On faith, belief and God
I love this quip from a favorite comedian of mine: “I have a lot of beliefs. And I don’t live by any of them!”
I love this quip from a favorite comedian of mine: “I have a lot of beliefs. And I don’t live by any of them!”
Chanukah 5769: Will the Jewish flame of our era burn forth unto our children and our children\’s children?
I have a wish that our eloquent new president will have the audacity to tell the nation that, for most of us, 99 percent of our happiness is in our own hands.
\”Religion is not primarily about faith in God; it is about community, identity, heritage and being of service to others,\” he said. \”We Humanists must also do more to meet these needs, rather than complain about what others believe.
It is easy to read the headlines and conclude that if religion would just go away, all would be well. But humans are hard-wired for belief.
This week\’s cover story celebrates not make-believe angels, but real live ones.
During a private audience at the Vatican, the head of the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged Pope Benedict XVI this week to lead a \”coalition of the good\” against international terrorism and threats from Iran.
Rabbi Benjamin Blech, author of \”Taking Stock: A Spiritual Guide to Rising Above Life\’s Financial Ups and Downs\” (AMACOM, 2003), wonders mostly how he ever got so frenzied about money — both its gain, and its loss. Of course, he is not alone. Perhaps you didn\’t sink your nest egg into dot-com stocks, but chances are very good that money — or lack of it — sometimes throws you off kilter.
One of the signal contributions of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) over the many years has been its stream of publications reporting on and analyzing our community.
Sometime in the early 1980s, a new type of crime was identified. It was called \”hate crime.\” Although the conduct which hate crime laws were aimed at was already criminal, the new laws targeted the motivation for the crime.