You may not be looking for the promised land, but you might find it anyway / Under one of those old familiar names / Like New Orleans, Detroit City, Dallas, Pittsburg P.A., New York City, Kansas City, Atlanta, Chicago, and L.A.
-James Brown, Living in America
“We have to be all those difficult things like cheerful and kind and curious and patient, and we’ve got to study and think and work hard, all of us, in all our different worlds, and then we’ll build…”
“And then what?” said her Dæmon sleepily “build what?”
“The Republic of Heaven.”
-Phillip Pullman, The Amber Spyglass
People grapple with how to make something larger than themselves significant in a personal context all the time. Obviously, religion is no exception. And when one tries to extrude one’s own understanding of a concept such as religion onto others, the consequences are disastrous.
That being said, I personally have found it extremely productive to learn more about other people’s approaches to difficult concepts. I struggle to maintain a balance of originality (i.e. not adopting someone else’s viewpoints) and applicability (not becoming so caught up in my own opinions that I become insular and self-centered) in my opinions. I talk to experts, I weigh their opinions, and I try to form my own based on a hopefully well-informed view of the situation.
So it was when I started wearing tzitzit and covering my head after freshman year. I spent time with some Modern Orthodox Jews, I talked to some more Reconstructionist-ish rabbis, I talked to friends and family, and I spent time just thinking about it myself. I ultimately came to the conclusion that it was something I wanted to do, to help provide me with the sense of constant responsibility and Jewishness that I felt I had been missing.
I knew then that that wasn’t at all a final step in my religious deliberations, but I’ve definitely gone in some directions since then that I didn’t anticipate. One in particular seemed to me a good topic for a post; my recent attendance of the weekly Quaker meetings in Northampton. My father was raised Quaker, although his family was Jewish by blood, so the RSoF was always on my radar in a vague sort of sense. I knew that Quakers worshipped in silence, and that one stands up and just speaks if one has something to say. I suppose I had thought a bit about the theological implications of this form of worship, but not extensively. So, about a month ago, I went to a meeting.
I have quite a few Quaker friends, so I had a bit of an insider view on the community from the beginning; I could sort of see it through their perspectives. There were not that many people at the first meeting I went to, owing to a annual meeting elsewhere in the area that drew a lot of regular members, but it was still very interesting. There were a couple “messages” given over the one-hour period. One woman spoke about a trip she took to Austria, and an experience she had in a small village where no one spoke English. She had a hard time understanding the local dialect, but she did know that everyone was very friendly, because whenever anyone passed anyone on the street, they would greet each other familiarly. It took her a while to figure out that what they were saying was Gruss Gott, which translates as “Greet G*d”.
The format of Quaker meetings can be taken in a lot of different directions. Some of my friends informed me that there’s a name for when too many people are giving messages at a meeting. They call it “popcorn”. So there’s a subtle stigma towards talking too much. But my perception was that that’s not because they don’t encourage thought. It’s that they encourage room for thought. The format of the meeting is deeply rooted in the Quaker belief that G@d is within everyone. The meeting is designed to provide space for you to clear your thoughts and share them if you feel that it’s appropriate.
My father remembers the meetings feeling very oppressive as a child. I can see how this would be true. A woman I talked to last Sunday told me about the childcare service the Northampton Friends’ Society provides; they bring the kids in for only the last ten minutes. Clearly, it would be difficult for a lot of kids to sit in silence for an hour. Even for adults, it’s difficult in some ways. But I’m continually surprised at how subtly natural it feels to just be with people. I find it refreshing. As much as I like to think that I’m unflappable, that I’m capable of forming rational opinions and coming to valid conclusions under even the most pressing and stressful of circumstances, I’m not; I’m only human. And since we live in a not-exclusively-Jewish community, my family has sacrificed any kind of Saturday Shabbat worship, instead focusing on being together Friday night. Thus, Quaker meeting on Sunday mornings is ironically enough my Sabbath.
