the unsung heroes of our hospitals, schools and local communities who daily remind us that happiness lies in what we give to the world not what we take from it. Some of these had power, others didn’t, but what made them great was influence, the way they inspired others and spoke to the better angels of their nature.

Not all of us have power. But we all have influence, whether we seek it or not. We make the people around us better or worse than they might otherwise have been. Worse if we infect them with our materialism or cynicism, better if we inspire them with what Wordsworth called “the best portion” of a good life, our “little, nameless, unremembered acts / of kindness and of love.” That quiet leadership of influence seeks no power but it changes lives. In tough times like now we need it more than ever.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Of the 20 or so T-shirts I own, about half make some reference to Jedis, midi-chlorians, or lightsabers. In 1999, on the day Episode I: The Phantom Menace was released, I bought tickets to three consecutive screenings and sat giddily through them all, Jar Jar be damned. When my dear friends had their beautiful baby boy late last year, I was thrilled to buy him a Boba Fett alarm clock desk lamp, the best gift I could imagine. I bought another one for myself.

If you’ve understood most of the references in the paragraph above, you, sadly, belong to the same wretched class of emotionally precarious quasi-adults in whose minds and hearts Star Wars occupies the realms others furnish with accomplishing life goals or forming meaningful relationships. Which is why the next line hurts: George Lucas has ruined our lives.

I don’t mean that in the obvious way, like the sorry stares my friends and I sometimes get from well-balanced, emotionally available adults when they overhear us discussing issues like the politics of Wookie society or why all spaceships seem to always have their engines on in full thrust yet none ever seem to accelerate. What I mean is that those of us reared on Star Wars too easily subscribe to its creator’s facile mythology that sees all religions as nothing more than particular facets of one grand universal myth and that has little use for cultural distinctions or theological depth. As his newly released production, the World War II film Red Tails, clearly shows, George Lucas’ world is a place where good forever battles evil on a landscape that is smooth and flat and unchanging. The same goes for his entire oeuvre.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Movies & Television • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Traveling to Israel with Jewish colleagues earlier this month had a transforming effect on the Rev. Susan Sica, vicar of Saint Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Parsippany.

“It would have been easy to go to Israel and have a sanitized experience that only touched on Christian sites — where Jesus walked, and that sort of thing. But then we would never have really looked at what Israel is today,” she told NJJN in a phone conversation a few days after returning.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism

An attack early Wednesday (Jan. 11) on a New Jersey synagogue—the fourth such incident in a month—is being investigated as an attempted murder and a bias crime, leading to increased concern and security measures from Jewish leaders and law enforcement officials.

Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said Congregation Beth El in Rutherford was hit by several Molotov cocktails and other explosive devices before dawn Wednesday, leading to a fire in the second-floor bedroom of Rabbi Nosson Schuman.

Schuman suffered second-degree burns to his left hand; his family escaped safely.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

A group of American college students stands in a semicircle, clapping and hopping on one foot as they sing in Yiddish: "Az der rebe tantst, tantsn ale khsidim!"

In English, the lyrics mean: "When the rebbe dances, so do all the Hasidim."

This isn't music appreciation or even a class at a synagogue. It's the first semester of Yiddish at Emory University in Atlanta -- one of a handful of college programs across the country studying the Germanic-based language of Eastern European Jews....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Education • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Go here and download or listen to it from the December 21stnd morning show. Fascinating the modern parallels he draws--KSH.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Asia • North Korea • Europe • Czech Republic • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The founders of Neve Shaanan, a neighborhood in southern Tel Aviv, planned their streets in the shape of a seven-branched candelabra - a symbol of their Jewish faith. Ninety years later, the streets are full of Christmas decorations, reflecting a flowering of Christianity in Israel's economic and cultural capital.

Tens of thousands of Christian foreigners, most of them laborers from the Philippines and African asylum seekers, have poured into the neighborhood in recent years. They pray year-round in more than 30 churches hidden in grimy apartment buildings. But in late December, their Christian subculture emerges in full force in the southern streets of Tel Aviv, whose founders called it the "first Hebrew city."

On the Saturday before Christmas, the center of festivities was the city's central bus station, a hulking seven-story maze of concrete.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Christmas • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Israel • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism

As the political leaders of Europe come together to save the euro and European Union itself, I believe the time has come for religious leaders to do likewise.

The task ahead of us is not between Jews and Catholics, or even Jews and Christians, but between Jews and Christians on the one hand and the increasingly, even aggressively secularising forces at work in Europe today on the other, challenging and even ridiculing our faith.

