August 23, 2007 | 1:43 pm

Everybody into the bomb shelter!

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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The most interesting part of my trip to Israel two weeks ago was not my meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, but having Shabbat dinner with the Bar-On family, a household of kibbutzniks living along the Gaza border.

Daily life in the western Negev region within the range of Qassam rockets is filled with nonstop unease. Five minutes after I arrived for dinner at Kibbutz Nir-Am, a PA sounded the “tveza adom” warning of incoming fire. In Sderot they have 15 seconds to take cover, which I had the enjoyment (!) of doing twice the day before, but on Nir-Am they are that much closer to Gaza and have only six to seven seconds. It didn’t matter for me, though. I missed the warning.

A single rocket attack, or even two back to back, is no big deal for people living in the western Negev. For the past six years they have been getting shelled; in late May attacks escalated and during two weeks they were hit by 293 Qassams.

This was the most interesting story I came back from Israel with, and it’s this week’s cover for The Jewish Journal.

The Bar-On’s front door leads into what used to be the veranda, but, thanks to the addition of two mostly windowed walls, is now the living room. The ceiling is rich cherry oak and the floor smooth brick. This is where Mayan and Gabi sit on plump, blue leather couches and watch Nickelodeon, and from where they run when they hear the “color red” warning of an incoming rocket—“tveza adom.”

“If we’re sitting in here with the air-conditioning on and the windows closed and the TV on, we can’t hear the siren. What does it matter if we can hear it or not?” Marcell asks, growing exasperated. “What can we do? We’re going to go where there are not windows, but we are still not protected.”

For that reason, when the rocket attacks are heavy, like they were for the last two weeks of May, when 293 rockets were launched from Gaza after a six-month cease-fire broke down, the Bar-Ons often sleep on the concrete floor of a communal bomb shelter about 50 meters from their house.

“I like this one because it is underground,” Marcell says, walking down the stairs in the dark. “It’s something extra. It’s really, really safe.”

“Ooh, it smells terrible,” she says, before flipping the light switch and revealing a red picnic bench, tile floor and wine cellar décor. About 15 feet by 20 feet, the room is stuffed with upwards of a dozen people on busy nights.

Fortunately, the previous few weeks have been “quiet.” Marcell uses that term several times and usually follows it with a grimace, as if the Sderot region has been experiencing the calm before the storm.

Quiet, anyway, doesn’t mean silent. It still means three to four Qassams coming their direction each day.

Last month, Uzi and Marcell saw one of the rockets fly above them as they swam in the pool after dinner.

“We knew that Gabi was playing soccer and that Mayan was in bed. We were totally helpless in the middle of the pool, and we saw this bomb fly right over our heads,” Marcell recalls. “We jumped out of the pool to see where Gabi was, to see if he was still alive.”

He was. But the rocket tore off a room in an elderly couple’s home. That direct hit followed the Qassam that landed on the kibbutz restaurant, Fauna, and burned the structure to the foundation, which followed the bomb that tore through one of the dorms rented to students at Sapir College. Amazingly, each time, no one was hurt.

“We have,” Marcell adds, “so many stories like that ....”

Why then, you ask—everyone asks—does anyone stay here?

Some stay because they are committed to the land, which is inside the Green Line of 1948 Israel. Others because they don’t want to be bullied by Palestinian terrorists. But many remain because, as Marcell Bar-On puts it, of “a lack of choice.”

If you could choose, would you stay in the area around Sderot?

August 23, 2007 | 12:04 pm

My take on Mark Lilla’s ‘Stilborn God’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Mark Lilla’s cover story for last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is not the most thrilling essay I’ve read in the past month, but it is probably the most relevant to the world we are living in. Adapted from his to-be-published book “The Stillborn God,” Lilla addresses an important issue that underscores the limited effectiveness of “liberal” Islam:

What they mean is an Islam more adapted to the demands of modern life, kinder in its treatment of women and children, more tolerant of other faiths, more open to dissent. These are brave people who have often suffered for their efforts, in prison or exile, as did their predecessors in the 19th century, of which there were many. But now as then, their efforts have been swept away by deeper theological currents they cannot master and perhaps do not even understand. The history of Protestant and Jewish liberal theology reveals the problem: the more a biblical faith is trimmed to fit the demands of the moment, the fewer reasons it gives believers for holding on to that faith in troubled times, when self-appointed guardians of theological purity offer more radical hope.