I was taught in dayschool (before I dropped out) and then Hebrew school (before I dropped out of that too) that Go_Od is everywhere. The Friends’ Society embodies that fully and faithfully.
Like the progressive Judaism that I have tried to form for myself, Quaker meeting embraces the notion of humanity, rather than denying it. Instead of condemning personal flaws and limits of ability, it recognizes them and calls on me to work within those constraints to fashion something useful and beautiful.
DailyKos posted this video today, poking fun at Arizona State Sen. Sylvia Allen (R), as she speaks at the Senate Retirement and Rural Development Committee meeting.
First of all, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt, and assume that she’s just a lazy Creationist, rounding up to 6,000. (We all know the earth is actually only 5,769-years old.)
But here’s the real concern:
This Earth’s been hear 6,000 years — and I know I’m going on and on and I’ll shut up — it’s been here 6,000 years, long before anybody had environmental laws, and somehow it hasn’t been done away with.
She’s falling back on a still-lazy belief common amongst a certain subset of neo-con Christians: that because G!d created the earth, everything has been, and will be, provided for us. If those same Christians believe in the end times, they feel no pressure to protect the environment now, because the world’s supposed to end soon anyway. I’m glad Jews don’t have that same mentality. (Nor do all Christians; remember when the Vatican added polluting the environment as a sin?)
But here’s the real shortcoming of her statement. Allen claims that there weren’t any environmental laws for the last 6,000 years. I call foul. It doesn’t take too close a reading of the Bible to find many references to our responsibility to the earth, nature, and animals; heck, the land even gets its own sabbath. Yeesh.
There are Jewish organisations, including the JCCs of North America and HUC, offering scholarships to American rabbinical students who wish to become military chaplains. The US Army’s chaplain recruitment webpage states,
“Army Chaplains are expected to observe the distinctive doctrines of their faith while also honoring the right of others to observe their own faith. The Army is a pluralistic environment. “
Honouring the right of others to observe their own faith. That seems key to me. Both for the individuals in the armed forces, and the citizens on the countries they invade. If chaplains from different faiths are expected to work side by side, and serve that “pluralistic environment” of different faith soldiers, how can the following be permitted?
U.S. Soldiers have been encouraged to spread the message of their Christian faith among Afghanistan’s predominantly Muslim population, video footage obtained by Al Jazeera appears to show.Military chaplains stationed in the U.S. air base at Bagram were also filmed with Bibles printed in the country’s main Pashto and Dari languages.
In one recorded sermon, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling Soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility “to be witnesses for him”.
“The special forces guys — they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down,” he says.
“Get the hound of heaven after them, so we get them into the kingdom. That’s what we do, that’s our business.” [read more.]
Unacceptable. The army’s mandate is not to convert, not to be missionaries, not to proselytise. If a military chaplain of a different faith were to encourage soldiers to act on a similar mission (say, convert everyone to Judaism, Islam, or Hinduism), this would be a giant story, with the majority of Americans angrily protesting. But converting to Christianity? No one makes a stir.
Okay, okay, not “no one.” “Some of the Soldiers” were reprimanded, and the army confiscated some of the Bibles that had been printed in Pashto and Dari (Afghanistan’s main languages). We know that this is bad for US diplomacy, it’s unconstitutional, and the Army doesn’t allow it… So why isn’t it being fully investigated? Why aren’t all of the soldiers being reprimanded? How come this was allowed to happen in Iraq as well? And why does hasn’t that chaplain been reprimanded?
This is no joke. Watch the video here. Capitalizing on the style of Disney, the Holy Land Experience is an Orlando theme park. The theme is 1st century Jerusalem, where you can see Jesus crucified on stage twice daily and shop. And visit the Temple.
I’m pretty sure there’s some money-changing going on around this Temple.
This came up in a course I’m taking right now, Pilgrimages to Rome, Jerusalem and Mecca. The professor brought this site and this video to our attention while discussing the state of pilgrimage in modernity.