When a civilisation loses its faith, it loses its future. When it recovers its faith, it recovers its future. For the sake of our children, and their children not yet born, we — Jews and Christians, side by side — must renew our faith and its prophetic voice. We must help Europe to recover its soul.

The idea of religious leaders saving the euro and the EU sounds absurd. What has religion to do with economics, or spirituality with financial institutions? The answer is that the market economy has religious roots. It emerged in a Europe saturated with Judeo-Christian values. In the Hebrew Bible, for instance, material prosperity is a divine blessing. Poverty crushes the human spirit as well as the body, and its alleviation is a sacred task.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Euro • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • Europe • --European Sovereign Debt Crisis of 2010 • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Recently, we had to move out of our historic building because of damage caused to our walls by the August earthquake centered in Virginia. Within days we received several offers to help house our various services from Lutherans, Methodists, fellow Episcopalians and our generous neighbors at Mount Zion AME Church.

The next thing we know, we are benefitting from the gifts of our fellow citizens and worshiping on Sundays at 11:15 at the oldest Catholic parish in the Carolinas, St. Mary’s on Hasell Street....

...[and later] picture my surprise as an invitation came from the president of Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim Synagogue across from St. Mary’s to have Christmas services at their location. Did I get that right? Did our Jewish brothers and sisters just invite us for Christmas at the synagogue?

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Church Year / Liturgical Seasons • Christmas • Liturgy, Music, Worship • Parish Ministry • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Judaism • * South Carolina

...the heroes of the Jewish story fought not only against a foreign persecutor. They also fought against fellow Jews who—perhaps more attracted to the cosmopolitan and sophisticated Greek culture than to the ways of their ancestors—cooperated with their rulers....

Over time, the stories of the persecutions that led to this war came to serve as models of Jewish faithfulness under excruciating persecution. In the most memorable instance, seven brothers and their mother all choose, successively, to die at the hands of their torturers rather than to yield to the demand to eat pork as a public disavowal of the God of Israel and his commandments....

"Hanukkah" means "dedication." Originally, the term referred to the rededication of the purified Temple after the Maccabees' stunning military victory. But as the story of the martyrs shows, the victory was also associated with the heroic dedication of the Jewish traditionalists of the time to their God and his Torah. If Hanukkah celebrates freedom, it is a freedom to be bound to something higher than freedom itself.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The seven remaining Jews in Baghdad have been named by WikiLeaks, leaving them in danger of persecution, according to the city's Anglican vicar.

Their lives are now in immediate danger, according to Canon Andrew White, and they’ve been advised to hide their religion.

Canon White said Baghdad’s Anglican Church is trying to protect them, as they fear extremists might try to kill them if they’re identified.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • The Episcopal Church of Jerusalem and the Middle East • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Middle East • Iraq • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

When Hirshy Minkowicz was growing up in a Hasidic enclave of Brooklyn 30 years ago, he often noticed visitors arriving after dinner to meet with his father. They would withdraw into the study, speak for a time, then part with some confidential agreement having been sealed.

As he grew into his teens, Hirshy came to learn that his father operated a traditional Jewish free-loan program called a gemach. The visitors, many of them teachers in local religious schools, struggling to raise their families on small and irregular salaries, had been coming to borrow money at no interest and with no public exposure.

Now 39 years old and serving as the rabbi of a Chabad center near Atlanta, Rabbi Minkowicz has done something he never expected: open a gemach that deals primarily with non-Orthodox Jews in a prosperous stretch of suburbia....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Psychology • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Consumer/consumer spending • Housing/Real Estate Market • Labor/Labor Unions/Labor Market • Personal Finance • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The question of same-sex marriage concerns every morally sensitive citizen. And so it is no wonder that it has been the subject of debate everywhere, among politicians and jurists, scholars and intellectuals.

Professor Martha Nussbaum and I have locked swords over this issue on many occasions, such as in Sexual Orientation and Human Rights in American Religious Discourse. Her recent essay in the California Law Review entitled "A Right To Marry?" provides a welcome opportunity to return to this hotly debated question, and sharpen the points of difference between us....

She draws upon precedents that seem to be already changing the legal definition of marriage from a union of a man and woman into the union of two persons, irrespective of their sex. Conversely, I want to change or undo those very precedents that have led to a situation where what might be called "the traditional Western definition of marriage" can now be seriously and powerfully challenged.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Marriage & Family • Religion & Culture • Sexuality • --Civil Unions & Partnerships • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Anthropology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Christianity might have stayed just a fascination [for Amy-Jill Levine], but for an unfortunate episode in second grade: “When I was 7 years old, one girl said to me on the school bus, ‘You killed our Lord.’ I couldn’t fathom how this religion that was so beautiful was saying such a dreadful thing.”