The article details how the West got to where it is today, with its societies divided between the secular and the devout:

Liberal theology had begun in hope that the moral truths of biblical faith might be intellectually reconciled with, and not just accommodated to, the realities of modern political life. Yet the liberal deity turned out to be a stillborn God, unable to inspire genuine conviction among a younger generation seeking ultimate truth. For what did the new Protestantism offer the soul of one seeking union with his creator? It prescribed a catechism of moral commonplaces and historical optimism about bourgeois life, spiced with deep pessimism about the possibility of altering that life. It preached good citizenship and national pride, economic good sense and the proper length of a gentleman’s beard. But it was too ashamed to proclaim the message found on every page of the Gospels: that you must change your life. And what did the new Judaism bring to a young Jew seeking a connection with the traditional faith of his people? It taught him to appreciate the ethical message at the core of all biblical faith and passed over in genteel silence the fearsome God of the prophets, his covenant with the Jewish people and the demanding laws he gave them. Above all, it taught a young Jew that his first obligation was to seek common ground with Christianity and find acceptance in the one nation, Germany, whose highest cultural ideals matched those of Judaism, properly understood. To the decisive questions — “Why be a Christian?” and “Why be a Jew?” — liberal theology offered no answer at all.

Such vapidness laid the foundation for modern religiosity among those in the West who want religion more intertwined with politics. Christopher Hitchens, one of The New Atheists, critiques the piece in a Slate article titled “Mark Lilla doesn’t give us enough credit for shaking off the God myth.”

Question. What is a bigger threat to Western-style democracy: religious extremism or extreme secularism?

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August 22, 2007 | 7:01 pm

Bringing banking in line with Islamic law

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

That’s the duty of John Weguelin, the managing director of European Islamic Investment Bank. The long-awaited second issue of Portfolio (that’s another story) has a short profile on the dapper Londoner. But after reading that Weguelin’s bank is in accordance with sharia, my only question was: huh?

(F)or a clear sign of what makes E.I.I.B. different, just turn to the bank’s first annual report, in which briefings from the chairman and company secretary open with “In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful” and calculations of shareholders’ zakah, an annual charitable donation required of all Muslims, are supplied. The cornerstone of the bank’s Islamic nature lies in its transactions and ventures, which are guarded by its Sharia Board—four Islamic scholars who vet funds and deals to make sure they don’t contravene Koranic bans on earning interest and making profit from alcohol, pork, or unethical activities.

That makes sense. But can they employ a Sharia Goy to do the unholy business?

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August 22, 2007 | 2:52 pm

Accused pedophile allegedly faked his death

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

GREAT FALLS, Mont. - A former youth pastor accused of sexually assaulting a child in Texas was tracked down living here Tuesday, six months after he allegedly faked his own death. Kevin Othell Laferney, 40, is wanted in Upshur County, Texas, on four counts each of aggravated sexual assault of a child and bail jumping. According to the U.S. Marshals Service, he faked his death in February and disappeared before he was scheduled to appear in court. Great Falls police and U.S. Marshals deputies arrested Laferney without incident at about 5 p.m. Tuesday when authorities knocked on the door of his apartment.

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August 21, 2007 | 10:29 pm

‘God’s Jewish Warriors’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“Whether Muslim, Christian or Jew, millions of people view the world through a religious prism. They want God back in their daily life, back to the seat of power.” That’s how Christiane Amanpour opened the widely promoted CNN special “God’s Warriors.”

The first installment of three was on God’s Jewish warriors, and opened in Hebron, the city of the patriarchs in the West Bank. GetReligion.org has the play-by-play.

I’ve just reached the 30-minute mark and found little to offer color commentary on. So far, the report has been a primer on the meaning of the Six-Day and Yom Kippur wars on religious Jews who believe that the land seized from Arabs in 1967, biblically known as Judea and Samaria, were promised them by God.

This comment, from a Jewish settler and veteran of the ‘67 war, caught my attention: “Those who believe in peace with the Palestinians is pure mysticism.”

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August 21, 2007 | 5:17 pm

Me and Christianity Today’s quote of the day

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

I began freelancing for Christianity Today two years ago after news director Ted Olsen read an article I wrote about a pastor forgotten by his church and Olsen responded with this post on the widely read Weblog he writes for the magazine.

Today, I made it onto Ted’s blog as a newsmake, sort of. He liked my interview with The Forward, particularly this line—“This is a thousands-year-old problem, the question of who is a Jew. I don’t anticipate being the answer”—which he deemed the quote of the day.

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August 21, 2007 | 5:05 pm

To a Muslim leader, Israel is ‘Satan’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

“God’s Warriors” begins tonight on CNN. But on Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (everyone’s favorite) let us know who he thinks is Satan’s warrior: “The Zionist regime is the standard bearer of invasion, occupation and Satan.”

In honor of Ahmadinejad’s statement, Slate posted a two-year-old explanation of what the Muslim Satan is like.

What does he look like? Muslims don’t have a clear iconography for Iblis, and there’s no Shaitanic counterpart to the red-skinned, pitchfork-wielding demon of Christianity. During the hajj, Shaitan is represented by a featureless stone pillar or wall. Pilgrims “stone Satan” by throwing rocks at the wall.

In Iran, where the Ayatollah Khomeini first dubbed the United States “the Great Satan” in the late 1970s, the words might evoke the divs, or devils, of Persian mythology. These were often depicted as gnarly-looking creatures with horns, dark skin, and protruding teeth. (Ancient literature describes the invasion of Persia by a particularly nasty monster called the White Div.) Posters from the Iranian revolution sometimes depicted Jimmy Carter or Uncle Sam in a demonic guise. In this one, a figure representing Israel and America stands over the shah, who is intertwined with a serpent.