This sort of thing seems to happen to me fairly regularly. I’ll be walking down the street, taking a taxi, on the bus, or crossing the border, and will be questioned about my religious practices. The comments usually stem from the observation that I have my ears pierced. But not always: in the past, I’ve had a border guard quiz my friend and I, en route to LimmudNY, about our understanding and interpretation of the book of Daniel. Driving to Seattle, I was called “father” by a Catholic border guard who asked me how my parents felt about my earrings. I’ve been asked about living on the “wrong” (French, Catholic) side of town by a taxi driver in Montreal, questioned by a city of Montreal employee on homosexuality and Judaism while walking to school, and stopped while crossing a street in Vancouver because I was the “only Jew” this long-term resident of Vancouver had ever seen in the city.
I usually enjoy these conversations, bizarre though they may be.
And Thursday morning’s was no exception. I was quite early to the airport, forgetting that you don’t need to give yourself quite as much time to go through customs and security at YVR as you do at NY-area airports. I was sent to one of the dozen border guards who were free; I was one of two people in the “line.” Noticing the work visa in my passport, coded for “religious worker,” he asked what religious work I was doing, and what religion I practised. He looked at me, then asked how I could be a member of the Jewish clergy if I had my ears pierced. After clarifying that I wasn’t a clergy member, I tried to give a nonchalant answer, shrug off his question. It really wasn’t any of his business, right? At that point, he looked at my boarding card, saw that my flight was another two hours away, and said “we have time, let’s talk.” He still had my passport, which he hadn’t yet stamped, so what position was I in to say no?
He cited Leviticus 19:28, that one cannot mar their body, and again asked about my pierced ears. I tried to explain that Tanakh is open to interpretation, but he was adamant that it was literal. I asked if he understood everything he read in the Bible to be literal, and he said he did, noting that’s why he believes that the Jews are the chosen people, and why he holds Jews to a higher standard. Interesting… Did that mean he practiced stoning as punishment, avoided shrimp, and brought sacrifices to his priest? We eventually agreed that there was room for interpretation. (phew!)
But that somehow led him to Abraham, Ishmael, and Isaac. He wanted to know how, if Jews are the chosen people, if Jacob was renamed Israel, I reconciled Hagar being told her seeds would be greatly multiplied, that her descendants would be numerous, that Ishmael became the descendant of Abraham that the Muslims follow. I tried to explain that there can be differences in interpretation, that despite the shift in lineage, the Qu’ran contains many of the same stories as the Torah, and that there are some academics who argue that originally Islam followed Abraham/Isaac, and only later, after a dispute, did some shift the stories to Ishmael.
I think I lost him. It might have been too much for an early morning conversation with an evangelical Christian border guard. But he did say that we’re all brothers, Jews and Muslims, if not cousins, and we should really all get along. I agreed. He asked if I’d been to Israel, what my opinion was about Palestine. I gave him a short answer. And then, smiling, he stamped my passport and told me he’d have to research earrings for Jewish men (we’d already established he had no problem with earrings for Jewish women).
And, after about 10 minutes of talking, I went through to security.
I’m curious: do other people find themselves in these situations? I’m fairly convinced they’re the product of my being a “visible” Jew, living in a country with a small Jewish population, and in cities (or neighbourhoods) that aren’t heavily Jewish. Do conversations like these happen in NY with airport employees? I’m guessing not, since they see Jews on a daily basis. But… maybe I’m wrong. I’d love to hear other people’s stories.
The Passover Family Pack, which for $39.99 buys you two haggadot, a seder plate and a kiddush cup, is a messianic Haggadah which critics say is more of a disguised attempt at missionary work than it is a Haggadah. Take this quote, for example:
One of the Messiah’s last earthly acts was the celebration of the Passover. Gathering his disciples in a small room in Jerusalem, he led them in the seder. “I have eagerly to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 22:15) He passed the foods among them. It was there, in the context of this celebration that Yeshua revealed to them the mystery of God’s plain redemption. He spoke to them of his body and blood. He explained to them that he would have to die.