That encounter with the dark side of her friends’ religion sent Dr. Levine on a quest, one that took her to graduate school in New Testament studies and eventually to Vanderbilt University, where she has taught since 1994. Dr. Levine is still a committed Jew — she attends an Orthodox synagogue in Nashville — but she is a leading New Testament scholar.

And she is not alone. The book she has just edited with a Brandeis University professor, Marc Zvi Brettler, “The Jewish Annotated New Testament” (Oxford University Press), is an unusual scholarly experiment: an edition of the Christian holy book edited entirely by Jews. The volume includes notes and explanatory essays by 50 leading Jewish scholars, including Susannah Heschel, a historian and the daughter of the theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel; the Talmudist Daniel Boyarin; and Shaye J. D. Cohen, who teaches ancient Judaism at Harvard.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Education • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology • Theology: Scripture

Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg were a typical Chabad couple—devout, devoted to the Rebbe's principles, and with a strong sense for self-sacrifice for their fellow Jews. They also suffered from personal tragedy. Their first child was born with Tay-Sachs disease, a genetic disorder that took his life at the age of two.

In another community, the violent deaths of such a young and promising couple might have sent shivers through the leadership, prompting them to pull other emissaries from the field. But Chabad's leadership did the opposite, immediately sending another couple to take their place.

"It was almost instantly reflexive for some, especially from knowing Gabi and Rivki," observes Rabbi Chanoch Gechtman, who together with his wife Leah now runs the Chabad House in Mumbai. "Great darkness must be challenged with bright light."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Asia • India • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Minority Jews and Christians are putting their faith in Tunisia's nascent democracy to ensure its new Islamist-led leadership respects their rights in this traditionally secular state.

Religious minorities in the Arab world have mostly lost out when dictators are toppled and radical Islamists exploit the power vacuum to attack non-Muslims. The targeting of Christians in Iraq and Egypt constitutes a frightening example.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Tunisia • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Judaism

For Jewish progressives who remember the dark days of George W. Bush and Republican control of both houses of Congress, evangelicals are the election cycle boogeyman. We’ve already seen a growing stream of books and articles about evangelical conspiracies supposedly aimed at using Republican presidential candidates, such as Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann, to turn the United States into a “Christian nation.” These include Michelle Goldberg’s Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism and Rabbi James Rudin’s The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us. In a series for public radio, Rachel Tabachnick reported on the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), which aims to wage “spiritual warfare,” leveraging stealth political influence to take dominion over government, business and culture and hasten the second coming of Jesus.

Arcane, sensational theological doctrines like this are catnip to conspiracy theorists and their media enablers. Yet many of those most fearful of evangelicals know the least about them. Back in September, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart implicitly acknowledged that ignorance when he surveyed a clip of spectators at a Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. With his customary acuity, Stewart deconstructed the upscale audience in dresses, jackets and ties: “Look at this crowd. They’re not yahoos. This is not your torch and pitchfork angry villagers. These are people with firm opinions on which is the best brand of rider mower.” Kidding or not, Stewart at least recognized the evangelical Christians of the GOP base for what they are: moderate, middle-class Sun Belt suburbanites.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Evangelicals • Other Faiths • Judaism

Dozens of rabbis from across Europe have gathered in Warsaw for the largest meeting of Jewish religious leaders in Poland since the community was virtually wiped out during World War II.

This year's Conference of European Rabbis will focus on a range of issues affecting European and global Jewry, including attempts in Europe to ban the Jewish method of religious slaughter of animals.

But, the rabbis will also discuss the problem of validating the Jewish identity of people who have not practiced Judaism in two or three generations. This has become an issue in countries like Poland, where many people with Jewish ancestry were so traumatized by the Holocaust and postwar anti-Semitism that they lived secular or Christian lives for decades and are only now again embracing a Jewish life.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Poland • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The bell rings, and 19 middle school girls shuffle into Room 405 at the Solomon Schechter School of Westchester, slinging backpacks over chairs and sliding behind desks.

After quickly taking attendance, the teacher gets down to business.

“What’s the first step in a manicure?” she asks. Hands fly up; answers are blurted out.

