Religion Dispatches
The San Francisco Campaign against circumcision has allied itself with “Intact America.” Its activists have dubbed themselves “intactavists.” In San Francisco’s annual Gay Pride Parade a group representing BANG, the Bay Area iNtactivst Group, makes their point in a vivid manner: they don puffy penis costumes and carry a poster of an indignant-looking infant asking, “You want to cut off what?”
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With the swing to the Right of the 1950s, conservatives began to deploy “Judeo-Christian” in the fight against “Godless Communism,” contrasting it with “the communist projection of man as a producing, consuming animal to be used and discarded.”
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What’s the importance of the status of Jerusalem for the Alaskan contender?
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According to one author there is something unique about American antipathy to Islam that differs substantially from earlier campaigns against Catholics, Jews and other religious minorities.
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On August 31, a few days before the opening of the current American-led Middle East peace talks in Washington, four Israelis were killed by Hamas operatives in the West Bank. Among them was a pregnant woman. This did not bode well for the future of the talks, about which there was already a great…
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By bringing young Haredi men into contact with the permanent emergency that is Israeli civil society, volunteer organizations and the Israeli Army have brought these young men into contact with the world of physical violence, aggression, and gun use. Hitherto protected by their insularity and separateness from Israeli society, these ultra-Orthodox males are becoming socialized to Israeli norms. And they and their community are paying a heavy price for that socialization.
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New Yorkers may be grappling with conflicting ideas about how best to honor the sacred real estate around Ground Zero, but they got nothing on Jerusalem, where a California-inspired Museum of Tolerance is being constructed on what is said to be the site of an ancient Muslim cemetery.
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Sasha Polakow-Suransky reported last month in The Guardian that he had found evidence that Israel planned to sell nuclear warheads to South Africa in 1975, prompting the Israeli government to issue an official denial. Polakow-Suransky’s new book, “The Unspoken Alliance” is a history of Israel’s military alliance with apartheid South Africa.
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The Daily Alert newsletter sent by the Conference of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations is quite predictable: the news sources it quotes are either the official statements of Israeli officials or media articles supportive of…
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An ancient burial site was unearthed while building a badly needed emergency room. Contradicting the opinion of scientists, a group of Ultra-Orthodox Rabbis declared the bones Jewish, setting off a battle that has reached the highest seat of power and caused observers to question the role of religion in government decisions.
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