It was no coincidence that Messiah chose the Passover for the setting of what is now celebrated as communion, the Lord’s supper. For in the story of the Passover lamb, Yeshua could best communicate the course he would be taking over the confusing hours that were to follow. Here, as we participate together in the Passover seder, may we experience once again God’s great redemption.
Uhm… What now? I’ve seen some crazy Haggadot in my days, but this one takes the thorny crown! I’m actually pretty speechless right now. So it seems to me that the issue is this– If they’re trying to “trick” Jews into buying this Haggadah and come to the surprise that it’s filled with Jesus references then this is a BIG problem. If this is, as the publishers claim, an attempt to teach Christians about Jews… it’s still a BIG problem.
In my opinion, there is really no room for this kind of nonsense. I can’t see how this encourages understanding of Jewish tradition at all, but rather seems to be a Judeo-philic appropriation that, at best, bastardizes our tradition and creates something which would surely have the Rabbis rolling in their k’varim.
But, hey, if the Rabbis could “out-Hellenize the Hellenists” by “Hebraicizing” the Symposium… I guess we had it coming. But to quote a dear friend of mine, I suppose this can best be summed up by: “Ewh.”
Just saw “The Wrestler” and loved it. Loved Mickey Rourke’s performance. Loved the new Springsteen song. (Not sure the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce will love it so much…)
I also enjoyed the director”s earlier movie takes on kabbalah and the Tree of Life. And here’s the thing: “The Wrestler” is a pretty spiritual movie too. It’s actually a remake of “The Passion of the Christ.” (In case anyone misses the connection, Gibson’s infamous flick is actually referenced in the movie). But take it from me: “The Wrestler” is much more enjoyable than “Passion of the Christ.”
It’s essentially “Passion of the Christ with a staple gun. And without the anti-Semitism.
This is the next in a series of guest posts on intermarried and mixed families. “Mixed” is not a theological state but an identity. And as our guest poster, Mia Rut, today shares, “mixed” need not be products of interfaith marriages, but Jews by choice who bring with them their previous heritage(s). It’s not as simple as the continuity idiots would suggest, “just convert” as if all the problems of multiple identities and outside influences would be over. It’s just not that stupidly simple, so listen up. – Kung Fu Jew
For the first 28 years of my life I faithfully celebrated Christmas – of which I have very fond memories. My family’s tree covered in homemade ornaments, stockings my great-Grandmother had made that were filled to the brim with candies and small gifts, the family nativity scene we set up each year and placed Baby Jesus in the manger on Christmas morning. We would feast on ham and cheese sandwiches, deli trays complete with black olives we ate off the tips of our fingers and of course endless varieties of Christmas cookies and dried fruit. My favorite part was at the end of the Christmas Eve service while the congregation held tiny white candles and sang ‘Silent Night’ by candlelight. Of course I believed in Santa Clause for a while and upheld the illusion for my younger sisters until they too were old enough to know better.
Nothing brings people together during the holidays quite like messages of love, respect for all, the golden rule… I think the Pope needs to remember that.
In an address made yesterday, the Pope said that just as people are concerned about ecology, in order to protect rain forests and such, so too should we be concerned in an “ecology of man,” in order to protect the distinct roles of men and women as were determined during creation. He asks us to remember the order of creation, man then woman, and asks that it be respected. Ignoring it would be destruction of humans and of G!d’s work.
Italian LGBT groups have, understandably, taken offense with this speech. I’m wondering why I haven’t seen a Jewish reaction yet.
