There is more to this obscure fact than a clash between Jewish tradition and the concerns of animal-rights activists in today’s Europe, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz told a Jewish forum in Oslo. This is a symbolic fact about tensions that surround Jews in Norway.

“You live in the only country in the world today that does not permit kosher shechita,” he said, at the city’s Chabad House. “Shechita” is a rite in which a skilled Jew uses an extremely sharp blade to swiftly sever an animal’s trachea, esophagus and the arteries and veins of the neck, allowing blood to drain out.

“They wonder why there are only 800 Jews or 900 Jews living in Norway. This is a country that permits the butchering of seals, the butchering of whales, but not this ritual slaughter — which has been proved by every scientific means to be one of the most humane means of slaughter.”

The audience grasped the big idea behind his words, since this March 25 event — which was recorded — was held in an outreach center for observant Jews. How can Jews honor the details of their ancient faith without keeping kosher?

However, Dershowitz noted that when he asked other Jewish community leaders about any anti-Semitic trends in Norway, all they would say is that “things are wonderful,” before falling silent.

“How can things be wonderful,” he added, “if you can’t have your own meat? How do you deal with the meat here, do you have to bring it in from England?”

Someone in the audience quietly replied: “We don’t talk about certain things.”

Among First Amendment and criminal law attorneys, few are as famous and infamous as Dershowitz. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1964 and, three years later, was promoted to full professor at age 28. Even a brief summary of his courtroom career would include a gallery of clients such as porn star Harry “Deep Throat” Reems, British socialite Claus von Bulow and O.J. Simpson. In the 1970s his attempts to defend Russian dissident Anatoly Scharansky made global headlines.

Dershowitz didn’t travel to Norway just to talk about dietary laws.

The goal was to lecture about legal affairs and, especially, the role of international law in Israeli-Palestinian conflicts through the years. However, the Zionist group that organized the tour — the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem — found that Norwegian academic leaders were not anxious to have Dershowitz lecture on their campuses, at no expense to the hosts.

The dean of the Bergen University law faculty, according to Dershowitz, said the school would “be honored to have Prof. Dershowitz give a lecture on the O.J. Simpson case, as long as he promises not to say a word about Israel.” The Harvard professor has written six books about the Middle East, advocating a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian standoff.

Israel was the key, in part because of 2009 debates at Norwegian universities about a proposed boycott at Jewish Israeli scholars and others who support Israel. However, rather than focusing on recent conflicts about occupied territories, Dershowitz noted that the text defining the boycott began by saying: “Since 1948 the state of Israel has occupied Palestinian land and denied the Palestinians basic human rights.”

In addition to challenging the founding of the state of Israel, the first academic leader to sign the boycott petition also offered a harsh critique of the “egocentric … tribe-mentality” among Jews in Israel, Norway and “all over the world.”

While Norwegian leaders keep talking about dialogue on these issues, said Dershowitz, it will be hard for Jewish leaders to take part in bridge-building efforts if their voices are not allowed to be heard. The only previous time in his career in which he was turned away from major universities was in “apartheid South Africa, when I was Nelson Mandela’s lawyer.”

The bottom line: Boycotts do not promote dialogue.

Based on recent events, Dershowitz said it appears Norwegian intellectuals want “dialogue with Hamas, but not with Dershowitz. Dialogue with Hamas, but not with Israel. … Dialogue with people that we agree with, but not with people we disagree with. This is not dialogue. This is a one-way monologue.”

The American Heritage Dictionary defines this term as a “vindication of God’s goodness and justice in the face of the existence of evil.” Wikipedia calls it a “branch of theology … that attempts to reconcile

the existence of evil in the world with the assumption of a benevolent God.”

There were three “theodicy” events in 2005, so the Religion Newswriters Association combined them into one item in its top-10 story list. What linked Hurricane Katrina, the Southeast Asia tsunami and another earthquake in Pakistan? Each time, journalists asked the timeless question: What role did God play in these disasters?

