Religion Dispatches
I wanted to think about how we mediate the past for children—and how we tell stories about children who lived in the past. Writing about religion, memory, and children’s literature became my way of doing that.
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Called to the carpet for the decision to reinstall controversial bishops, the Vatican has taken to doing what it does best: issuing public statements, coupled with obfuscation and outright denial.
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If traditional notions of Judaism and Jewishness are at odds with the contemporary world, one can either change Judaism, or one can change the world. A new book makes a case for the former.
Read MoreI have a better idea.
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We remember child martyrs in the crusades, young Holocaust victims like Anne Frank, the deaths of Emmett Till and four little girls in Birmingham, Alabama. The children of the day care center in Oklahoma City. Our enduring image from that dark day is a fireman, soaked in blood, carrying a baby on the cover of the magazines. Youth move us because they bring to the light the existential horror of no future.
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I know it sounds strange but it’s a great time to be an Jewish American activist working for Middle East peace. After all these years in the closet there’s hope that the Beinartians and the Lernerites have begun a critical dialogue for Jewish Americans.
Read MoreRomney can’t help, but there are steps the Church could take.
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Maurice Sendak lived in the shadow of the Holocaust, yet he refused to claim that identity and chosenness solely for the Jewish people.
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A report from the principally Catholic anti-contraception rally in Maryland reveals a constituency whose calls for religious freedom appear to be at the cost of freedom for all others.
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Recently, a controversial megachurch minister Eddie Long was crowned a Davidic king “on behalf of the Jewish people”; but he’s far from the first non-Jew to make use of a so-called rabbi to bolster his spiritual authority.
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