There are two versions of the creation story in Genesis; our sages have suggested that one shows that the first being was actually an androgynos. But we don’t have to go that route to see that the Pope is just, well, wrong. Gender roles and norms change from generation to century. Is he really suggesting that men should behave today as they did in the Bible? Should we be like Cain and murder our brothers? Like Noah and drink to excess? Like Abraham and alienate our wives and sons? Like Jacob and steal from our brothers? We really don’t need to think too hard about this to find that surely the Pope can’t actually believe what he’s saying.
(Besides, how can anyone listen to a speech about the preservation of ‘real’ men from a guy wearing red Prada shoes?!)
OK, I admit it: I love to listen to Christmas songs this time of year.
I’ll leave it to you to determine if that makes me a bad Jew or a worse rabbi, but what can I say? I’ve got a major weakness for the ol’ seasonal standards.
Now I’m not talking about Christmas carols or overtly religious hymns (nor do I mean X-mas novelty kitsch like “Barking Dog Jingle Bells” or “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.”) No, I’m really, truly a sucker for those aching, melancholy Christmas ballads.
I’m sure you know the ones – they actually come in various sub-genres. There are the “It’s Christmas and I’m Sad Because We’ve Broken Up” songs (i.e. “Christmas/Baby Please Come Home” or “All I Want For Christmas Is You.”) Then there are the “It’s Christmas and I’m Not Able To Make it Home” songs (i.e. “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” or “White Christmas”) and there’s the “This May Be the Last Christmas We Ever Spend Together” songs (i.e. “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.”)
Is it perverse or at all sacreligious for a rabbi to be confessing his love for songs such as these? I dunno, don’t you think there’s something of a Jewish quality to them? Maybe it’s their quasi-exilic yearning (not to mention the fact that most of them were written by Jews anyhow.)
So that’s my seasonal guilty pleasure confession. And lest you judge me too quickly here, just take the test yourself. Check out James Taylor’s version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” or “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” as sung by Sarah McLachlan. (Man, that last line gets me every time…)
Last week, Kung Fu Jew’s post about multifaith families stirred up a lot of activity in the comments section. KFJ ended his post soliciting for other posts from intermarried Jews and products of intermarried Jews. I am neither. And, in fact, as a product of the Conservative Movement’s indoctrination program youth group, I entered adulthood believing that intermarriage was the worst sin one could possibly commit.
A couple of things happened to change my point of view. A big factor, naturally, was experience. I saw my friends who came from intermarried families grow into Jewishly committed adults. I saw my cousins figure out how they could create authentic Jewish identities for their children in partnership with their non-Jewish spouses. I got involved in Jewish education and met hundreds of families doing the same thing. And I heard from dozens of people with multifaith backgrounds about how the hardest part of Judaism was getting in the door, even when they desperately wanted to. I started to think that maybe if we weren’t so busy building up the fences around who gets to learn and practice, we might notice a whole lot of people anxious to get in. (And this year, I was pleased when my Federation published a study that implied just that.)
In truth, dayeinu, that would have been enough. But as I myself have continued to study and learn about the development of Judaism through history, I’ve learned that this whole business of tightening our borders has changed quite a bit over time. And when the discussion around KFJ’s post started getting into a fight over what kind of “influence” non-Jewish religions might have on Judaism, should (or shouldn’t) have on Judaism, I felt like a big piece of the story was being ignored, namely the influences that other religions and cultures have already had on Judaism over the last couple of millennia.
Before I get too deep into this, I have to acknowledge that the subject of influence is sticky. My own thinking is itself influenced by Michael Satlow, with whom I had the pleasure of studying last year. One of Prof. Satlow’s mantras in our class was that “influence” is a problematic term to describe cultural interaction. To wit: the Hasmoneans, upon taking power in Jerusalem, structured their government as a polis, a Greek-style city-state. While one might say that these Jewish leaders were influenced by their Greek surroundings, others might say that they simply structured the government according to their time and place. Since they themselves were as much a part of their time and place and the Greeks were, it doesn’t quite qualify as influence because the Jews weren’t outside of the cultural landscape that gave rise to their governmental structure, they were part of it.