Last year, it was the schoolhouse massacre of five Amish girls in Bart Township, Pa. The stunning words of forgiveness offered by the families of the victims added yet another layer of drama to the story.

“Every year there is going to be some great tragedy or disaster and that causes people to ask, ‘Where was God?’ These events may not seem like religion stories, but they almost always turn into religion stories because of the way people respond to them,” said Richard N. Ostling, who retired last year after three decades on the religion beat, first with Time and then with the Associated Press.

“This tells us something important — that it’s hard to draw clean lines between what is religion news and what is not. … Religious faith is part of how people think and how they live. This affects all kinds of things.”

This is true in Iran and in Israel. It’s true on Sunday mornings in American suburbs and during riots in the suburbs of France. It’s true on the border between India and Pakistan and numerous other fault lines around the world.

Religion is a factor when people go to worship or when they decline to do so. For many, faith plays a role when they vote and when they volunteer to help others. Sadly, religion often plays a pivotal role when people go to war.

Thus, noted Ostling, events on this beat often seem to go in circles, with certain themes and conflicts appearing year after year, world without end — amen.

This is frustrating for editors, who struggle to understand why religious believers “keep getting so upset about what seem to be the same old stories,” he said.

For example, mainline Protestants have been fighting for decades over hot-button issues linked to ancient doctrines about marriage, gender and sex. More often than not, this leads to headlines about another round of changes in the U.S. Episcopal Church. One of the major stories of 2006 was the election of the Rt. Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori — an articulate feminist from the tiny Diocese of Nevada — as the denomination’s first female presiding bishop.

“This was an important story,” noted Ostling. “But was there anything all that surprising about it? Not really.” Meanwhile, the bigger story — a chain reaction among parishes leaving the denomination — is “probably harder to cover because it is spread all over the country,” he said.

The fall of the Rev. Ted Haggard as president of the National Association of Evangelicals was a big story in 2006, but the typical news year always includes at least one sexy scandal of this kind.

The list goes on. Every election year will include a wave of reports about the degree to which religious issues did or did not drive Republicans, and increasingly Democrats, to the polls.

There are annual stories that pit science against religion and Hollywood against people in pews. Can journalists separate politics and faith in the Middle East? Are clashes between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq about religious faith, political power or some combination of the two? What will the pope say that upsets people this year? Which church-state case split the U.S. Supreme Court this time around?

“The problem is that it’s hard to know if any one event in this stream of events is the definitive one, the truly landmark event,” said Ostling. “At some point, things change and they stay changed.”

But journalists have to be patient, he said, because “people are looking for answers to the big questions and they don’t change what they believe overnight.”

Baha’is also embrace alcohol, pork, gambling and adultery.

Human rights activists are studying this new wave of hate for one reason — the Islamic Republic of Iran runs Kayhan. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei picks the managing editor. So there’s more to these headlines than ink and paper.

“When Iran has a new enemy, it never takes long for them to connect that enemy to us,” said Kit Bigelow, external affairs director for the Baha’i faith in the United States. “It used to be Russian and Britain, then it was Israel and the Zionists. Now, it’s the United States. … We can see certain dots being connected right now in Iran, even though we can’t say for sure that we can see cause and effect. It’s foreboding.”

Here are some of the dots the experts are connecting.

Iranian officials recently arrested 54 Baha’is and their supporters involved in a UNICEF community service project in Shiraz, even though the young people obtained a permission letter for their project from the local Islamic Council. Last week, 51 of them were released on bail, although they have not been formally charged with a crime.

The three young people still in jail “were not the leaders, in any sense of the word” and no one knows why they have been singled out, said Bigelow. Other arrests during the past year have followed this pattern — mysterious arrests, demands for bail and no formal charges. Meanwhile, Iranian police also raided six Baha’i homes and collected computers, books, notebooks and other documents.

