The American Civil Liberties Union, known as a watchdog for the separation of church and state, wants to make sure that prisoners have access to religious material.

In a letter sent last week to the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Information and Privacy, the ACLU demanded that the federal Bureau of Prisons release records related to alleged attempts by prison officials to purge religious material from prison chapel libraries.

The demand follows what the ACLU says was an inadequate response by prison officials to a Freedom of Information Act request by a California graduate student writing a thesis on the censorship of religious materials in federal prisons.

According to the ACLU Joshua C. Harris, a master’s degree candidate in religion at Claremont Graduate University, is writing a thesis on the 2007 implementation of the Standardized Chapel Library Project, which authorized BOP officials to purge from prison chapel libraries any material that was not on a list of “acceptable” publications that the libraries could maintain. Among those titles banned at the time, the ACLU says, was Maimonides’ “Code of Jewish Law.”

“The refusal of prison officials to provide a full accounting of their rationale for banning religious material is just the latest example of an ongoing effort to secretly and unconstitutionally censor material they consider to be unacceptable,” David Shapiro, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Prison Project, said in a statement. “To deny prisoners their constitutional right to access religious materials is bad enough. But to attempt to do so in a way that skirts transparency and prevents the public from knowing what they are doing is entirely unacceptable.”

Harris filed a FOIA request in April asking for “any/all documents that detail the reasoning behind, and implementation of” the Standardized Chapel Library Project, according to the ACLU. The prison bureau gave him four documents.

Continue reading "ACLU demands prison records" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Church and State, Education, Judaism
        

As he steps down as moderator of Jewish affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal William Keeler has some advice for his successor: Keep your ears open.

“I saw this most recently on a conference call that we had with Jewish and Catholic leaders on the document “Covenant and Mission,” he tells The Baltimore Jewish Times. The statement by the bishops’ Committee for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs initially characterized interfaith exchange with Jews as an opportunity to proselytize the Jews.

“We agreed that we would change the two sentences from that which were a concern” Keeler tells the Jewish Times. “Put that into historical context and I just have to say that the relationships are superb and that we are making progress all the time.”

Keeler says he told Pope Benedict XVI that Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York was “the ideal person” to succeed him. He also discusses his appreciation of his faith’s Jewish roots:

I say the Psalms every day and I’m very conscious of their Hebrew authorship. I also think of the Church’s document on the Hebrew Scriptures that was prepared by the present pope and the introduction that he wrote for it is important and something that we live by.

I read every day from this book, “The Liturgy of the Hours,” as all priests are supposed to do. We read Psalms. Not all of them. There are a few that are so angry that they are omitted from the office, which is what we call the book — “The Divine Office of The Office Of Prayer.” It’s a marvelous source. Right now we’re reading from the Second Book of Maccabees.

Read the story at jewishtimes.com.

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Ten area Jewish organizations have received $250,000 in federal homeland security grants, the Baltimore Jewish Council announced.

The Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore, of which the Baltimore Jewish Council is an agency, will receive $45,000. Talmudical Academy of Baltimore in Pikesville will receive $15,000 and the Jewish Federation of Howard County will receive $2,999.

The rest of the money is to be divided among seven area synagogues: Avodas Yisroel Machzikei Torah, Beit Yaakov Congregation, Har Sinai Congregation, Ohr Hamizrach Congregation, Shaarei Tfiloh Congregation, Shearith Israel Congregation and Bnos Yisroel of Baltimore.

"Keeping our community safe is a critical part of the work done by the Baltimore Jewish Council," Jimmy Berg, chairman of the Associated board, said in a statement. " Maryland was the first state in the nation to provide federal funds to enhance security at Jewish institutions. The Baltimore Jewish Council continues to advise and lobby state and federal officials about the security concerns of our community's synagogues, schools and other organizations."

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The Baltimore Jewish Times this week has a couple of stories interesting both in and of themselves and in juxtaposition.

The first reports that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a federal lawsuit on behalf two Baltimore-area brothers alleging anti-Semitism in the workplace. Scott and Joey Jacobson say they were physically and verbally harassed because of their religion. According to The Jewish Times, they were subjected to such slurs as “dirty Jew,” “stupid Jew,” “f—-ing Jew” and “dumb Jew.”

In addition, The Jewish Times reports, Scott Jacobson said a red swastika was taped to his vehicle, water was poured on him, and he was forced into a dumpster and tied to a fence. He was also shot at with a BB gun. The Jacobsons said their supervisors failed to correct the “hostile” workplace climate.

The lawsuit names Conn-X LLC, a Florida cable corporation with an office in Edgewood, and the Houston-based Administaff Inc. as defendants.

