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By Jo Ellen Green Kaiser
In Part I of this
series, author Ilan Stavans explored Borges' self-identification as a Jew. Part II
focused on Borges' infatuation with Kabbalah. In Part III, Stavans argued that
Borges carefully styled himself as a literary son of Jewish precursors.
Here, Stavans demonstrates that the so-called "apolitical" Borges was deeply engaged in fighting Nazism, and that this engagement developed Borges' belief in a universal "man"--the idea that all of us are "wandering ...
When Farah Pandith prepared to leave her position as senior advisor on Muslim affairs covering the European region for the State Department, in advance of President Barack Obama's inauguration, she wanted to be sure the new administration had a chance to hear about the way in which America engaged with European Muslims and why. Pandith had been leading the effort in Europe on Muslim engagement, one in which the US government facilitated rather than dictated to Muslim communities. Her success was so notable that incoming Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made her an offer she couldn't refuse. Instead of departing government service as planned, where she was keen on writing a book and doing continued research on Muslims in Europe, a new position and budget was created for her - Representative to Muslim Communities - leaving Pandith with a new vehicle for expanding her thoughtful initiatives to Muslim communities outside Europe. Here, in her first official interview in her new role, Farah Pandith speaks to us about her plans for expanding her programs, the opportunities for lateral engagement between Muslim communities worldwide, and what it means to be an American Muslim representing the United States.
What if more journalists tried to write like JoAnn Wypijewski, probing rather than excoriating; thinking rather than reacting? I'd thought I'd seen everything I needed to know and then some on the Mark Sanford front when I came across Wypijewski's jewel-like meditation on love, marriage, religion, politics and journalism.
It would have been enough if Wypijewski had simply set the record straight. Despite most media reports and innuendos, Sanford is neither a benighted Southern conservative nor a backwoods Bible-thumper. "He recently irritated those who are [very religious] by not signing a bill that would have welded I Believe to the state license plate" writes Wypijewski, adding "he wasn't elected in 2002 pushing family values; he ran as a vague libertarian and was elected because a lot of Democrats, blacks especially, abandoned the odious incumbent."
But Wypijewski pushes further, analyzing the last 40 years of changing sexual mores and politics to examine how we've mangled expectations of love in the name of personal fulfillment. In the process she takes the media to task for condemning Sanford for the sins they love to hate—and live to expose.Of course it's understandable why journalists seize on stories of celebrity adultery. They, too, follow the path of least resistance, seizing tropes that make good copy. Hypocrisy sells and religious hypocrisy sells even better. But it's also true that they miss (or misunderstand) believers' lack of outrage when preachers and politicians stumble. We are them, they are us: we all sin and need forgiveness—from our readers if not our gods.In a similar vein, Farai Chideya exhorts reporters to be more self-aware when writing about race. She calls out Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz who, complaining that black female reporters are too soft on Michelle Obama, sounds snarky and sexist.The bigger but less obvious problem is Kurtz's lack of self-awareness. He seems to forget that white people, as members of a race, are subject to as well as objects of bias. As Chideya notes: "This presumption of transparency when it comes to whiteness is particularly dangerous in the newsroom. At the same time, for example, my now-cancelled show "News and Notes" was scrutinized for any bias toward then-Senator Obama, one of the people constantly reminding us not to be biased would use the phrase 'my friend Karl Rove' without the slightest sense of irony." Journalists, like the rest of us, have blind spots, and religion and race tend to be big ones. We become so used to assuming our perspective is normative that we come to believe it. But sometimes there's a gap between belief and reality; Wypijewski and Chideya offer challenges, and insights, on how to scale it. Diane Winston
The compatibility of Islam and pluralism is sometimes defended by referencing examples of Islamic "tolerance" of minorities in centuries past. Some Muslims' interpretation of pluralism is colored by Islam's political power in the past, and they define religious tolerance in terms of how religious minorities were treated in the Islamic Empire—that is, as groups that were free to practice their religion as long as they obeyed the Islamic political order and paid taxes in return for protection by the Islamic state. As some modern Islamic thinkers argue, however, this form of religious tolerance is inadequate in light of changing human rights standards. Whereas the Islamic Empire's notion of religious tolerance may have been appropriate for that time, Muslims in the modern age must re-evaluate and realize that the historical approach to religious tolerance must be modified. Conditional and condescending "tolerance" must be redefined to include mutual respect, equal treatment, and robust pluralism.
By Patrick Aleph
Jews are big fans of organizations. Friends of IDF, Hillel, Limmud, Birthright Israel, ADF, JCCs and much much more! And don't forget about synagogues. In my hometown of Atlanta, there are eight Orthodox synagogues. Eight! And that doesn't include all the Chabad houses, either. How they fill the seats is news to me, since the Deep South isn't exactly Crown Heights.