“We think this is part of a strategy to keep the Baha’i community off balance, to keep us on tenterhooks,” said Bigelow.

But nothing alarmed Baha’is more than the disclosure this spring of a confidential 2005 letter sent to the Iranian Ministry of Information, the Revolutionary Guard and police. It said the “Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, had instructed the Command headquarters to identify persons who adhere to the Baha’i faith and monitor their activities,” according to a statement by Asma Jahangir of Pakistan, Special Rapporteur on religious liberty for the United Nations. The letter asked the “recipients to, in a highly confidential manner, collect any and all information about members of the Baha’i faith.”

Anti-Defamation League director Abraham Foxman connected the dots and detected what he believes is a horrifying pattern.

“These actions … are reminiscent of the steps taken against Jews in Europe and a dangerous step toward the institution of Nuremberg-type laws,” said Foxman, a Holocaust survivor. “This clear attempt to step-up persecution of the Baha’i community in Iran sets a dangerous precedent” and has raised the historic persecution of Iran’s largest religious minority “to the next level.”

These strong words may provide little comfort, since Iranian leaders already claim the Baha’is are agents for Zionism.

Part of the problem is that the Baha’i faith, which proclaims the unity of all religions, also has unique ties to Islam and Iran. The faith began with a leader known as the Bab, who claimed a direct lineage from Muhammad. He predicted the coming of a new prophet, but was executed in 1850 in Tabriz.

Baha’is believe this new prophet — the successor to Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad and others — was Baha’ullah, who was born in 1817 in Tehran. He was persecuted and repeatedly banished to Baghdad, Constantinople and, finally, Palestine. He died in 1892 and his tomb, and the Bab’s tomb, is in a shrine near the Baha’i headquarters in Haifa.

Thus, Iran insists that Baha’i believers are both apostates and heretics, Thus, the faith is a sect that does not deserve the recognition and rights that the Islamic republic grants to Jews, Christians and Zoroastrians.

“They believe that the Baha’i faith is not a valid, independent world religion in its own right,” said Bigelow, who is a convert from Christianity. “And, of course, our holy shrine is located in what has become the modern state of Israel. So when Baha’is around the world, including thousands of Baha’is in Iran, send money to help support this shrine and our work they are sending money to Israel. You can imagine what the current leaders of Iran think of that.”

“I want a cheeseburger, right now,” she said, scanning a trendy South Florida menu. “You can get cheeseburgers in Israel, but you can’t get a really good one. You know?”

This wasn’t just a wisecrack about the kosher tradition of separating meat and dairy products. This was the kind of symbolic issue that Preston faced when she signed up for one of the free tours that have taken 70,000 young Jews to Israel during the past five years.

The global Birthright Israel program is open to young people between the ages of 18 and 26 who have never been on an organized tour of Israel. It doesn’t matter if they have one Jewish parent or two. It doesn’t matter if they have no idea why some Jews eat cheeseburgers and some do not.

“There are cheeseburgers in Israel. You can get them at McDonald’s and some places serve them just like regular hamburgers,” said Marlene Post, chair of Birthright Israel in North America. “You make your choices. If she’s planning on being religious, then she will never see another cheeseburger in her life. If she’s going to be secular she will have all the options she would have anywhere else.”

This tension between Judaism the faith and Judaism the culture has been part of Israel from the start. Thus, one of the key philanthropists behind www.BirthrightIsrael.org is Wall Street legend Michael Steinhardt — an avowed atheist. Nevertheless, he joined the Israeli government and a coalition of donors, foundations and civic groups to fund this experiment.

The young people can select tours that emphasize education, art, recreation, religion or nothing in particular during their 10-day visits. They float in the Dead Sea and hike the Golan Heights, hang out with young Israeli soldiers and meet Holocaust survivors, visit security checkpoints and tour in buses tracked by on-board global positioning systems.

