New York Immigration Coalition February 1, 2006 Battery Park, NYC Invocation Blessed Holy One, we know you by many names and we call you by many names in many languages, but at this hour of moral concern we call out to you with one voice. Protect us as we protect America’s values. Shield us as we shield our nation from a culture of fear and suspicion. Guard us as we guard the rights of women, men and children to live…
Short thoughts on the short film The Pity CardDirector – Bob Odenkirk I would file Odenkirk’s 12 minute film, playing at the Sundance Festival, next to the ‘survivor’ episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the ‘tolerance museum’ episode of South Park and Sarah Silverman’s ‘Jesus is Magic’ as a prime example of the new format of ‘post-holocaust’ comedy -comedy that pokes fun of the sanctity of holocaust memory. The film speaks to a particular post-holocaust museum/holocaust education paradox: The American Jew…
About a dozen years ago, at a Pina Baush dance performance at Brooklyn Academy of Music, I had something close to a religious experience. It was hard to describe – but the dancers, encircling a massive pile of red carnations, created such an ecstatic movement of beauty and wonder and celebration that I felt as if I had entered a dream. A delightful dream. Cirque Eloise , the Candian company whose piece Rain I saw today in Princeton, just took…
(note: an edited version of this piece is published in the newsletter of the RRA) Working in a Christian Seminary, I sometimes feel like the wacky upstairs neighbor in a Hallmark Channel sitcom. Sure, Menachem Meiri and Yakov Emden respected Christianity – but would they have played Santa at the office Christmas party? Inter-religious work has not changed much since its un-official birth at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. It is often a community relations exercise in putting aside differences…
I just got a wonderful invitation from the Indian consulate. The event, January 30th, is the 58th anniversary of Mahatma Ganhdi’s Punya Tithi. There will be a program of bhajans (devotional songs) and inter-faith prayers. More later.
Back on January 2nd, Joseph Loconte had a piece chastising Liberals for using the language of faith in his “Nearer, My God, to the G.O.P.” which ran in the New York Times. Loconte, in an attempt to teach a wider lesson about faith and politics argues that “When Christians – liberal or conservative – invoke a biblical theocracy as a handy guide to contemporary politics, they threaten our national discourse.” This sounded perfectly sensible – until I did a bit…
This week I’m studying with Bob Pollack, director of the Columbia University Center for the Study of Science and Religion. Here’s more on the course. He is a fascinating speaker – and already making folks blood boil. We have a mix of religious leaders – Catholics, Methodists, Presbyterians, Unitarians – and we will all be going to the Darwin exhibit on Wednesday at the Museum of Natural History.
Reb Blog has now been read by over 1,000 unique visitors! While in blog land this may not be such a wondorous feat, I am celebrating by posting a new poem. Enjoy: The poetry hacker The poetry hackerbeams his verseto Tusconto an unsuspecting Blackberry userwhy Tuscon?I don’t knowBut she doesn’t get it.Delete.But the text messageWired to a random number in IstanbulIs faithfully translatedThen read aloud at a house partySpoken in broken English. Our hero blogs late, sending emails to.nz.cz.kgHe dreams…
Back in 1987 and ’88, when I was going to school in Madison, Wisconsin, I was part of the ensemble at the Ark Improv Theater, directed by Dennis Kern, a man who is considered a master of improv comedy. (He had previously trained Joan Cusak.) The Ark was a a gem – a transformed auto mechanic shop where I had the great thrill to perform on stage with the late comic actor and SNL star Chris Farley – and to…
I snapped this photo on a recent airboat tour of the Everglades near Miami. Repairing damage done by Hurricane Wilma, these Muckoseegee tribesmen are reconstructing a Chickee hut on a small, gator infested island. While much has been lost as the tribe has shifted from fishing (mercury levels got too high) to casino gambling and NASCAR, it was great to see an ancient practice like Chickee building done outside the confines of the museum. My aunt Sorah, a Lubavitcher recently…