And since I've spent most of my life in the South, I've learned an awful lot about Evangelical Christians. One thing I know for ...
The alleged shooter at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum today has an online book excerpt revealing his deep roots in...
By Bradford Pilcher
“The Holocaust is a uniquely Jewish event.” So sayeth Assemblyman Dov Hikind, representative of Brooklyn.
You might not be aware that Nazi Germany, in addition to murdering six million Jews, also managed to snuff out the lives of some five million other undesirable groups: gays, Roma (gypsies), and Jehovah’s Witnesses just to name a few. If you weren’t aware of that, it’s probably due in large part to the efforts of people like Dov Hikind.
The occasion for Hikind’s remarks is a ...
For some scholars, "religion" gives the social cohesion and moral purpose without which a merely self-interested and fragmenting liberalism could not survive. Others see how, at moments of crisis, figures like Lincoln---or now we might argue Obama---draw on biblical language to call a special nation to its higher and redemptive purpose, and thus name common purposes that mobilize nation-building or rebuilding. In 1968, Bellah linked civil religion not only to consensus but to dissent: he invoked the examples of William Lloyd Garrison and Eugene Debs to argue that critics of racism or empire must speak in widely resonant, biblical terms, or they risk cultural marginality and political impotence. Critics who do not invoke "any genuinely American pattern of values," the "better instincts of American patriotism" or indeed "the deeper moral instincts of Americans," he argues, will fail, and a corporate and imperial regime will continue to "undermine essential American values and constitutional order."
Paul HarveySomehow I missed this story entirely (as did the national media) -- thanks to The Critical Cleric for bringing it to my attention.The Critical Cleric Celebrates The First Black Female Rabbi--Alysa Stanton. The story is covered also here. Congratulations to Rabbi Stanton. A bit of her story here:As a student at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Stanton drove more than 140 miles a week to study with a rabbi in Denver for her conversion. She later moved to Denver, becoming very involved in the Jewish community.She also learned to chant the Torah, the five books of Moses."That opened something in the recesses of my being, and I had a hunger and a thirst to learn more," Stanton said.Stanton, who worked as a licensed psychotherapist specializing in grief, loss and trauma, thought she was too old and too poor to start rabbinical studies at age 38. But she believed it was meant to be.She enrolled in 2002 at the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the nation's oldest institution for training rabbis, cantors and educators of Reform Judaism.She believes her future is in God's hands but isn't satisfied with the world as it is, said Rabbi Kenneth Ehrlich, campus dean."She deeply believes that God calls upon her _ and upon all of us _ to make this a better world, a place that God wants it to be," Ehrlich said, referring to Stanton's work with a hospice and other community activities.Her ordination is a politically significant and healthy step in the next stage of Judaism's development in America, said Lewis Gordon, founder of the Institute of Afro-Jewish Studies at Temple University in Philadelphia. Many believe it could draw more women and blacks to the rabbinate and other leadership roles.A check of major seminaries in mainstream Judaism show 994 women rabbis will have been ordained as of the end of 2009. And several experts said they know of only one ordained black male rabbi in mainstream Judaism.Stanton said she is happy to be a face that reflects diversity."I want our synagogue to be a place of hope, healing and inclusion," she said. "I want it to be an oasis for anyone seeking spiritual refreshment."
On June 2, 2009, the Religious
Institute issued a statement on behalf of national religious
organizations and religious leaders in the wake of the murder of Dr.
George Tiller in his church on Sunday, May 31, 2009. The statement is
signed by religious leaders, including the Presidents of three national
denominations, who have joined to mourn for Dr. Tiller and to condemn
the violence that led to his death. The statement and a list of
signatories – still in formation – follows.
Read Full Press Release
STATEMENT OF RELIGIOUS LEADERS ON THE MURDER OF DR. GEORGE TILLER
As religious leaders, we affirm that life is sacred.
We
mourn for Dr. George Tiller. We decry the cruel act of violence that
ended his life. We pray for his family, friends, colleagues, and
staff, and for the untold number of women and families who have been
deprived of his compassionate care.
We
condemn physical and verbal violence and harassment directed against
abortion clinics, their staffs, and their clients. We call for a
society that assures safe access and delivery of reproductive health
care services, both for the women and families who need them, and the
practitioners who provide them.
