Religion Dispatches
…the X-rated Egyptian myth of Set and Horus. As that story goes, Horus—the Egyptian sky god—contends with Set, god of chaos and the desert, for control of all of Egypt. The rivalry between the two gods, who are sometimes depicted as brothers, entails seduction, revenge, betrayal and a blush-inducing debate over who left his semen in whom to be settled by the other gods, including Isis, their mother. More recently in the “Angels and Monsters” episo…
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…ealous brothers plan to murder him, but end up selling him into slavery in Egypt. In case you don’t remember how that turned out, Joseph does some prison time until his flair for dream interpretation is recognized by the Pharaoh, who appoints him Viceroy in thanks. It’s a decades-spanning, riches to rags to worse rags to riches story fraught with tribulation, self-doubt, and ultimately, salvation. “The easy parallel,” says Audience of One director…
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Inspired by protests over the summer organized through social media in Egypt and Madrid, upwards of a thousand demonstrators gathered on September 17 to “Occupy Wall Street” in a rally loosely coordinated by the activist media organization Adbusters. Hundreds lingered through the weekend and continued the protest as the New York Stock Exchange opened low on Monday, September 19 over worries about the wider impact of the Greek debt crisis. Demonst…
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…would have taken time and money I did not possess. Traveling from India to Egypt seemed to offer a fairly simple way of linking my south Asian heritage with the history of the regions where Islamic jurisprudence came of age. A less tangible motive also helps explain the book’s trajectory. Although it is no bad thing to recognize the diversity and benign qualities of Muslim life—and I hope my book does that throughout—I thought it crucial to focus…
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…d, in fact, was in favor of returning the West Bank and Gaza to Jordon and Egypt after 1967. Menachem Begin was a member of a terror organization and a firm believer in Greater Israel. Yet he made peace with Sadat (Sadat was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood yet he made peace with Israel). Yizhak Rabin said of the Palestinians, “we will break their bones,” yet shook Arafat’s hand and implemented Oslo. Ehud Barak was part of a clandestine army uni…
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…Pole; under the Mediterranean near Crete; in Sweden, the Persian Gulf, and Egypt.” What Paradise Lust makes clear is that the rhetorical power of words like “Eden” far transcends the actuality of any one place. Go to top Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church Kaya Oakes Counterpoint 2012 Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church (2012) by Kaya Oakes – Few religious phenomena of the last decade have been…
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…Qur’an from the 8th century, and a visually striking red velvet tent from Egypt known as the Mahmal. While the portrayal of the history of Hajj balances the spiritual with the material challenges met by the organizers and pilgrims, the same cannot be said for the contemporary accounts of the Hajj. During the launch of the exhibition, Director Neil MacGreggor, speaking of the contemporary pilgrimage, noted flatly that the “Hajj is one of the great…
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…s recounted, it’s done in the first person plural, “When we were slaves in Egypt.” In the very first interview that I did while writing Beyond Chrismukkah, a Unitarian Universalist woman committed to raising Jewish children reflected that it took years for her to feel that she was included in that “we.” For more than a decade, she felt left out at her in-laws’ seder table, and even at her own, though she had done half of the cooking. While the his…
Read More…istreat a stranger, nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:21)) but in more recent, and less universal, Jewish experiences. Ironically, this choice is at once too particular, and not particular enough. It excludes many Jews, and perhaps deliberately depicts Jewishness as a secular, American immigration narrative that is accessible to non-Jews as well – such as, importantly, readers of this publication. This is g…
Read More…. This important but modest bill embodies the Jewish principle that “When strangers sojourn with you in your land, you shall not do them wrong. The strangers who sojourn with you shall be to you as the natives among you, and you shall love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:33-34). The DREAM Act is opposed by religious right groups like Concerned Women for America and Eagle Forum, but Conservatives for Com…
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