Religion Dispatches
…Romney this time. A recent poll by the American Jewish Committee showed Obama’s support among Florida’s Jewish voters running at 69% to Romney’s 25%, with a margin of error of 6%. Obama won 76% of the Florida Jewish vote in 2008. My favorite part of the campaign, though, is this Florida billboard which reads, “Obama. . . Oy Vey!!” Isn’t that what Jews are saying about Adelson?…
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…good move. When I got to the lobby another something told me to dig out my phone and check it for messages. Sure enough, I had one from an unfamiliar number. A woman’s voice said Bedi was still sleeping, exhausted from the previous day’s overseas flight, and needed to reschedule our interview for that afternoon. I called the number back, convinced the opportunity was lost. “I’m here at the hotel now, but I’m booked solid this afternoon—” “Hold on,…
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…n passing. While many publications, including the BBC, Daily Mail, and The New York Times[3] noted the conspicuous absence of more explicit references to the ongoing bloody conflict, none commented on the main subject of Putin’s address: the advancement of traditional family values. At first glance, the phrase “traditional family values”[4] might appear absurd when applied to a large, multiethnic country—one that toyed with rather radical ideas ab…
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…art-time rabbi for Congregation Tikkun v’Or, a Reform synagogue in Ithaca, New York, sits on both the JVP Rabbinic Council and the J Street Rabbinic Cabinet. While the emergence of JVP has “widened the discourse of rabbis,” he claims that there remain “many rabbis” who would want to affiliate with JVP but can’t “because there are severe limitations on what you can do as a rabbi and still hold a job.” Progressive Zionist rabbis like Kleinbaum and B…
Read More…te about a similar move with regard to public education here). There are a number of dimensions to the Florida plan but those that interest me are the plans to “privatize” the system by turning even more of it over to “faith based” prison ministries and to reshape the system as whole with a model put forth over 40 years ago by none other than RJ Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism. Governor Rick Scott wants to move prisoners from…
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…public offering. In doing so, SoulCycle is gambling that people outside of New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles (which, together, account for 95% of SoulCycle’s revenue) will be willing to drop $30+ in order to pedal in unison with strangers, listening to messages of empowerment, growth, and self-actualization. But SoulCycle is also part of a larger gamble: namely, that Americans will be willing to meld the forms of spirituality and the forms…
Read More…gh one can imagine it might be a safety issue in some situations), and the news reports have treated it as a kind of amusing oddity. But what’s interesting here is the pattern of behavior, which replicates the broader social and political movement strategies we’ve seen on a personal scale. First, you try to convince people to do what you want—so, for example, if you’re an ultra-Orthodox man on a plane, you ask the woman next to you to move elsewhe…
Read More…an ad in a local shop or community center. Last minute emergency? Call the airline right away to see about possibilities for accommodating your needs. Likewise, if one is ardently anti-abortion for moral reasons, rather than only focus on making it illegal, prevent it by limiting unwanted pregnancies: help ensure adequate, healthy sex education and contraception are available to those who need or want them. Work to make affordable, quality prenata…
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…rust I have in the TSA before, Jillette’s rant in “Penn’s Bacon and a Kiss Airline” was like finding a long-lost brother; another guy who feels it is criminal to be viewed naked by strangers—involuntarily—is a true freedom fighter. This is a comedian with a conscience. He may come down on the wrong side of many traditional issues (global warming and sexual mores, e.g.), but he is keenly aware that too many people suffer. Theodicy in motion. In the…
Read More…state of disbelief and objectivity into a realm of complicity. In a recent New York Times interview, co-writer Damon Lindelhof suggests, One of the things that we completely own is that in many ways Lost is a mash-up/remix of our favorite stories, whether that’s Bible stories from Sunday school or Narnia or Star Wars or the writings of John Steinbeck. Carlton and I both had to take philosophy classes when we were in college, and we talk about phil…
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