It isn’t hard to spot the agenda, said Roman Smolkin, a 24-year-old computer professional in Aventura. Insiders stress the need for young people to “bond” with the state of Israel. Others talk about helping them establish a sense of “Jewish identity,” whether religious or secular. Clearly, the constant late-night socializing is meant to facilitate friendships, some hooking up and even Jewish marriages.

“I think they’re just trying to get people like us to be us, to be ourselves. They want us to act like young Jews,” he said, during a dinner with Preston and several other tour veterans in South Florida. “But the people funding this must be thinking in terms of a very long-term investment for Israel and for Judaism. They must be thinking that they give us this trip now and, 30 years down the road we’ll be different people.”

For Harrison Heller, the impact was immediate. When he returned to Boca Raton he promptly signed up with Students for Israel and began speaking out politically. He still considers himself non-religious, although he now wears a prominent Star of David necklace.

“The whole religious thing is impossible to avoid,” he said. “One of the very first application forms that we had to complete came right out and asked that question. It said, ‘Are you Orthodox, Conservative, Reform or just a Jew?’ You can’t get more direct than that.”

Preston wrestled with the faith issue as she prepared for “aliyah” — the Hebrew word that means “to ascend,” or move to Israel. She said she was raised “sort-of Reform” and “did the Christmas thing every year, but with no church services.” Before Birthright Israel, she thought a “kibbutz” was a kind of boat.

Long after the tour, she had a tearful epiphany when she heard a Scottish folk singer attack Israel during a music festival in Montreal.

“What I’ve discovered,” she said, “is that it’s almost impossible to get involved in the life and politics of Israel without getting underneath that into the religious questions. … That’s what Israel is all about. It’s great. It’s scary. I love it. It’s frustrating. I’m moving there.

“What can I say? I know that I can’t escape the Israel question now, because it’s my question.”

Metropolitan Theodosius VI could hear them and so could his young Lebanese assistant. Finally, the couple stormed into the office. They agreed on only one thing — divorce.

“I will deal with you separately,” said the archbishop. Then he gestured for his aide to linger. This was going to be a learning opportunity for Philip Saliba, a master class in the realities of church leadership. Half a century later, he remembers what he learned.

It helps to know that, Theodosius soon became patriarch of the Antiochian Orthodox Church, the ancient church of Sts. Peter and Paul. Then in 1966, he consecrated Philip Saliba as metropolitan of the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America.

So the old world was teaching a lesson to the new world, a lesson that the 72-year-old Metropolitan Philip turned into an emotional parable during last weekend’s 46th Archdiocese Convention, held at the Fontainebleau Hilton in Miami Beach.

This was a parable about the growing pains of Eastern Orthodoxy in America, a story about trying to honor the past while facing the future. Grasp this parable, Philip told his priests and lay leaders, and you will begin to understand the hurdles facing churches in America as they strive to gain autonomy from the old country.

So here is the rest of the parable.

Theodosius asked the elderly husband what was wrong with his wife. He offered a familiar litany: She didn’t cook, she didn’t clean and she refused to shine his shoes. The husband left and the wife came in. She said her husband was lazy and unaffectionate. He gambled, drank too much and leered at other women.

The archbishop listened and then faced the two of them. Recalling that moment, Philip thickened his Lebanese accent to imitate his old teacher’s voice. All Theodosius said was: “You are having very serious problems. Go home! Come see me next year!”

Philip was confused. He said he did not understand the wisdom of this response to the couple’s fury. What was he supposed to have learned?

That is easy, said the archbishop. The husband and wife were very old. During the next year, they might kill each other. In a year, the odds were good that either the wife or the husband would die. That would solve the problem.

The audience laughed. Then Metropolitan Philip’s voice grew serious. Never forget, he said, that people in the ancient lands of the East truly believe that “time and death” will solve most difficult problems.

The audience stopped laughing. This was the meaning of the parable.