It’s the Midrash Manicures club at Schechter, a Jewish day school here, where the weekly club offerings include math club, glee club, sports writing club and this one, in which Rabbi Yael Buechler teaches girls in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades how to do their nails with designs inspired by the weekly Torah portion.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Children • Education • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

As Jews around the world gather to celebrate Simchat Torah next week—the raucous holiday marking the completion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings—I am reminded of one of the more curious practices among Soviet Jews in the final decades of the Communist regime.

Living under duress, these Jews gathered illegally in homes or even in the streets to celebrate a holiday for an object that most had never seen, let alone read from. Such celebrations persisted despite systematic anti-Jewish persecution by the Soviets, including university quotas, discouragement from certain jobs, and an all-out effort to eradicate Jewish culture and religion.

And yet 20 years after the Soviet Union's fall, this act of defiance has taken on an entirely different character....

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Europe • Russia • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

An Anglican priest here says he's working with the U.S. Embassy to persuade the handful of Jews who still live in Baghdad to leave because their names have appeared in cables published last month by WikiLeaks.

The Rev. Canon Andrew White said he first approached members of the Jewish community about what he felt was the danger they faced after a news story was published last month that made reference to the cables.

"The U.S. Embassy is desperately trying to get them out," White said. So far, however, only one, a regular confidante of the U.S. Embassy, according to the cables, had expressed interest in emigrating to the United States.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Ministry of the Ordained • * Culture-Watch • Blogging & the Internet • Religion & Culture • Science & Technology • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

Throughout the nation’s history, American soldiers have fought for God and country. During the Civil War, the bonds of country were blurred, but faith in God remained strong on both sides, blue and gray....

...[Yesterday], the S.C. Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum debuts a new exhibit — “Through Fiery Trials: Religion in the Civil War” — taking a look at that faith. It is the second in a series of special exhibits commemorating the war’s 150th anniversary.

While the stars of the exhibit are Bibles belonging to Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, on loan from Virginia museums, one of the most moving items is local: The bullet-pierced Bible of Sgt. Walter Henry Counts of Lexington.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism • * South Carolina

Jews, Muslims and their allies cheered Sunday (Oct. 2) as California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill prohibiting all local bans on circumcision, making it illegal for local authorities to restrict the medical or religious practice.

Anti-circumcision activists had gathered enough signatures to place the issue on the ballot in San Francisco. Voters would have been asked to decide if infant circumcision should be banned as an unnecessary genital mutilation, a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to a year in jail.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Health & Medicine • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • State Government • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

... in recent years, the break-fast party has become part of the Jewish social calendar. From Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, many are attending large, crowded break-fasts, where the spirit of the High Holy Days can get lost in the mixing, and where the day’s solemnity quickly abates, smothered by large quantities of cream cheese and hummus.

Vanessa Ochs, who teaches religion at the University of Virginia, says the new, bigger break-fast raises theological questions. Even before the day of repentance is over, many people are forced to think about the meal they will be serving.

“In the last 25 years, the break-fast has, in some friendship groups, become such a moment for gratitude and coming together that people will stay home from services to cook and prepare,” Dr. Ochs said. “That isn’t what they’re supposed to be doing, but from a non-halakhic” — extra-legal — “perspective, if this meal marks who is in your friendship circle, and who is going to be there for you, then this is a holy communal feast.”

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Dieting/Food/Nutrition • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

For an atheist, Maxim Schrogin talks about God a lot.

Over lunch at a Jewish deli, he ponders the impulse to believe — does it come from within or without? Why does God permit suffering? Finally, he pulls out a flowchart he made showing degrees of belief, which ranges from unquestioning faith to absolute atheism. He stabs the paper with his pen.

"This is where I fall," he said. "Zero."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

'I love beginnings,' Elie Wiesel told a panel of eight students on stage and about 700 in the audience during a Sunday appearance at the College of Charleston's Sottile Theatre.

That's because he thought Auschwitz signified the end of history, he said. And because much of human endeavor tends to end badly, with injustice, terror and death. Though the meaning of life can be elusive, it is the obligation of human beings to act in ways that make a better world.

'When one person suffers, you have to do something,' he said later, at an evening lecture that filled the Sottile for a second time. 'The opposite of hate is not love, but indifference. Indifference is the opposite of everything that's created, everything that's noble in human experience. The opposite of indifference is commitment, education.'

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Books • Education • History • Religion & Culture • Young Adults • * International News & Commentary • Europe • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

The conference — held at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane, a town in the Atlas Mountains about two hours south of Rabat — brought together Holocaust scholars and survivors, leaders of Morocco’s Jewish community and American Jewish and Moroccan Muslim students. Its twin mandates were to teach about the extermination of European Jewry and to pay homage to the courage of Morocco’s wartime king, Mohammed V, in resisting the orders of the Vichy French occupation government to round up and turn over Jews for internment and probable death.