Still with me?
Personally, while I understand Satlow’s hesitation around influence, I don’t entirely subscribe to it. Shaye Cohen’s Forward article about the Hasmoneans nicely demonstrates why with its recounting of the creation of the holiday of Hanukkah itself:
…the twin ideas that an assembly of the people has the power to institute an annual festival, and the idea that an annual festival is an appropriate way to mark a great victory, are ideas that came to the Hasmoneans from Greek culture. This is how the Greeks celebrated their great victory over the Persians in 479 B.C.E.; they instituted an annual festival at Delphi.
Let’s take a moment to appreciate the irony here, given how Hanukkah is generally talked about today.
Call it influence, call it cultural exchange, call it (as Shaye Cohen does) enrichment of Judaism, whatever you call it, it’s not limited to the Hasmoneans.
First of all, I grew up among the Xtians all my life. There are more Jews who blog on Jewschool than I ever knew until the age of 22. Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, small town California, Oregon and Washington State. I’m not afraid of Christians.
But I do have to be honest, they have some funny ideas about us Hebrews. One asked my family, “Oh, you’re Jewish? So where do you do your sacrifices?” And not because he was an anti-Semite, but because a good read of the Old Testament would lead you to believe that.
And many folks like him happen to believe, in a pretty benign way, that the Jews have been replaced. By them. It’s as easy as saying, “Hey-didn’t-God-tell-the-Israelites-to-kill-the-Canaanites-even-though-they-never-did-anything-wrong?” Yes, indeedy, that easy to believe. Ever met a Canaanite? They’re not around so much, but any Palestinian will do. You see, the ideas of “replacing” a people are quite common here at home among us Jews. They’re not so different, they’re really good people, trust me.
But that doesn’t mean I want them making foreign policy decisions about Israel. Their love of Israel is as uneducated as you can get — and not a tap we want to open without the ability to shut it. American policy vis a vis Israel under greater influence of the Evangelicals is going to become the Jews’ Proposition 8: all the Christians will out-fund and out-influence the Jews on our own issue. Don’t believe me? Look up the 990 tax forms of the biggest churches. Above and beyond any Federation.
I love Eli’s comics because of their double-punch. Not only do we get to lampoon the Evangelicals’ blood thirst for the End of Days, but we harpoon our own people for our unfortunate Crusades-related baggage. Sometimes it’s even hard to tell who’s the main target of the cartoon: us or them.
Commentary asks how this cartoon got past the “liberal, tolerant” editors at The Forward. I’ll explain why: Eli proves time and again that the best comedy material — stupidity, fanaticism, embarassment — is in the mirror.
Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice…..
“Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable,” said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.
“We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion,” Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. “We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough.”
Michel said talks with Mormon leaders, held as recently as last week, have ended. He said his group will not sue, and that “the only thing left, therefore, is to turn to the court of public opinion.”
In 1995, Mormons and Jews inked an agreement to limit the circumstances that allow for the proxy baptisms of Holocaust victims. Ending the practice outright was not part of the agreement and would essentially be asking Mormons to alter their beliefs, church Elder Lance B. Wickman said Monday in an interview with reporters in Salt Lake City.
“We don’t think any faith group has the right to ask another to change its doctrines,” Wickman said. “If our work for the dead is properly understood … it should not be a source of friction to anyone. It’s merely a freewill offering.”
A three-foot-tall tablet with 87 lines of Hebrew that scholars believe dates from the decades just before the birth of Jesus is causing a quiet stir in biblical and archaeological circles, especially because it may speak of a messiah who will rise from the dead after three days.
If such a messianic description really is there, it will contribute to a developing re-evaluation of both popular and scholarly views of Jesus, since it suggests that the story of his death and resurrection was not unique but part of a recognized Jewish tradition at the time.
The tablet, probably found near the Dead Sea in Jordan according to some scholars who have studied it, is a rare example of a stone with ink writings from that era — in essence, a Dead Sea Scroll on stone.
