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Tattoos, Cremation, Personal Spirituality: The Jewish World in Transformation

By Dana Evan Kaplan

…. While there is no question that it has weakened, there will still be separate religious movements for the foreseeable future. I hope I did not contribute to this misperception by entitling one of my chapters “The Rise and Fall of American Jewish Denominationalism.” The sages of the classical rabbinic tradition reinterpreted biblical commandments in order to reinvent contemporary Judaism for their times. I implicitly argue that we need to do the…

The Myth of the Maya Apocalypse

By Evan Pondel

…zero, a numerical system that allows you to do calculations of very large numbers very precisely. The Maya fell in love with numbers too cumbersome to calculate with Roman numerals. The Maya believed these numbers created some sort of godly power. Say, by some miracle, that 12/21/12 does turn out to be the end of the world… how would you spend your last day on Earth? I would get together with the people I love and tell them how much I really love…

Sleep-Deprived

By Amina Wadud

…t a boast. Actually, because of my sporadic sleep pattern, fajr prayer separates the previous day from the new. It acts as a marker for that “today is the first day of the rest of your life” sorta thing. I tend to sleep in 2 or 3 hour snippets. What characterizes a good night for me is when I get at least two of these at three hours with nothing but the time it takes to turn over and check the read out dial of the clock in between. If I have to ge…

Election Day: Hope, Heartbreak, Naiveté, and Studs Terkel

By The Editors

…d lens that let us peer to the edge of the universe. Wall Street traders gyrate between exultation and despair as corner-office titans enlist the administration’s Objectivists to refill the trillion-dollar cookie jar they’d raided and stocked with imaginary cookies. Has anyone counted the dead in Iraq? Lapel pins, real Americans, water-boarding and what the frak is a credit-default swap anyway? A wise old Zen master boiled the Dharma down to this:…

The Sacramental American Day of Thanks

By Louis A. Ruprecht

…ncoln) and its sacred shrines (cemeteries at Gettysburg and Arlington, any number of memorials on the Washington Mall, and more recently, Oklahoma City, the Pentagon and Ground Zero in New York). Perhaps most important, the US civil religion boasts its own calendar of “secular” holidays. These days, actually constituting a quasi-sacred calendar, span the entire calendar year: New Year’s Day, the King Holiday, President’s Day, Memorial Day, the Fou…

Osama and Orientalism: Where Islamophobes Meet Al-Qaeda

By Hussein Rashid

…wers of what Islam is. For example, in January 2009, 300 Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow published a letter to President Obama in the Washington Post. One of the key lines is “Safeguard our shared… values of peace, pluralism, and cooperation.” However, a quick Google search turns up a number of criticisms of this letter as disingenuous. I consistently attend interfaith events where my understanding of Islam is claimed to be either wrong or not represen…

Muslims Are Not the Only Group Endangered By Hate

By Shabana Mir

…all Europeans, not just to Muslims. Because the doors of hatred do not operate singly. One door of hatred opens multiple doors. Non-Muslim immigrants and minorities should not reassure themselves that the focus on Muslims and their clothes will work to their advantage. This focus will not keep the damage limited to “only” Muslims. To minority groups, tolerance and acceptance may often justifiably appear as limited commodities: if handed out to ot…

“[I] Pray For Barack Obama To Die And Go To Hell”: The Story The Media Missed

By Frederick Clarkson

…you’re gonna tell me I’m supposed to pray for God to give him a good lunch tomorrow while he’s in Phoenix, Arizona? Nope. I’m not gonna pray for his good. I’m going to pray that he dies and goes to hell. But no one should come away from this story without a sense of the depth and breadth and virulence of the views being expressed or that Anderson sees his views as anything other than the truth and an effort at common sense. Fortunately, diligent b…

Creationist-Leaning Texas Sets Textbook Agenda

By Lauri Lebo

…ired creationism to be taught alongside evolution. I’m headed to Louisiana tomorrow. While I will be primarily searching for incredible food, wonderful music and one of those ubiquitous drive-thru daiquiri stands, I’ll also be visiting with Barbara Forrest, the woman best known for irking the heck out of intelligent design advocates. Creationism’s Trojan Horse, the book she co-wrote with Paul Gross, details the statements of the movement’s leaders…

No Garden to Get Back to: Understanding Post-Avatar Ecological Depressive Disorder

By Ryann Croken

…ch a progressive environmental (not to mention anti-imperial and anti-corporate) message to achieve this kind of universal popularity is remarkable. Any explanation as to how a mainstream Hollywood mega-blockbuster could radicalize the eco-consciousnesses of scores of people who seem to have had little previous interest in the praxis of deep ecology or neo-tribalism must go beyond the observation the film was merely “visually interesting.” One cou…