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Spiritual McCarthyism and the Catholic Vote

By Bill Berkowitz

…iumphantly pointed out that There is no mention anywhere on the Obama website of the Catholic National Advisory Council, and after plac[ing] three phone calls to his campaign … we were told … that someone would get back to us, but no one did.” Donohue noted that he “personally e-mailed [Mark] Linton [Obama’s National Catholic Outreach Coordinator] informing him of the three phone calls, requesting that he respond to my question: ‘I would like to…

Tribal Trouble: The Changing Nature of American Jews’ Relationship to Israel and the Question of Jewish Unity

By Shaul Magid

…reements about matters concerning Israel. We can point to the anti-Zionist American Council for Judaism; the non-statist American Zionists, such as rabbis Abba Hillel Silver and Stephen Wise (who only agreed to join Ben-Gurion’s statist project after the Biltmore Conference in May, 1942); and the anti-occupation group Breira that emerged after the Yom Kippur War in 1973; among many others. The new heresy The identification of Zionism with Jewishne…

Trump’s Inaugural Address Gets an “F” in American Civil Religion

By Spencer Dew

…elation of sovereignty to power, citizens to the state, that characterizes American politics. Sovereignty, in American politics, is rooted in the people. Rather than resting in a monarch, American popular sovereignty is a matter of negotiation and compromise, a matter of relation. Not only does such popular sovereignty not look much like the old-school, European variety—which gets shorthanded as “tyranny” in our founding documents—it is also an id…

Put Your Money Where Your Mind Is: A For-Profit Meditation Studio Opens in New York

By Michael Schulson

…w tweaks, Buddhist practices of mindfulness meditation fit right into this American tradition. Since the 1970s, Americans have used quiet, awareness-based contemplative practices to calm and focus their minds. Much of this is thanks to Jon Kabat-Zinn, the creator of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), an eight-week course. Kabat-Zinn studied mindfulness meditation under the Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh, but he has emphasized the psychological a…

Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews

By Shalom Goldman

…zed American political atmosphere one wonders if there is any way—polite or impolite—to conduct a serious public conversation about the Middle East in general, and about Israel in particular The clash between Arun Gandhi and the American Jewish leadership, Israeli intellectuals, and American Christian supporters of Zionism may have been inevitable. Sadly, this was a noisy and ugly clash, not worthy of the tradition of exchange and dialogue that pr…

What Can a Real Life Haunting Tell Us About American Religion? [Updated]

By Daniel Wise

…ng is in keeping with a type of spirituality she shares with an increasing number of Americans. She holds what some academics would call a form of metaphysical spirituality. Historian of American religion Catherine Albanese traces metaphysical religion or spirituality through New Age spirituality back through late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Theosophy and back to Spiritualism and Mesmerism. It’s a type of spirituality concerned with int…

Vatican Considers ‘Disordered’ Language; HBO Doc on LGBT Persecution in Russia; Nigerian Bishop Shifts on Anti-Gay Law; Arson at ‘Open Mosque’ in South Africa; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…t asylum on the basis of his sexual orientation” had been confirmed by an “American official, who was not authorized to comment on the case and so spoke on the condition of anonymity.” Susan Reed, an attorney for the teen, disputed the Russian government’s claims, saying, “He is in federal custody, and was placed in a foster home because he is an unaccompanied minor asylum-seeker and that is standard,” she said. This is “a licensed foster home tha…

No One Can Tell I’m a Muslim: All-American Muslim Debuts

By Su?ad Abdul Khabeer

…ge anti-Muslim bigotry, choosing a cast of immigrants and first-generation Americans, all Arab American save the newbie white convert, may just propel the show into another set of tropes: all Muslims are Arabs, all Arabs are Muslim, and all Muslims are immigrants. Indeed some Muslims are Arab, some Arabs are Muslim, and some Muslims are immigrants. But many are not. Many will celebrate the show, and those who do may read this review (if they get t…

Are They Jewish Bones? Battle for Separation of Synagogue & State in Israel

By Shalom Goldman

…service has fueled resentment again the Ultra-Orthodox, this sharing of the conscription burden has done quite a bit to lessen that resentment. But the Barzilai affair again painted Haredim as anti-modern and reactionary. Those Haredi groups that have Web sites (and there are quite a few) are now calling on their rabbis to go against Litzman’s demands. Last week’s Jerusalem Post quotes the Web site Kikar Hashabat as saying that Litzman “aggresivel…

Before We Scold DeSean Jackson and Others For Anti-Semitism We Need To Talk About ‘Chosenness’

By A. E. Brooks-Key

…lbany or Washington—are controlled by Jews. I think they are controlled by Americans, and the American Negro situation is a direct result of this control. And anti-Semitism among Negroes, inevitable as it may be, and understandable, alas, as it is, does not operate to menace this control, but only to confirm it. It is not the Jew who controls the American drama. It is the Christian. At the time of Baldwin’s writing these were some of the most powe…