It is written, not engraved, across two neat columns, similar to columns in a Torah. But the stone is broken, and some of the text is faded, meaning that much of what it says is open to debate.
Still, its authenticity has so far faced no challenge, so its role in helping to understand the roots of Christianity in the devastating political crisis faced by the Jews of the time seems likely to increase.
(Matthew) Lincoln alleges that Lakewind (Church) and its pastors were “negligent in not supervising the catchers to be sure that they stood behind the person being prayed for…should they have a dizzying, fainting, or falling in the spirit as had occurred on many occasions before.”
I’m thinking there’s a fascinating dissertation to be written about the connection between fervently religious and American litigious…
Reported all over the place, but the WaPo doesn’t have that annoying registration thingy. As pretty much everyone knows, Obama has had a lot of political problems with his church. First there was the out of context Wright quote, which was taken to mean that Wright hated every white person, but especially Jews. Apparently the latest hitch has been (Roman Catholic) Rev. Michael Pfleger slamming Clinton in a sermon and implying that she’s a white supremacist.
I have to admit, I have some mixed feelings about this. Now, y’all know that I’m pretty annoyed about the misogyny behind a significant amount of the anti-Clinton activity, from speechifying, to musing about her personal life and sartorial choices, and don’t even get me into the various objects intended to deride (nutcrackers and the like). Let me just say, I don’t think that Obama himself is a misogynist.
But let’s get away fro this most recent thing, which I think Obama shouldn’t have to answer for, either, and get back to Wright. I think that Wright may well be saying something that we ought to be listening to. If you’re an African American, your experience of racism is quite different than any other group of color’s in this country. Unlike (Ashkenazi) Jews and Italians whose move up the economic ladder has allowed us to assimilate and blend in, and the Japanese and Chinese whose model minority status is moving them in that direction as well (along with extremely high exogamy rates), if you’re African American, your class has to get pretty outstandingly high before you – as an individual- are exempted from some of the worst of the bigotry. Even then, go someplace where your name isn’t recognized, and you can wear silk and rubies and it’s not going to help you much.
SO, while I don’t necessarily love Wright, I think we need to listen to him a little more carefully, because he can tell us a lot about what we don’t normally hear. and so, I respected Obama for sticking to his church and not resigning. Especially since it is often true that when you cut yourself off from someone who is angry, you’ve lost your chance to talk to them and help them see a different way out. Obama was a trusted friend, insofar as a clergyperson can unbend among congregants, and Obama might have led him to a more nuanced way of speaking. Who will do that now?
through customs and security at YVR as you do at NY-area airports. I was sent to one of the dozen border guards who were free; I was one of two people in the “line.” Noticing the work visa in my passport, coded for “religious worker,” he asked what religious work I was doing, and what religion I practised. He looked at me, then asked how I could be a member of the Jewish clergy if I had my ears pierced. After clarifying that I wasn’t a clergy member, I tried to give a nonchalant answer, shrug off his question. It really wasn’t any of his business, right? At that point, he looked at my boarding card, saw that my flight was another two hours away, and said “we have time, let’s talk.” He still had my passport, which he hadn’t yet stamped, so what position was I in to say no?
I tried to explain that there can be differences in interpretation, that despite the shift in lineage, the Qu’ran contains many of the same stories as the Torah, and that there are some academics who argue that originally Islam followed Abraham/Isaac, and only later, after a dispute, did some shift the stories to Ishmael.
The Passover Family Pack, which for $39.99 buys you two haggadot, a seder plate and a kiddush cup, is a messianic Haggadah which critics say is more of a disguised attempt at missionary work than it is a Haggadah. Take this quote, for example:
Italian LGBT groups have, understandably, taken offense with this speech. I’m wondering why I haven’t seen a Jewish reaction yet.
OK, I admit it: I love to listen to Christmas songs this time of year.
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