Religion Dispatches
…e calling, I was working as a collector of Yiddish books, and had frequent contact with the last generation for whom the most uniquely Jewish of languages was a mother tongue. A Catholic moving through a Yiddish-speaking world, I was relieved to discover how much less theological differences seemed to matter than they once did. Visiting elderly Jews in Brooklyn, Co-op City, or the New Jersey suburbs, I was usually invited to stay a while, maybe lo…
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…oremost community: “Up until debate,” he explained, “the only people I had contact with were from my parents’ fundamentalist church and the homeschool groups.” While Yoza’s debate community was still conservative, it was less so than church and school, “which cracked the door open to less conservative ideas.” In fact, Yoza credits conversations with his conservative Christian debate community for the fact that he’s an atheist today. But like Stard…
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…act, dialogue is inadvisable, because the deceiver is so powerful that any contact risks corruption. Best to avoid it entirely, lest you end up like Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who changed his mind on GMOs after visiting Monsanto. Under most circumstances, the reasonable explanation would be that Nye was persuaded by argument and evidence. But for those who believe in Monsatan, the better—the only—explanation is that Nye was coerced, just as the be…
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…medieval historians. The Trial of the Talmud tells a story of cultures in contact. But what stands out about these documents is how little the Church actually knew, prior to the 12th and 13th centuries, about the Jewish population that lived within its borders and relied on its protection. As Chazan explains in his introduction, virtually no medieval clerics knew Hebrew, and while Jews did occasionally convert to Christianity, those who did so te…
Read More…at the guy calls over someone who has more English, and is able to call my contact person from the tour agency; and Mr. Mansour says he will send someone to get me. I try to explain where he should go, but he gives the impression that he knows. I sit with this young guy, and notice he is wearing a hearing device. I never got his name, but when I asked about the regularity of the chaos he explains a bit about his day. Then I ask if he speaks any ot…
Read More…the archdiocese of Newark, NJ, agreed to supervise him and banned him from contact with children, but appointed him as chaplain of a hospital without informing the hospital of his history. Fugee continued to have contact with children, including traveling with them on retreats, until last year when a local newspaper brought his activities to light and a public outcry forced his ouster. The bishop who was supposed to supervise Fugee, John Myers, re…
Read More…he union. And because population turnover rates are high, one-on-one voter contact can be more challenging. Ground game (door-to-door voter identification, contact, and mobilization) may prove crucial in getting voters to the polls, and here Romney’s quasi-hometown advantage among Republican Mormons—a population with excellent door-to-door skills—could be a point of strength. New Hampshire: Can Romney convert the “nones”? Of all the swing states,…
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…work is suffused with fierce countercultural sensibilities and a dramatic contact experience he underwent in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1994. Morrison had played with the paranormal notion of “being written” since his early work in books like Animal Man, but the Kathmandu event clearly turbo-boosted this idea into orbit, as is evident in his metaphysical manifesto, The Invisibles. Fans, eager for another major statement, now have it in the recently rel…
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…arly modern period. The exhibition was meant to highlight the influence of contact between Christianity and Islam on Christian art, the suggestion of which offended Bulgarian nationalists so deeply that it led to the Cultural Ministry’s refusal to loan the sixty previously promised items. Speaking to Bulgarian state television, Emmanuil Mutafov a historian and the director of the Institute for the Study of Arts at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences…
Read More…round another person in an airplane aisle knows there will be some sort of contact as you move past; the space just isn’t big enough for most people to avoid that. If your goal is sincerely to avoid contact, it seems to me that remaining in your own seat, lowering your eyes and simply relinquishing your claim to the armrest would be a more effective means of not touching a woman. It seems hard to believe that “hundreds” of men wound up in the same…
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