Judaism

Big 2023 religion news? Godbeat scribes say 'spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism'

Big 2023 religion news? Godbeat scribes say 'spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism'

The Hamas surprise attack on Israeli citizens was selected as the year's most important international story by religion-beat journalists, in part because it led to "spikes in Islamophobia and antisemitism" when Israel launched its massive counterattack on Gaza.

Members of the Religion News Association echoed that decision when voting to select the top 2023 religion story in America.

"Incidents of hate against Jews and Muslims skyrocket after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel, and Israel's military assault in Gaza," noted the RNA, in its poll. "In Illinois, a Palestinian-American boy is killed, and his mother wounded in an alleged hate attack. The conflict prompts numerous protests, and college campuses see fierce debate about the war and the boundaries of free speech."

The generational nature of the U.S. debates was underlined in a Harvard-Harris poll in which 60% of respondents aged 18-24 agreed that the "Hamas killing of 1200 Israeli civilians and the kidnapping of another 250 civilians can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians." In that poll, 67% of participants in that same age group affirmed that "Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as oppressors," as opposed to 9% of respondents older than 65.

The Anti-Defamation League reported 2,031 antisemitic incidents in the United States between October 7 and December 7. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, noted CNN, reported 2,171 U.S. claims of Islamophobic "bias or requests for help" between October 7 and December 2.

For many years, the RNA published one annual list of the world's most important religion-news events and trends. For the second year in a row, the organization produced separate American and global lists. The next few American selections were:

* Legislative and legal battles continued after he 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, with numerous states banning or restricting abortion and others solidifying access to abortions. U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville blocked hundreds of military job nominations and promotions, while protesting a White House policy that allowed U.S. soldiers to travel to obtain abortions in states where these procedures are more easily available.

* At least 25% of United Methodist congregations left America's second-largest Protestant denomination, following decades of conflict about biblical authority and ancient doctrines on marriage and sexuality, including the ordination of noncelibate LGBTQ+ clergy.

* Debates over LGBTQ+ issues caused increased levels of local and national turmoil, especially in clashes over parental rights, school assignments, drag-queen events, pronoun policies and the rights of transgender athletes.

Norman Lear: It's impossible to talk about American life without including faith

Norman Lear: It's impossible to talk about American life without including faith

Early in the premier of Norman Lear's sit-com "Sunday Dinner," the beautiful environmentalist T.T. Fagori raised her eyes to heaven and, with a sigh, entered a spiritual minefield.

"Chief?", she asked God. "You got a minute?"

In addition to praying out loud in prime time, this character offered a theological reverie at dinner while meeting the family of her fiancé, a 56-year-old widower nearly three decades her elder. The problem: His granddaughter heard Fagori mention God during a science lecture.

"You see, I talk about extending 'love thy neighbor' to include animals, plants, stuff like that. I say that the natural world is the largest sacred community to which we all belong," Fagori explained. "I talk about cosmic piety because the same atoms that form the galaxies are in all of us and it's the universe that carries the deep mysteries of our existence within itself.

"You see how all that sounds pretty spiritual. … So, when the kids hear me say these things, some of them think they hear the word 'God,' but they don't. I don't actually mention it. Interesting, huh?"

This 1991 comedy flopped, but it was an important statement from Lear, whose December 5 death at 101 years of age closed his career as lightning rod in popular culture and politics.

For decades, Lear described himself as a cultural Jew who didn't practice any traditional form of faith. He also founded People for the American Way, an old-school liberal advocacy group on church-state issues. But this television icon became more and more intrigued with religious faith, both as a force in American life and as a topic ignored by Hollywood.

During "Sunday Dinner" press events, Lear argued that America was caught in "a deep spiritual malaise, and nobody is addressing it. The Religious Right did for a period and still continues to. But mainline churches don't do that good a job of it. And the media don't deal with it at all."

For many liberal Jews, Gaza nightmare has created an 'upside-down' world

For many liberal Jews, Gaza nightmare has created an 'upside-down' world

The graffiti on Cornell University sidewalks was stunning, with messages proclaiming, "Israel is fascist," "Zionism = genocide" and "F*** Israel."

