Religion Dispatches
…meantime, the people are doing a pretty good job of getting ready to leave Egypt all on their own, and we’re stuck wondering why it is nobody thinks we’re relevant anymore. *Harold Meyerson calls Scott Walker “the cheddarhead pharaoh.” Update: No sooner have I spoken than a religious voice weighs in – on the side of the unions. Jerome Listecki, Archbishop of the Diocese of Milwaukee, says: “this much needed call for cooperation and communication b…
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…er stands as a kind of coda to the work, a portrait of one group of Stones today, but it also differs from the rest of the text in its intimacy, its first-person engagement. As this book will surely help lead to other studies of the Stones and El Rukns by other writers and scholars, hopefully Williams and Moore will continue to pursue the story of the kids of Chicago today, their struggles and their myths, and craft that into a book with more clar…
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…ng place as the Jewish community prepares for Passover, the celebration of freedom. In the biblical liberation narrative, the Israelites have barely left Egypt when God warns them against mistreating sojourners and other vulnerable populations. “If you afflict them in any way,” God says, “if they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.” (Exodus 22:23) In explaining this verse, the medieval commentator Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban) imagines…
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…stolic Throne of St. Andrew speaks the language of human rights, religious freedom, and trust in science. This position arises in no small part from the Patriarchate’s own precarious role as a representative of minority religion in Turkey. At the same time, the Patriarch of Moscow, having reclaimed much of his post’s former political influence in a post-Soviet Russia, has taken to spearheading not only the traditionalist Orthodox cause, but acting…
Read More…pect the stranger in your land, “because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt,” is much more frequently repeated in the Bible than the injunction against eating unleavened bread. An Israeli group working to honor the ‘stranger,’ Rabbis for Human Rights, has just published its Human Rights Supplement to the Seder. This group and its activism is surely worthy of an American media story. I have no doubt that the 400 American and Israeli Rabbis aff…
Read More…avid Blight tells the story of the first Memorial Day, celebrated by newly freed blacks in Charleston, South Carolina memorializing dead Union troops. In Joplin, Missouri, residents mourned those lost in the tornado. The Department of Homeland Security has ended a post-9/11 registration program that required Arab and Muslim men to register with the government, but not before tangling many Muslim immigrants up in legal proceedings. The Muslim Broth…
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…bbouni “is, in fact, excellent Mishnaic Hebrew” because “It is attested in Codex Kaufmann of Mishna Ta`anit 3.8.” This sounds impressive until one actually reads Codex Kaufmann, a priceless source for early Rabbinic Hebrew. What Buth neglects to mention is that this form appears only once, as opposed to over 50 instances of the normal Hebrew forms “rab” or “rabbi.” He also doesn’t mention that, by contrast, this Aramaic term for “lord” is overwhel…
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…y many churches will hold a Passover Seder, a ritual meal recounting God’s freeing of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. For Christians it recalls Jesus’ Last Supper. It also reminds Christians of Jesus’ Jewish practices. Some Christians and Jews believe Church seders are inappropriate. They say it distorts the Jewishness of the Passover holiday. In RD earlier this week, Rebecca Cynamon-Murphy argued that it “does unwitting harm” by treating…
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…ocation of Koranic verses. He reports that ISIS supporters “often speak in codes and allusions that sound odd or old-fashioned to non-Muslims, but refer to specific traditions and texts of early Islam,” and that they, “spoke with an academic precision that put me in mind of a good graduate seminar.” These people speak with authority, so they must be authoritative. So the logic goes. In the article, Wood relies on the familiar Protestant notion tha…
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…bal behemoth.” The 2003 intervention may have been the “original sin.” But Freedland like Obama is happy to lay the blame squarely on Iraqi and Syrian politicians whose ongoing sins are not having enough Sunnis in government. By this logic, the proper antidote to sectarian conflict is to have the warring sects represented by their own members. Never mind any concept of nationhood, citizenship, national institutions, or a shared historical and cons…
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