After all, it had been two years since the American archdiocese — which has grown from 66 to 228 parishes during his tenure — overwhelmingly approved an appeal to the Holy Synod in Damascus for autonomy and the ability to manage more of its own affairs. And it had been two years since Metropolitan Philip survived a life-and-death showdown with heart disease.

Hotel hallways were buzzing with reports of calls from the Istanbul offices of Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, symbolic leader of the world’s Orthodox churches, seeking delays in autonomy efforts affecting the growing churches in North America, and their bank accounts. After all, changes in the convert-friendly sanctuaries of the Antiochian archdiocese and the Orthodox Church in America, which has Russia roots, might spread to others — even the Greeks.

Some leaders “in the East,” said Metropolitan Philip, are convinced that if he dies, the autonomy issue will die. Delay the decision and time and death will solve the problem.

Shouting in Arabic and English, Philip vowed that he would not let this happen.

“No! No way,” he said. “I will rise from the grave!”

Hours later, the conference approved — by a 99.6 percent margin — sending the latest draft of an autonomy resolution to the Holy Synod, a document prepared by leaders from America and the old country. The synod should meet in October, but recent meetings have been postponed.

In other words, the phrase “Byzantine politics” exists for a reason.

“If this step is delayed,” Metropolitan Philip said, Orthodox unity in North America “will be set back for 100 years.”

The senior elder of the Bruderhof communes in America and England opposed U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, the Holy Week bombings of Serbia, the first Gulf War, the Vietnam War and the Korean War. He marched with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. His social-activist resume covers half a century.

“I am more than a pacifist,” he said. “The teachings of Jesus do not permit war. They do not permit armed conflict. … Yes, I know that there is torture. I know that there are genocides and massacres. But I do not even believe that war is the answer to great evils of this kind. Violence leads to more violence.”

But this time around, Arnold has not joined the marchers.

In fact, he has become troubled by the barrage of images of anti-war protests in the U.S. and abroad. Arnold said he respects the motives of the marchers, but he believes that it’s time for anti-war activists to shun tactics that lead to bitterness, division and, in extreme cases, violence.

Right now, he said, people of faith — on both sides of the Iraq debate — must strive to actually help people whose lives are being touched by the war. It’s hard to work for peace, while attacking others.

“How can we judge others without judging ourselves?”, he asked. “What do we gain from angry words, now that war has started? What do we gain by pointing fingers at our president, our Congress and our soldiers? … Now is the time for desperate prayers, not more protests. I am afraid that more protests will do more harm than good.”

These are idealistic words, but Arnold leads a highly idealistic community of believers. The Bruderhof movement — the name means “place of the brothers” — began in the rubble of World War I Germany. Before long, the tiny Protestant group’s commitment to nonviolence led to persecution. Arnold’s parents were refugees who fled Nazism.

Today, the Bruderhof remain committed to simple living and the sanctity of life. While sharing some characteristics of the Amish and Mennonites, their communes are highly active in technology and publishing — especially through the Internet.

On the World Wide Web, Arnold has begun pleading for a change among his colleagues in the anti-war movement. The bottom line, he said, is that being anti-war is not enough. The war is real. Thus, it’s time to focus on the needs of real people. The pain in military families might be a good place to start, he said.

“As stories of injury, capture, imprisonment and death seep home from the front lines, it will become unbearably, overwhelmingly real,” he wrote, in an epistle at www.Bruderhof.org. “And unlike those of us who can turn off the TV set when it all becomes too much, these people will have no choice in the matter. They will have to grapple with the suffering of their loved ones until they find a purpose or meaning in it. And we must too.”

What would this look like, in real life?

If peace activists hold vigils, he said, they might seek to create prayer services that truly welcome veterans and members of military families, rather than offend and antagonize them. More churches should organize gatherings to write letters of support to the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf and at home. Someone will need to organize efforts to counsel and console those who lose loved ones and the soldiers who return home, their lives changed forever by combat.

It would help if churches — on the left and right — offered day care, babysitting and after-school activities for young children whose mothers or fathers have been called into active military service. Who will help the mothers who will soon give birth while their husbands are on the front lines?

