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I will be checking this out sooner or later. It has to be a rare account because Orthodox Jews are prohibited from entering a church of any kind, even on a tour of Italy. I won’t judge how Cohen overcame that particular thing although I bet he brings it up in the book.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/02/08 at 1:59 am

He does address this, and it is quite comical. He spoke to a handful of rabbis, seeking their blessing, but none would approve. Eventually he found one who would, on the condition that he wearing a kippa and his press pass. Reminds me of when a child asks one parent if they can go to the movies, gets an answer they don’t like and asks the other parent.

Comment by Brad A. Greenberg on 11/02/08 at 2:32 am

Rabbi shopping happens. When the Reform movement began to consider the admission of openly gay rabbinical students, their religious authority was adamantly against it on the basis of Leviticus. They asked what the difference was compared to Sabbath violation and he said that you can’t get around ‘abomination’. So they waited until he died and passed it in committee.

Aside from the website and blog he has on this, here is a half hour interview he did on NPR. I didn’t have the time to listen so I read the transcript. They say

(Because of intense interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, NPR makes available free transcripts of its coverage. View the free transcript of this story.)

Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Good thing they lumped the Jew stuff together or there might be no transcript.

Now on the topic, it is certainly a strain to grow up Orthodox in a Christian and secular country (if not the Bible Belt). Not that I had any impulse to go Trick or Treating, especially not after being egged for my yarmulka. I thought I had a fair idea of the inside of a church from the occasional TV or movie scene, and I read the New Testament in college for a humanities course. If anything I would have liked to go incognito for a break once in a while rather than join any other party.

My eyes were opened to the extent of the saturation of our culture with Christianity by listening to lectures of Rabbi Tovia Singer, who knows his NT chapter and verse. It is in the air we breathe and the water we swim in, probably to a greater extent than the average Christian who considers it ‘normal’ even realizes. I started to notice with amusement when a thoroughly Orthodox Rabbi would pen an article or sermon that unknowingly included some phrase or [removed]not theology) from the NT. I did not look at Judaism with new eyes but at life in America and the world. Even Israel.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/04/08 at 1:06 pm

What is [removed]? I said ‘phrase or expression’.

Comment by Ben Plonie on 11/04/08 at 1:09 pm

good site

Comment by kamal on 7/13/09 at 9:44 pm

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