Then antisemitic screeds appeared on the Cornell forum at Greekrank, a multi-campus website about fraternities and sororities. This included threats to the Ivy League school's prominent Jewish community, with detailed references to the Center for Jewish Living.

Among the milder posts was this from a "kill jews" account: "allahu akbar! from the river to the sea, palestine will be free! liberation by any means necessary!" A "jew evil" post added: "if you see a jewish 'person' on campus follow them home and slit their throats. rats need to be eliminated from cornell."

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul met with students, promising that "New York State would do everything possible to find the perpetrator who threatened a mass shooting and antisemitic violence on campus." Then a Cornell student, a former campus safety officer, was arrested and charged in connection with the threats.

This followed waves of international protests and rioting, with the Anti-Defamation League noting that antisemitic activity in America rose 400% after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, compared with the same weeks last year.

The news only seems to get worse whenever Jews venture online, even when digging into their social-media feeds, said Rabbi Sharon Brous, in a viral sermon at her progressive IKAR ("essence") congregation in Los Angeles. If the Holocaust is the "dominant psychic reality of the Jew," it's impossible not to view news reports through "Shoah-colored glasses."

It's hard to tell reality from brutal satire, especially when signs of "genocidal antisemitism" emerge from some of America's most elite institutions, she said.

“This week we entered the upside-down world, when a retrograde, regressive, totalitarian, misogynistic, messianic, terrorist regime became -- for the time being -- the hero of the left," said Brous, in a sermon that opened with a warning that parents might want to take their children out of the sanctuary.

Why won't Indiana Jones convert to something after all he has seen in his life?

Why won't Indiana Jones convert to something after all he has seen in his life?

By the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," archaeologist Indiana Jones had learned enough to know that he should close his eyes when facing the wrath of God.

Apparently, that kind of power can melt Nazis -- without changing the hero's soul.

"Why won't Indiana Jones convert? We aren't insisting that he convert to our faith or to his father's faith or really to any faith in particular," noted Jack Bennett, in a Popcorn Cathedral video marking the "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" release.

"What we want to know is why he is always back to square one at the start of every adventure -- a skeptic, or even a scoffer. I mean, think about it: He has seen the Ark of the Covenant opened and the destroying angels pour out God's vengeance on his enemies. He has seen the sacred Hindu stones come to life. …He has seen the true cup of Christ heal his own father from a fatal gunshot wound -- on screen, with no ambiguity."

In what the 80-year-old Harrison Ford has promised is the finale, Indiana Jones remains the archaeologist who risks everything to keep supernatural, even holy, artifacts out of the bad guys' clutches.

This is a war between archetypes of Good and Evil -- with capital letters. The Nazis are on one side, fighting with a brave skeptic who careens through scenes based on Saturday-matinee classics. Miraculous stories from the past are mere fairy tales, until he learns that Higher Powers are at work. Then again, maybe it's just aliens or generic supernatural forces.

In the new film, Jones confesses: "I don't believe in magic, but a few times in my life I've seen things, things I can't explain." But after a life wrestling with sacred mysteries, he concludes: "It's not so much what you believe. It's about how hard you believe it."

The 'secular city'? The religious marketplace in New York has grown more complex

The 'secular city'? The religious marketplace in New York has grown more complex

Early in his church-planting work in New York City, the Rev. Tim Keller focused on what he called the Center City, which started in lower Manhattan, near Wall Street, and extended past Central Park.

The Presbyterian Church in America seminary professor camped in the old Tramway Diner under the 59th Street Bridge at 2nd Avenue, asking New Yorkers probing questions about their lives. He dug into the socialist Dissent Magazine to learn the city's secular lingo.

But New York was already evolving in 1989, when Redeemer Presbyterian Church opened its doors two weeks after Easter, said Tony Carnes, leader of the "A Journey through NYC Religions" website.

Changes began in the 1970s in the city's boroughs "with more internationals arriving from all over," including Global South cultures in which "no one doubts that faith is an important part of life," he said, reached by telephone. "It took time to see these changes affect Manhattan, but they did."

In 2000, Carnes' team found -- through a face-to-face census with church leaders -- 120 evangelical congregations in the Manhattan Center City. That number reached 197 a decade later, 251 in 2014, 308 in 2019 and are expected to near 370 in 2024.