“This is how we can work for peace,” said Arnold. “If we can help one child of a soldier, if we can comfort one grieving family, it we can share the pain of one soldier who has been wounded in soul and body, then we will have done something positive. Then we will have done what Christ calls us to do.”

Visitors must stoop or bow in submission. Once inside, most tourists - about 1.25 million a year, in peaceful times - quickly queue on the right side of the 5th century Orthodox basilica and wait to enter the Grotto of the Nativity beneath the high altar.

I passed through the gate two years ago and headed for the altar icons. A priest appeared.

“You are American? You are Orthodox?”, he asked, before assisting me. “We have so few people who come here to pray.”

Frankly, I was glad to have a guide in the maze. The main lesson I learned was that the Church of the Nativity is not one building.

Nevertheless, most news about the recent Bethlehem siege described it has one church served by 30 or more priests, monks and nuns. Sadly, the reality is more splintered than that and recent events may have deepened the cracks.

Journalists said Palestinians in “the monastery” exchanged fire with Israeli troops. Which monastery? There are separate Roman Catholic and Greek monasteries and an Armenian Orthodox convent. “The priests” said they were not held hostage. Which priests? Gunmen raided food supplies and trashed monastic cells. In which cloister?

It is not even clear how the Palestinians entered “the church.”

Time reported that they used the Gate of Humility. Yet it’s hard to imagine several dozen al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade leaders, Tanzim militia, Hamas fighters and Palestinian Authority police being allowed through the Gate of Humility with 90 weapons, including assault rifles, and enough explosives for a reported 40 booby-traps.

Newsweek and numerous other publications say they shot their way through the main doors of the Roman Catholic Church of St. Catherine, a 19th century sanctuary adjoining the Orthodox basilica. But some reports said the Franciscan priests opened these doors, perhaps due to fear of being taken hostage.

Either way, how did gunmen get from the Franciscan passageways into the ancient basilica? Why did Palestinians - as shown in news photos — end up sleeping on its cold stone floor, rather than in the Catholic sanctuary’s pews? Orthodox churches do not have pews.

The Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem believes these are not trivial questions. His words could not have been more blunt, as reporters surveyed the Greek monastery after the siege.

“All the media concentrated on the Franciscan quarter, where little damage was done,” said Patriarch Irineos I, according to a Washington Times report. “Why? The Franciscans actually let the gunmen in then guided the gunmen to our rooms. … The Franciscans then blocked their own rooms’ doors with iron bars.”

The New York Times and other publications reported that the most militant Palestinians appear to have lived, fought and died in the quarters of the Orthodox monks. Greek clerics feared Muslims would even attempt to claim these bloody sites as shrines. At one point, gunmen tried to bury one of their dead in the Greek monastery’s garden.

Franciscan priests did report that gunmen tore up Bibles for toilet paper. The organ in their church was damaged, as was a mosaic. Meanwhile, Palestinian and Israeli leaders traded accusations about who caused fires in the monasteries. The militants stole candelabra, icons and other golden objects, but left them behind with their weapons. Everyone leaving the basilica passed through a metal detector.

A Vatican envoy quickly ruled that St. Catherine’s had not been defiled. The first Mass after the siege was celebratory, complete with the sound of a tambourine. Reporters noted that this church’s main gate had been repaired, since it appeared that gunmen shot off the lock.

Next door, Patriarch Irineos led solemn reconsecration rites, before the first Divine Liturgy in his violated sanctuary. One altar had been used a common table, the baptismal font as a washtub and parts of the nave as latrines. The Grotto of the Nativity was used as a morgue. And Eastern Orthodox believers were unable to celebrate Holy Week and their Easter on May 5.

Was this another tragic first in the history of one of Christendom’s oldest churches?

The siege raised agonizing questions inside the Church of the Nativity, as well as outside of its ancient walls.