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A Memoir of Jewish, Transgender Spirituality

…my personal experience, I limit its range. I’m only one trans person, male-to-female transsexuals constitute a small fraction of the transgender world, I am very much a product of a white, middle-class, mid-twentieth-century upbringing, I’m a religious (though not Orthodox) Jew, I’m an academic, and so on. But my hope was that by presenting my experience as specifically and intimately as possible, others would recognize aspects of that experience…

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A Devil’s Dozen of the Best ‘New Religion Journalism’ Books of the Decade

…the United States the vast majority of our medical resources go towards end-of-life care, using medicine, the law, philosophy, ethics, and religion as lenses through which she helps her reader understand difficult questions about what death is, how death should happen, and how death shouldn’t. The Good Death has as a central sentiment that “Because of medical developments, we’ve gotten away from caring for our dying, from seeing death up close… [s…

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Breaking Up with God: I Didn’t Lose My Faith, I Left It

…native title would you give the book? I love the title of my book. It’s my best title yet, I think. I write in the preface about my hesitation to figure my relationship with God as a love relationship. It seemed simultaneously so medieval-mystic, so patriarchal, so oedipal that it made me cringe. Calling it a break-up also meant I had to come out: I had to admit to myself and to the rest of the world that the God I’d been dating was a man. I’m a f…

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Telling the World a ‘Big Story’: RD in Conversation with Karen Armstrong

…o public knowledge into practice. And yet most young scholars today cannot write books the way you write them because the rules of the academy are different—focused on specialization, learning relevant languages, and so on. Some of them are also struggling with how to make sense of the postmodern turn in the study of religions. I have noticed, however, that there is a very powerful longing in my students to become public intellectuals, even though…

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Yom Kippur Prayers for Corporate Atonement at Occupy Wall St.

…preneur whose current project is Jew It Yourself: The Every Day Guide to Do-It-Yourself Jewish Living. In addition, Sieradski is a writer, photographer, filmmaker, and designer whose work explores themes of post-normative Jewish cultural expression. I see from the Facebook page you put up for the Kol Nidre minyan at Occupy Wall Street that you already have more than enough people for minyan. To your knowledge, is this the very first Kol Nidre serv…

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The Best Books Media of 2008

…owledge of Aramaic with Hollywood directors hungry to add a little language-of-Jesus mysticism to occult plot-lines. His strangest assignment? Translating “I Am the Walrus” into his ancient tongue for an episode of The X Files. * * * The morning after the election, Beliefnet editor Patton Dodd did something that was as funny as it was smart: He waded through status updates on Facebook looking for Christian responses to Obama’s victory. Lending ano…

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Dreaming Cyborg Dreams: Virtual Identity and Religious Experience

…ne cinema,” an emerging new form of moviemaking, using game engines or real-time online worlds as the setting. Immersive play is transformed through digital recording of online interactions into the raw elements of a story, which are then edited, sometimes with the addition of new sounds or text, to create a finished product. If the filmmaker uses an online world like Second Life, he or she can even recruit actors, design sets and costumes, and pr…

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Sacred Texting: When Religious Writ Gets Wired

…Wailing Wall has recently been constructed in Second Life, the popular user-built online virtual “world.” The creator of the virtual Wailing Wall, “Xanadu,” explains that the digital wall, “is a peaceful spot to sit and grieve, pray, meditate, or comfort a friend. The wall accepts self-created notecards that are immediately deleted. The idea is to allow The Wailing Wall to bear away your burden.” Given the fact that both walls seem to function as…

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From Closeted Evangelical to Unapologetic Atheist: A “Faitheist” Manifesto

…, Beacon Press, is so wonderful. As far as I’m concerned, they’re just the best. They’ve been more than tolerant of my desire to be really hands-on in the publication process, soliciting my input on many different things relating to the book. I actually told them before I signed my contract that I wanted to be able to assist with the aesthetics of the project, and they were totally receptive. The cover is actually a collaboration of work I did wit…

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Is Joel Osteen, Success Mag Cover Boy, Really “God’s Best”?

…and be rich. Not all rich people are heartless bastards.” Osteen’s Houston-based Lakewood (mega-)Church reaches about 40,000 people a week with Osteen’s folksy, feel-good, “God wants you to succeed, too” theology. Osteen took over the church from his father and more than quadrupled the 6,000 member church into what it is today. Osteen told the magazine his success—multi-million dollar contracts for books, a nice home, national media attention—has…

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