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Changing the Jewish State and the State of Jews: J Street and the Future of Israel

By Mark LeVine

…. My father always folded over one of the small amounts—not enough to seem cheap, since he was a doctor and a “respected member of the community” (as my mother described him), but certainly not the amount some of his friends and colleagues donated. I didn’t understand it then, but I think my father—born of Lithuanian immigrants, child of the Great Depression, a no-nonsense person who disdained ideologies of all types and never had a bad word to sa…

In a Time of Irrational Fear and New Media: The Deadly ‘Dance Plague’ at 500

By Ed Simon

…rned a crisis into a nightmare scenario worthy of a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch. Breughel’s painting can scarcely impart the full nightmare of Strasbourg’s dance plague, when what was typically joyful was transformed into something hellish. The gaping mouths and spinning eyes, arms and legs akimbo, leather shoes in bloody tatters and broken bones, the stench of evacuated bowels, piss, and puke upon the straw floor as dancers refused relief and harr…

The Bible is a Good Book, But God Didn’t Write It

By Candace Chellew-Hodge

…her book is published that way except encyclopedias, dictionaries, and telephone books. You don’t want to read those books, you go to them for authoritative answers and you don’t argue with the dictionary. If you’re playing Scrabble you go to the dictionary to settle the argument. We’ve encouraged people to think about the Bible as this kind of book, a source of authority, the final word, not to be debated. I think that helps people to think that…

Dispatches from the Borderlands: “They Came at Night, Trying to Kill Us!”

By Manuel A. Vásquez

…ation in South Africa for many years, believes that immigrants have become scapegoats for the failure of the post-apartheid democratic government to address “the high unemployment, acute housing shortages, and appallingly high crime rate” faced by many poor South Africans. Certainly, the fact that the anti-immigrant violence started in Alexandra, a place created by the segregationist policies of apartheid, points to difficulties of overcoming the…

Who Is “Sam Bacile?”

By Sarah Posner

…d that the film was intended to be a provocative political statement assailing the religion. He denied being Sam Bacile, the pseudonym for the video’s purportedly Israeli Jewish writer and director, but AP said the cellphone number it called for a telephone interview with Bacile on Tuesday matched Nakoula’s address. —- For more RD coverage of the events in Libya see “Tragic Violence in Libya: No Excuses,” by Haroon Moghul — ed….

Death Penalty, Debated (Dedicated to the Memory of Sarah Horowitz)

By Bill Berkowitz

…inal tract ravaged by illness, and she put pressure yet again on a cardiovascular system damaged and inadequate from birth, and on a body whose wounded state would take her so cruelly from us only two months later. Undaunted by every discomfort and challenge, she marched into two-degree weather, in the depths of a heartland winter, to knock on doors and bring out Americans she had never met to join in her campaign of hope, of yes we can. And you c…

How to Choose a Tour Company for Your Hajj

By Amina Wadud

…nts than their quota allows. Most Muslim countries have a quota; a limited number of hajjis permitted from that country in any one year. This number is set by hajj authorities in Saudi Arabia, because, in all fairness, there has to be a cap on how many Muslims converge on the place. Right now, it stands at around 3 million! Countries with large populations of Muslims have many more applicants than their allotted number of pilgrims. This means you…

South Asian Religious Leaders Challenged to Take on Stigma and Discrimination: Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…on Religion and Sexuality According to The Costa Rica News, the Ecumenical School of Religious Studies at the National University released the findings of a telephone survey and set of focus groups on the religious beliefs of Costa Ricans. TCRN reports that 69% professed to being active Catholics, but only 4 out of 10 go to church. On homosexuality, 36.5% of respondents believed that churches should advise and support those people to not be homose…

Conservative Bishops Unhappy At Synod, But Ignore Walkout Call; Australian Religious Leaders Step Up Marriage Equality Opposition; Italy Debates Civil Unions; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…ong after, the former acquaintance called to threaten Subhi from a Turkish phone number. Power noted that Subhi spoke at a recent UN Security Council Session, the first-ever dedicated to LGBT rights, which she said was an important precedent to set: But also, it allowed us to convey, in a single voice, and with the authority of the Security Council – which is the premiere global enforcement body for peace and security – it allowed us to convey tha…

Holey Holey Holey: The Problem with a New Study Valuing Religion at $1.2 Trillion Per Year

By Michael Schulson

…f the total revenue of American religious congregations. To get that final number, the Grims took one estimate of the total number of congregations in America (344,894) and multiplied it by another estimate of the average revenue of each ($242,910). Depending on how you look at it, $378 billion is a lot of money, or it’s not very much money at all. It’s more than the net worth of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Warren Buffet, combined…