The second story announces that two area men, one of them a former Baltimore County police supervisor, have formed a security firm that specializes in safeguarding synagogues and Jewish gatherings.

Defender One founders Jon Krieger and Scott Wendell, both members of Beth El Congregation, plan to use active and retired police officers from area departments for the security details.

Continue reading "Anti-Semitism and synagogue security" »

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The Los Angeles office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, an outfit best known for calling attention to attacks on Muslims in the United States, has condemned the shooting of two worshippers Thursday morning at a North Hollywood synagogue.

“We condemn this attack near the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic Orthodox synagogue in the strongest possible terms and offer our prayers for the victims and their families,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush said in a statement.

“No worshiper -- whether Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, or other -- should be made to feel unsafe or intimidated at a house of worship. We also appreciate the LAPD’s investigation and enhanced security in response to the attack.”

The two victims, each of whom was shot in the leg, were in good condition at local hospitals, according to Baltimore Sun sister The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Police are investigating the shooting as a hate crime.

The Times describes Adat Yeshurun as “the heart of the San Fernando Valley's Orthodox Jewish community,” within walking distance of kosher markets and other synagogues. Los Angeles police have alerted area synagogues about the shooting and stepped up patrols outside Jewish institutions, The Times reports.

Read more on the shooting at latimes.com.

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The Vatican began talks on Monday with the Society of St. Pius X, the traditionalist faction whose leaders were excommunicated 20 years ago after consecrating their own bishops without the consent of Pope John Paul II.

The effort got off to a rough start earlier this year when one of the four bishops whose excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI turned out to be a Holocaust denier. There have been conflicting reports about whether the Vatican was aware of comments by British Bishop Richard Williamson, who told Swedish television last year that the evidence was “hugely against 6 million Jews having been deliberately gassed” by the Nazis during World War II.

In any event, negotiations are expected to take years, the Associated Press reports.

"In the best case, humanly speaking, we have several years of discussions ahead of us," the society's delegation leader, Bishop Alfonso de Galarreta, said in a recent interview posted on the society's Web site. De Galarreta is one of the other bishops whose excommunication was rescinded in January.

The AP has a useful summary of the split between the church and the Society of St. Puis X, also known as Lefebvrists, after founding Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre:

Lefebvre founded the society in 1969, opposed to Vatican II's reforms, which included outreach to Jews and other Christians and the celebration of Mass in the vernacular rather than Latin.

The society's opposition to Vatican II, particularly its teachings on ecumenism and religious freedom, remains at the heart of the dispute with Rome and is the focus of the talks beginning Monday with officials from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Benedict has for two decades tried to bring the society back into the Vatican's fold, first as head of the doctrine office and later as pope — part of his aim of uniting the church and putting a highly conservative stamp on it. ...

In the case of the society, Benedict has risked relations with Jews and liberal Catholic alike to reintegrate Lefebvre's followers even after it emerged that one of the society's four bishops denied the full extent of the Holocaust.

Read the rest of the AP story.

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American Jews who have participated in a 10-year-old program that provides a free trip to Israel have a strengthened connection to the Jewish state, a greater sense of belonging to the Jewish people and an increased interest in building Jewish families, according to a study at Brandeis University.

The study released on Monday by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis sought to document the impact on participants of the Taglit-Birthright Israel experience, which has granted a free, 10-day trip to 220,000 Jews aged 18 to 26 since 2000. It was co-sponsored by Taglit-Birthright Israel.

“In ten short years, Taglit-Birthright Israel has inspired a generation of young Jews to reconnect with Israel and the Jewish community,” said Gidi Mark, CEO of Taglit-Birthright Israel. “With tens of thousands on our waiting list, we are well on our way to establishing an educational trip to Israel as a rite of passage in the Jewish life cycle. That’s going to be the story of our second decade.”

Among key findings:

● Forty-five percent of participants felt the trip was “very much” and 28 percent "somewhat" a life-changing experience

● Participants were 23 percent more likely than non-participants to report feeling “very much” connected to Israel.

● Participants were 24 percent more likely than non-participants to “strongly agree” with the statement, “I have a strong sense of connection to the Jewish people.”

● Married, non-Orthodox participants were 57 percent more likely to be married to a Jew than non-Orthodox non-participants.

● Participants were 30 percent more likely than non-participants to view raising Jewish children as “very important.”

Read the study at brandeis.edu.

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More interesting, perhaps, then the fact that Houda Ezra Ebrahim Nonoo is the first Jewish ambassador from the Persian Gulf state of Bahrain is that the 45-year-old diplomat rose to her post despite being one of only three dozen Jews in the Arab nation.

The Baltimore Jewish Times has a story about Nonoo’s visit this month with a group of Baltimoreans visiting Washington as part of the Jewish Muslim Dialogue coordinated by the Baltimore Jewish Council.