 

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August 21, 2007 | 1:04 pm

‘World’s newest slacker religion? Dudeism’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Hailed as the “fastest-growing religion in the world”—not confident in the accuracy of that statement—Dudeism has a homepage and a mascot. (“Yeah, I’ve got a rash, man.”)

The idea is this: Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don’t do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you’ll make it into the finals. Kick back with some friends and some oat soda and whether you roll strikes or gutters, do your best to be true to yourself and others - that is to say, abide.
     

Courtesy of the Bible Belt Blogger who points out this line from Duderonomy 5: “Respect everyone’s point of view. It’s just, like, their opinion, man.”

Stephen Prothero would disagree.

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August 21, 2007 | 11:06 am

‘Go to church, goy’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

There haven’t been many published comments on The Forward‘s Web site about the paper’s Q&A with me. But this one from a Brett Greenberg caught my eye:

very lame indeed. do we really need to give this christian more of a profile then he already has. he is not and has never been a jew. go to church goy.

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August 20, 2007 | 4:56 pm

Michael Bloomberg’s religion problem

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

It seems like most the candidates in the ‘08 race are having a crisis of faith on the campaign trail. But keep in mind that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has not declared his candidacy for president. Yet. Then, read Jacques Berlinerblau’s assessment of why Bloomberg would fair poorly among the Party of God (no, not that party of God):

If values voters really do exist, the very competent, very capable, Michael Bloomberg is going to have the darnedest time winning them over. All mayors of the ultra multi-cultural Five Boroughs must learn how to speak a discourse of pluralism and tolerance. This Bloomberg can do solidly, though not spectacularly. But he appears very uncomfortable—John Kerry uncomfortable—speaking about his own religious convictions. I, along with many of his other constituents, had always attributed his reluctant and maladroit God Talk to the fact that he was a nonbeliever—an unremarkable identity in America’s greatest city.

I had assumed this until Bloomberg recently described himself as “short, Jewish divorced billionaire.” This was about as explicit a profession of faith as New Yorkers have heard from their unsentimental leader. Some Jews were surprised (though not necessarily upset) to hear Bloomberg publicly refer to his religion. Mindful of option “(a)” above, Opposition Research teams across America have surely taken note of what could be spun as a self-serving “conversion.”

Mr. Bloomberg is affiliated with Reform Judaism and this too augurs badly for his candidacy. Let us assume that he is deeply committed to his faith. Let us even assume that while he was skillfully micromanaging the City’s recent upswing, he secretly received his rabbinic training and ordination at Hebrew Union College on Broadway and West Fourth Street. My surmise is that even if this were the case, Rabbi Bloomberg would still fair poorly in the Red States. This is because Reform is an example of the type of secularized religion I have been discussing in previous posts. With its emphasis on human agency and social justice, it is nowhere near as obsessed with the role of the divine in everyday life as are certain varieties of conservative Protestantism. Highly educated, affluent and at peace with modernity, they resemble, in many ways, the small but influential class of urban-dwelling non-believers. A Reform Jewish candidate stumping among, let’s say, Evangelical Christians might be construed by them as a Unitarian, a secular humanist or even an atheist.

 

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August 20, 2007 | 12:34 pm

Is it still adultery if ...

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

In this week’s Forward, Rabbi Richard Address says we need “to reinterpret the concept of adultery.” A surprising statement, particularly when you consider that Address is director of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Department of Jewish Family Concerns.

Here’s the scenario from which he argues that religious leaders need to decide whether medical advancements that keep people alive long past their ability to fully function change the rules of the game:

Take, for example, the dilemma of a healthy spouse — let’s call her Sarah — caring for her husband, who is restricted to an Alzheimer’s facility. Sarah must deal with the extended institutionalization of her spouse. She cares for him with love and dignity, but also feels that he is not really her spouse. How does Sarah handle the reality that, while on a brief respite from the demands of care giving, she met someone with whom she became friendly and intimate? She cannot discuss this with her children, or even with her circle of friends. So Sarah asks her rabbi, “Tell me, rabbi, am I doing something wrong? I love and care for my husband. But I am a healthy 70-year-old woman, who goes to work, enjoys life and has needs. Is it wrong? Am I supposed to just put my needs on hold?” Such a scenario is not at all fiction. I have heard versions of this story over and over again, across the country. These real-life situations should prompt us to reinterpret the concept of adultery.

Any takers?

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August 19, 2007 | 11:01 am

NYT Magazine: ‘Politics of God’

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The cover story for today’s New York Times Magazine is about the power of political theology outside of the West. It’s adapted by Mark Lilla from his book, “The Stillborn God: Religion, Politics, and the Modern West.”

Though likely not wholly agreeable, I’m sure it’s a good read. I unfortunately won’t have time to read and offer my perspective on the article today, but will do so tomorrow.

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