Uncommonly among Arab and Muslim nations, Morocco has accepted the reality of the Holocaust, rather than either dismissing it outright or portraying it as a European crime for which those countries paid the price in the form of Israel’s creation. Partly, no doubt, because of Mohammed V’s stand against the Vichy regime, the current king, Mohammed VI, called in a 2009 proclamation for “an exhaustive and faithful reading of the history of this period” as part of “the duty of remembrance dictated by the Shoah.”

Still, the recent conference would never have occurred without Mr. Boudra. Now 24 and majoring in political science, Mr. Boudra grew up after much of Morocco’s Jewish population had moved to France or Israel. But he heard from his grandmother about her childhood in the Jewish quarter of Casablanca, and a grandfather still had Jewish neighbors in his apartment house.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Morocco • Europe • Germany • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

The Jewish High Holidays are upon us, so naturally it's time for the White House to feed political talking points to rabbis.

As has become its annual practice, the Obama administration on Thursday convened a conference call with several hundred rabbis and Jewish leaders. According to a participant on the call, President Obama promoted his jobs bill—noting that those who have been more blessed should pay their fair share—and briefed the rabbis on U.S. efforts to counter the push for a declaration of Palestinian statehood at the United Nations.

I was on another such call recently, the purpose of which—according to the Jewish rabbinical group that invited me—was to help listeners "understand the current state of the economy; learn about the impact of the proposed budget cuts on the poor and disenfranchised; consider the consequences of the increasing gap between the rich and poor in America; and, glean homiletic and textual background to help prepare their High Holiday sermons on this timely topic."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • Office of the President • President Barack Obama • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Judaism

"We evangelicals cringe like everyone else at the prominence given to marginal groups labeled with our name," says the Rev. Joel Hunter, an influential megachurch pastor in Orlando and an ideological centrist. "We know their numbers are small and their influence is grossly exaggerated, but we are not surprised that the majority of common-sense believers are not given equal attention in a society fascinated by extremes."

Most evangelicals accept some form of evolution and do not subscribe to arcane doctrines, such as "Christian Reconstructionism" and "Dominionism," that Christians need to rule the world in order to bring about the Second Coming of Jesus. And, contrary to recent writing by some progressive Jews, most evangelicals are comfortable with the notion of theological tolerance and religious pluralism. "The media have been too eager to feature a simpleton image of evangelicals," says Hunter. "Our part of the faith community is, on the whole, intelligent, accepting of diversity, and wanting the best practical solutions for the common good...."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Evangelicals • Other Faiths • Judaism • * Theology

In short, things are not looking good for Americans like myself who see religious liberty as one of the great achievements of the American experiment. Today, not only Muslims but also Hindus and Sikhs, Buddhists and humanists are on the outside of American public culture looking in. But as Jesus once said, "Take heart."

The United States has survived a series of culture wars in which Catholics, Mormons and members of other religious minorities were anathematized as un-American. In each case, Americans as a group have eventually decided to live not by fear but by first principles, not least the constitutional protection of liberty afforded in the First Amendment to Americans of all creeds.

Sept. 11, 2001, was, of course, a national trauma. Americans responded to that trauma, however, with a show of unity that crossed lines of race, region and religion. Such unity is easier to find in wartime, of course, or when one of our cities is strewn by hate with cremated remains. But it is always there in our cultural DNA — in Jefferson's insistence in his first inaugural address that "we are all Republicans, we are all Federalists," and in the words of Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural: "We are not enemies, but friends."

Read it all.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * Religion News & Commentary • Church-State Issues • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism

Jews and Muslims worshiping on Friday also addressed the national tragedy.

Temple Emanu-el Rabbi Jonathan Miller's sermon was written to connect the 9/11 anniversary to Jewish traditions of mourning and to tell the Birmingham, Ala., congregation why acts of evil might be forgiven but never forgotten (http://www.ourtemple.org).

"If we want to destroy the evil, we have to live into our better selves and make sure these terrorists, like the terrorists before them, have no place in the things that are holy to us," Miller said.

Read it all.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Parishes • * Christian Life / Church Life • Liturgy, Music, Worship • * Culture-Watch • History • Religion & Culture • * Religion News & Commentary • Inter-Faith Relations • Other Churches • Other Faiths • Islam • Judaism