Rev. Debra W. Haffner, Director, Religious Institute
Rabbi Dennis Ross, Director, Concerned Clergy for Choice
Rev. Dr. Ignacio Castuera, National Chaplain, Planned Parenthood Federation of America
Rev. Carlton Veazey, Director, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice
Ellen T. Armour, Director, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Program on Gender, Religion and Sexuality, Nashville, TN
Dr. Lee Barker, President, Meadville Lombard Theological School, Chicago, IL
Rev. Dr. Rita Nakashima Brock, Director, Faith Voices for the Common Good, Oakland, CA
Rev. Steve Clapp, Director, Christian Community, Fort Wayne, IN
Rev. Dr. Marie M. Fortune, Founder, Faith Trust Institute, Seattle, WA
Dr. Christine Gudorf, Chair, Department of Religion, Florida International University, Miami, FL
Ms. Ann Hanson, Minister for Sexuality Education and Justice, United Church of Christ, Cleveland, OH
Dr. Mary E. Hunt, Co-Director, WATER, Silver Spring, MD
Ms. Debra Kolodny, Executive Director, ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Philadelphia, PA
Rev. Peter Laarman, Progressive Christians Uniting, Los Angeles, CA
Rabbi Michael Lerner, Chair, Network of Spiritual Progressives, Berkeley, CA
Rev. Troy Plummer, Executive Director, Reconciling Ministries Network, Chicago, IL
Dr. Sylvia Rhue, Interim Director, National Black Justice Coalition, Washington, DC
Rev. Michael Schuenemeyer, Executive, Healthy and Wholeness Advocacy, United Church of Christ, Cleveland, OH
Rev. William Sinkford, President, Unitarian Universalist Association
Rabbi Mychal B. Springer, Associate Dean, Jewish Theological Seminary, New York, NY
Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President, United Church of Christ, Cleveland, OH
Dr. Emilie M. Townes, Academic Dean, Yale Divinity School, New Haven, CT
Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, Director, Institute for Welcoming Resources, Minneapolis, MN
Rabbi Arthur Waskow, Director, The Shalom Center, Philadelphia, PA
Rev. Matthew Westfox, National Coordinator for Field Services, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, New York, NY
Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President, Union for Reform Judaism, New York, NY
** Click to read full list of endorsers
By Arthur Waskow
Today we mourn the death of Dr. George Tiller, a physician who has been
murdered for making it possible for women to actually use their constitutional
right to choose an abortion.
All honor to Dr.Tiller, who joins the list of martyrs for ethical decency and
human rights, killed for healing with compassion. Dr. Tiller is a
religious martyr in the fullest classical sense, killed in his own church
as he arrived to worship, killed for acting in accord with his religious
commitments and ...
By now we all know that if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed by the Senate, she will be the first Latina to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. It is not unreasonable to wonder when the first practicing Muslim would be nominated to the highest court in the land. Sadly, even though Muslim slaves help build this country from the time of its founding and millions of Muslim live here today, such an event will not occur for the foreseeable future or even possibly in our lifetime. There are multiple obstacles to a Muslim being appointed to the Supreme Court, much less the lower level courts of the United States. First, although there are an increasing number of seasoned Muslim attorneys around the country and a dozen or so law professors there are no District or Appellate level judges in the United States. In modern history, Supreme Court nominees have been sitting judges. Groups such as the American Bar Association even vet nominees based on their judicial experience and make recommendations to the President.
Paul HarveyYou know the old adage, often intoned to students as we dispense nuggets of wisdom, of how the more we know, the more we know what we don't know. We pretend like we really believe that. It's a reassuring process of confirming our own ego while ostensibly humbling ourselves. But we don't really think that, usually. How do I know that? Because of how I often make my own personal reading lists. Biographies of subjects I think I know pretty well already often don't make the list. "I know about that already," my self says, "so better to read about some other stuff that I don't know." Then if we actually read about what we assume we know already, we come to know what we allegedly knew but actually didn't know. Humiliating though that is to the ego, it's also what makes "keeping up with the scholarship" fun and exciting, and it invigorates both research and teaching. I went through this process, from dismisal to discovery, yet again recently when encountering Richard Newman's new book Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers. Ok, my self said as I gave it a brief skim initially, I'm pretty well up on African American religious history, and I know Allen pretty well, so I'll save my reading energies for elsewhere. Then a student of mine last semester prepared a senior thesis on the AME Church in Colorado Springs (Payne Chapel, constructed on land donated by the founder of this city). Before getting to his subject, the student went through a lengthy and well-presented history of the AME Church, and included material that I didn't know (one way of learning how much we don't know about what we "know"). The student's thesis drew heavily from Newman's biography, compelling me to reopen the book for real this time. So, a shout out to you, Marcus, for exposing my need to learn about what I already knew, and making me excited about a subject on which I had grown rather passe, inclined to rely on my standard bromides rather than resituating my knowledge in ways that kept my thoughts fresh. I was reminded of this again reading over Alan Taylor's review of Newman's biography here at The New Republic (I also read a similar review elsewhere, but can't track that down presently). Taylor's review captures Allen's significance beautifully, and gives the author his props for managing to forge bricks out of evidentiary straw. I find "founding father kitsch" as tiresome as anyone, until the founding generation gets set in ways that demonstrate afresh the significance of the period. Here's how Taylor does it: Newman employs the notion of a "black founder" in two ways, one bolder than the other. In the more modest (but still important) sense, Allen was a Founder for African Americans, a man who pioneered black institutions and black politics. . . .
