Religion Dispatches
…aborated the best way to make this dhikr: one hundred repetitions; and the best times to make it: after fajr prayer before sunrise, and after ‘asr or the afternoon prayer. I’m not a diehard about all these details, except to say that the 100 repetitions are pretty standard. The specific times are a plus, I guess. I am just not capable of being that literal. But then again I guess that’s okay too, because even he reminded us that we should say it,…
Read More…an ad in a local shop or community center. Last minute emergency? Call the airline right away to see about possibilities for accommodating your needs. Likewise, if one is ardently anti-abortion for moral reasons, rather than only focus on making it illegal, prevent it by limiting unwanted pregnancies: help ensure adequate, healthy sex education and contraception are available to those who need or want them. Work to make affordable, quality prenata…
Read More…aisles for a 10 hour flight, or you file lawsuits and cost the government time and money defending the law you tried to convince it not to pass, and then once you get an accommodation you sue to be exempted from that as well). The real difference here is that if you don’t want to deal with ultra-Orthodox men interfering in your travel, you can just take another airline. If only it were as easy for female employees affected by the numerous lawsuit…
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…side my waistband. Embodiment is a theological issue of some currency. Sometimes it is treated as if it were a women’s issue, but we all share this—at times frightening—humanity. We only want those we trust most intimately to see us naked. To touch us in certain places. Several years ago I lost a secure seminary teaching job for being too liberal. My academic career never recovered (just try to explain that to a search committee repeatedly asking,…
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…rust I have in the TSA before, Jillette’s rant in “Penn’s Bacon and a Kiss Airline” was like finding a long-lost brother; another guy who feels it is criminal to be viewed naked by strangers—involuntarily—is a true freedom fighter. This is a comedian with a conscience. He may come down on the wrong side of many traditional issues (global warming and sexual mores, e.g.), but he is keenly aware that too many people suffer. Theodicy in motion. In the…
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…an find nothing to be optimistic about. That’s usually a function of their time frame. Most arrived at their current position only some time in the 21st century—many in the last four or five years. Before their change of heart, most weren’t even aware of the decades-old Jewish-American peace movement, so they can only compare the situation now with what it was a few years ago when they joined the effort for peace with such high hopes. Naturally th…
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…ubling. The Globe was showered with praise when Spotlight won an Oscar for best picture, but it pulled the plug on Crux right around the same time, an ironic maneuver that makes many wonder who will be the next Spotlight team when it comes to the still serious problems of sex abuse, misogyny, homophobia and corruption in the Catholic church that impact millions of people worldwide. Writers and editors still care about these issues, but news corpor…
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…am most proud was when I graduated from University College in 1987 as the best male athlete. As I tell my students at LMU, I don’t look like much now, being old and slow and fat, but I used to be somebody. When I moved to the San Fernando Valley in 1997 to start teaching at Cal State Northridge, I sought out Coach Wooden. That was another of the amazing things about him. He was approachable, answering his own phone and mail, meeting with complete…
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…s.” One of the summer’s notable developments on this front was the hawkish Times of Israel editor David Horovitz’s acknowledgement of something Netanyahu critics have long argued: that despite his claims to support a two-state solution, Netanyahu in reality does not. After a wartime press conference—during which Netanyahu spoke only in Hebrew—Horovitz wrote that the Israeli leader “made explicitly clear that he could never, ever, countenance a ful…
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…ative to lines of celestial longitude and latitude. He (or more likely his best student) wrote a book on the astrolabe, an instrument for telling time and making measurements by the sun or stars. You could even use it to calculate the circumference of the earth, which Gerbert and his peers knew very well was not flat like a disc but round as an apple. Much of this science Gerbert learned as a youth living on the border of Islamic Spain, then an e…
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