"We know there are others, because we hear things all the time," said Carnes. "We just haven't found them all -- yet."

For decades, researchers considered New York City a lab for the brand of secularism defined by Harvard Divinity School historian Harvey Cox, author of the influential "The Secular City" in 1965. In a famous quotation, he noted: "Secular Humanism is opposed to other religions; it actively rejects, excludes, and attempts to eliminate traditional theism from meaningful participation in the American culture."

However, at sidewalk level it's obvious that there are "two New Yorks," noted Carnes. While secularism remains dominant in mass media, academia and other parts of the cultural establishment, the reality is more complex in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island and now parts of Manhattan.

It's hard to consider the Big Apple a truly "secular city," when considering the rising number of New Yorkers who are Muslims, Orthodox Jews, Hindus and evangelical and Pentecostal believers in Latino, Black, Asian, white and interracial flocks.

This is good for Judaism? Tis the season for lots and lots of Hanukkah junk

This is good for Judaism? Tis the season for lots and lots of Hanukkah junk

It's hard to do justice to ancient holy days in throw-pillow slogans.

Consider the Zazzle item offering a menorah with an un-orthodox number of candles, along with: "Imagine if your cellphone was at 10% but lasted 8 days. Now you understand Hanukkah."

Maybe not. Or how about the Bed, Bath & Beyond pillow stating: "Why is this night different from all other nights? Happy Hanukkah."

Actually, that's the most famous question from rites during a Passover Seder dinner.

"There's no quality control with any of this stuff. No one's being careful with decisions about what's good and what's bad," said journalist Mira Fox of the Forward, a progressive Jewish website. "The point is to sell stuff. It doesn't need to be good stuff. It's just stuff.

"Basically, it's a lot of people saying, 'We can find a way to sell stuff to Jews during the holidays, along with selling lots of stuff to everybody else.' "

Hanukkah began rather early this year, starting at sundown this past Sunday (November 28) and extending for eight days. This placed the "Festival of Lights" closer to Thanksgiving -- near the start of the merchandizing frenzy known as The Holidays.

The story at the heart of this home-centered season dates to 165 B.C., when Jews, led by the Maccabee family, defeated Greek and Syrian oppressors. When the victors reentered their temple, only one container of ritually pure oil could be found for its eternal flame. Tradition says this one-day supply burned for eight days. Thus, Jews light menorah candles during Hanukkah, one on the first night, increasing to eight.

"It's not a biblical holiday. Hanukkah is not in the Hebrew Bible. … God is not a huge part of this story," said Fox. "Honestly, I don't think a lot of people understand what this holiday is about."

That's certainly true in the American marketplace.

Bob Dylan at 80: Still telling tales about divine judgment in a broken, fallen world

Bob Dylan at 80: Still telling tales about divine judgment in a broken, fallen world

Night after night, Bob Dylan's 1979 Gospel concerts at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre made news for all the wrong reasons, according to angry fans.

The November 11th show opened with Dylan roaring into "Gotta Serve Somebody" from "Slow Train Coming," the first of what Dylanologists called his "born-again" albums.

"You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief," he sang. "They may call you doctor, or they may call you chief, but you're gonna have to serve somebody. … Well, it may be the Devil, or it may be the Lord, but you're gonna have to serve somebody."

To add insult to injury, these concerts included fiery sermons by Dylan, while he avoided classic songs that made him a legend.

"I was 19 years old and that was my first Dylan concert," recalled Francis Beckwith, who teaches Church-State Studies at Baylor University. "The atmosphere was highly charged. Some people booed or walked out. … There were people shouting, 'Praise the Lord!', but you could also smell people smoking weed."

Beckwith kept going to Dylan concerts, while following years of reports about whether the songwriter was still a Christian, had returned to Judaism or fused those faiths. These debates will continue as fans, critics, scholars and musicians celebrate Dylan's 80th birthday on May 24th.

With a philosophy doctorate from Fordham University in New York and a law degree from Washington University in St. Louis, Beckwith is certainly not a conventional music critic. He made headlines in 2007 when -- while president of the Evangelical Theological Society -- he announced his return to Catholicism.