In a bolder sense, Allen was a Founder for all Americans. He advanced a prophetic vision of America as a multi-racial democracy of equal rights and equal opportunities. His egalitarian vision was far more daring than anything considered by the more famous white Founders. Allen exceeded them by fighting against the white racial privilege that so stunted, and threatened to stifle, the libertarian promise of the American Revolution. . . .
Allen and other black activists--James Forten, Prince Hall, Absalom Jones--struggled against the constriction of the revolution into a race-based republic for white men. In 1776, the white Founders had declared all men created equal and divinely endowed with inalienable rights, but by 1790 most of them had regretted that revolutionary burst of enthusiasm. In 1790, Congress adopted a naturalization law that limited new citizenship to white male immigrants. In late 1799, Philadelphia blacks petitioned Congress, then meeting in their city, to repeal the fugitive slave law (which had pinched Allen) and to consider emancipating all of the slaves by some gradual process. But by an 84 to 1 vote, the House of Representatives rejected the appeal with contempt, asserting that free blacks lacked the standing as citizens to petition Congress. A Congressman from Georgia sneered that "'We the people' does not mean them." Most white men had hardened around the consensus that the United States was a white man's republic. Even most white abolitionists of that generation doubted that black freedom should bring equal political rights. In their view, the best that blacks could hope for was a limbo above slavery but below citizenship.
Despite this crushing defeat, black activists refused to abandon the universal freedom and equality promised by the Declaration of Independence. Allen insisted that blacks had a sacred and prophetic mission to save the republic from the racism of white Americans. Since most whites had lost faith in true freedom, black Americans, as Newman remarks, were "the people on whom the great experiment in liberty depended." By non-violent resistance, blacks had a duty to remind the majority of the inclusive dream.
Taylor concludes his piece with thoughts on the meaning of "black founders," riffing on Richard Hofstadter's famous bon mot that America was born in perfection and aspired to progress:The central narrative of American history insists that we began purified by leaving Europe and have been getting better ever since, perfecting our special brand of freedom. In this morality play, the American Revolution serves as an accelerator, creating a republic on a slow but inexorable course to freedom and justice for all. If this is so, then it matters little that the white Founders failed in their own time to extend freedom to most blacks or to allow equality to any of them. Instead, it is said, their republic ensured that freedom, equality, and justice would emerge in due time--and not a moment too soon.By casting the early republic as a perfect machine of inevitable progress, this consoling version of our history is doubly distorting. First, it obscures the contradictory nature of the revolutionary generation. The revolution enhanced the liberty of common white men and allowed a measure of freedom for the black minority in the northern states--but the revolution denied citizenship to free blacks, while entrenching and expanding Southern slavery, which remained the lot of most African Americans. White supremacy became more virulent and more ratified by law after 1800 than before. During the 1820s and 1830s, most northern states rescinded the right to vote from blacks (who had rarely been allowed to exercise it previously). And thanks to the southwestern extension of slavery, there were twice as many American slaves when Allen died compared to when he was born. "Richard Allen's world was filled with high hopes and dashing disappointments," Newman concludes.Our comforting story of inevitable progress also obscures the endurance and the creativity of real people working to change their society--or at least to preserve its ideals for a better day. In particular, the usual story reduces black people to silent victims, waiting for white people to liberate them once the time becomes right. By recovering Allen's life as a troubled but persistent redeemer of our republic, Newman illuminates a truer history of struggle by black as well as white Americans. In his scholarship, Newman reflects Allen's legacy: just as Allen sought to redeem the republic from the unbearable burden of whiteness, Newman helps to reform our national memory which insists that our Founders were all white men at the center of power. If we should finally achieve a genuinely egalitarian society, we will owe as much to our black founders as to their white brethren.
Taylor's review and Newman's book bring Allen to life and set him in historical context in ways that command attention, so I commend both.
And here's an interview with the author which sheds more light on the book.
Michael Steele, new Republican National Committee chairman, is African-American; he's also a serious Roman Catholic who spent three years studying for the priesthood. The former fact is front and center in mainstream coverage of Steele and his new
Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter's decision to retire and return to his farm in New Hampshire has really got...