In anticipation of Easter, a slightly modified version of \”The Passion of the Christ,\” the film by actor and director Mel Gibson, and screenwriter Benedict Fitzgerald, has been re-released. The second coming if you will. This re-cut version is widely available in a DVD gift format.
As we stand at the dawn of the 21st century, a perhaps even more fundamental issue divides the American body politic. From stem cells, abortion and human cloning to the Schiavo case and physician-assisted suicides, the question of life has become this generation\’s great ideological battle ground.
The question: How Jewish vs. how democratic should the Jewish State of Israel actually be?
That was really the question before Israel\’s Supreme Court.
More than a legal question, it led to serious and heated debate. The answer would be a defining factor in the very nature of the state itself. It came to the fore as the court was asked to decide if three cities, Jerusalem included, could ban the selling of pork.
The ruling: That cities cannot outright forbid the sale of pork and should respect communities that are predominantly religious but may sell pork in other areas of the city.
Should synagogues and Jewish day schools get federal tax dollars to help them beef up security to meet the rising terror threat?
Coming after conferences on anti-Semitism in New York, Amsterdam, Paris and Vienna, the book, \”A New Anti-Semitism? Debating Judeophobia in 21st-Century Britain,\” is something of a symposium unto itself.
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