To mark that birthday, Beckwith is publishing online commentaries on what he considers Dylan's 80 most important songs. The Top 10: "Like a Rolling Stone," "My Back Pages," "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Visions of Johanna," "Tangled Up in Blue," "Blowin' in the Wind," "Precious Angel," "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding) and "Desolation Row."

Beckwith considered three factors -- popularity, lasting cultural significance and, finally, whether each song was "something I could listen to over and over." He stressed that Dylan's entire canon includes images and themes rooted in scripture and faith.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offered modern arguments defending an ancient faith

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks offered modern arguments defending an ancient faith

A typical Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks speech would open with a self-deprecating jab at long-winded rabbis and then flow into a blend of Hebrew texts, science, law, literature, current events and the scriptures other faiths.

When the former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom died on Nov. 7 at age 72, after battles with cancer that began in his 30s, the Prince of Wales said: "His immense learning spanned the secular and the sacred, and his prophetic voice spoke to our greatest challenges with unfailing insight and boundless compassion. His wise counsel was sought and appreciated by those of all faiths and none."

Most of all, Lord Sacks was known for using modern information and insights to defend ancient truths. One famous address, at a 2014 Vatican conference on marriage, began with fish mating in a Scottish lake 385 million years ago before charting humanity's rise from polygamy to monogamy, including some awkward biblical dramas.

Before this speech ended with a standing ovation, the rabbi explained that his goal was to defend the “most beautiful idea in the history of civilization," the concept of love as the origin of new life.

"What made the traditional family remarkable, a work of high religious art, is what it brought together: sexual drive, physical desire, friendship, companionship, emotional kinship and love, the begetting of children and their protection and care, their early education and induction into an identity and a history," he explained.

“Seldom has any institution woven together so many different drives and desires. … It made sense of the world and gave it a human face -- the face of love. For a whole variety of reasons, some to do with medical developments like birth control, in vitro fertilization and other genetic interventions, some to do with moral change like the idea that we are free to do whatever we like so long as it does not harm others, some to do with a transfer of responsibilities from the individual to the state … almost everything that marriage once brought together has now been split apart. Sex has been divorced from love, love from commitment, marriage from having children and having children from responsibility for their care."

Lord Sacks was part of the Modern Orthodox movement and wrote two dozen prayer books and works about science and spirituality, as well serving as a commentator on BBC Four's "Thought for the Day." He became chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth in 1991, holding that post until 2013, Queen Elizabeth knighted him in 2005 and he entered the House of Lords in 2009.

Survey of Millennials and Gen Z: Many young Americans just don't get the Holocaust

Survey of Millennials and Gen Z: Many young Americans just don't get the Holocaust

It was the kind of open-ended question researchers ask when they want survey participants to have every possible chance to give a good answer.

Thus, a recent 50-state study of Millennials and younger "Generation Z" Americans included this: "During the Holocaust, Jews and many others were sent to concentration camps, death camps and ghettos. Can you name any concentration camps, death camps or ghettos you have heard of?"

Only 44% could remember hearing about Auschwitz and only 6% remembered Dachau, the first concentration camp. Only 1% mentioned Buchenwald, where Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel was a prisoner when the American Third Army arrived.

Another question: "How was the Holocaust carried out?" While 30% knew that there were concentration camps, only 13% remembered poison-gas chambers.

"That was truly shocking. I have always thought of Auschwitz as a symbol of evil for just about everyone. … It has always been the ultimate example of what hate can lead to if we don't find a way to stop it," said Gideon Taylor, president of the Conference of Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

It was a sobering "wake-up call," he added, to learn that half of the young Americans in this survey "couldn't name a single concentration camp. … It seems that we no longer have common Holocaust symbols in our culture, at least not among our younger generations."

Popular culture is crucial. It has, after all, been nearly 30 years since the release of Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List," so that landmark movie isn't a cultural reference point for many young people. And it's been 20 years since the original "X-Men" movie, which opens at the gates of Auschwitz, and almost a decade since "X-Men: First Class," which offered a variation on that concentration-camp imagery.

Old movies and school Holocaust-education materials, said Taylor, are clearly being buried in information from social media and Internet search engines.