“We have a visible Jewish community in that we have 36 people and we are all related,” said the British-educated Nonoo, the Bahraini ambassador to the United States.

She says her family’s history in Bahrain goes back more than a century, when her grandfather arrived from Iraqi to start a financial business. She described a climate of relative harmony among Jews and Muslims.

“During the festivals, we go to each others houses and our non-Jewish friends come to wish l’shanah tova,” she said. “We wish them well and visit their houses on the Muslim Eid Festival, too.”

Bahrain does not recognize the State of Israel. Nonoo says her country’s role in resolving the conflict is limited.

“We are inviting Israeli journalists to Bahrain, but being a small country we can’t take that first step of making peace,” she said. “It’s going to take a long time.”

Read the rest of the story at jewishtimes.com.

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Over at Read Street, the Baltimore Sun books blog, they're giving away a copy of The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.

The jacket copy describes the anatomically comprehensive work by the underground comic artist as "THE FIRST BOOK OF THE BIBLE GRAPHICALLY DEPICTED! NOTHING LEFT OUT!" And there's a warning on the cover: "ADULT SUPERVISION RECOMMENDED FOR MINORS."

Sun colleague Nancy Johnston says: "It's gorgeous, graphic and much more seriously handled than you might expect from the irreverent Crumb." Details on how to win are at Read Street.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Christianity, Culture, Interfaith, Islam, Judaism, People
        

A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them.

From a release issued on Thursday:

Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better.

“We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,” said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. “Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.”

Other key findings of the report, entitled “Faith and Organization Project: Maintaining Vital Between Faith Communities and their Organizations:”

* A new breed of evangelical organizations has emerged with a different understanding about how to develop an organization to do a specific mission that is firmly based in a particular set of beliefs but that focuses on personal relationships to provide services rather than sharing their faith as a means to improve the lives of those served.

Continue reading "UMD study stresses ties for faith-based ministries" »

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

I am honored that Professor David Neipert, one of the faculty members who initiated the EEOC complaint against Belmont Abbey College, saw fit to respond to my earlier article on this topic. Given his personal involvement in this case, it is obvious that he begins with a far greater knowledge of its particulars, and I appreciate his sharing his perspective of the facts.

Here are the key points that he has made, to the best of my understanding:

1. The status of Belmont Abbey College as a religious institution is questionable. This is buttressed by the fact that the college "advertised itself as an equal opportunity employer and freely accepted funding that was not available to religious institutions." Additionally, the majority of its faculty, staff, students, and alumni are not Catholic.

2. The college offered coverage for these services for 26 years, "indicating that this was a change of a deliberate policy." It was then done immediately, unilaterally, and without discussion, and the college refused to negotiate.

3. It is not the eight faculty members, but the school, that is attacking religious freedom. "Forcing us to abide by a Catholic approved health plan makes no more sense than prohibiting a Catholic plumber from eating a Pork sandwich for lunch if he works at a Jewish hospital." Professor Neipert was assured that he would "not be expected to adopt Catholic practices and that not being Catholic would not affect my career in any way."

Let us address each of these in turn.

Continue reading "Guest post: Belmont Abbey, continued" »

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On the eve of an event honoring local veterans of the Israel Defense Forces, the Baltimore Jewish Times has an interesting feature profiling five local men who served.

Shlomo Cohen, 58, speaks of capturing mountaintops in Syria during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Uzi Merles, 32, recalls the absurdity of stopping respectful older Palestinains at checkpoints while watching others in the distance using trails to slip into the towns.

Michael Field, 48, concluded from his service that Israel has no choice but to find a way to make peace with the Palestinians, because the only way to win the conflict would be to commit genocide.

The Maryland Chapter of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces will honor local veterans at 6 p.m. Thursday at Chizuk Amuno Congregation in Stevenson. Former Ambassador John Bolton will speak; tickets are required. More information is available by calling 410-486-0004 or e-mailing Charlie.levine@israelsoldiers.org.

Read more at jewishtimes.com.

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We were going to post the video in which Sarah Silverman proposes that the pope solve world hunger by selling the Vatican. Then we watched it.

There's a question of taste.

Still, the video is interesting in part for the thoughtful reaction it has provoked from the Rev. James Martin over at America magazine. We can excerpt from an Associated Press story that summarizes both the video and the response:

In a new profanity-laced monologue making the rounds on YouTube in time for U.N. World Food Day on Friday, Silverman suggests that it's time for the pope to "move out of your house that is a city" and use the proceeds to feed the world's poor.

"On an ego level alone you will be the biggest hero in the history of ever!" she exclaimed. "Sell the Vatican. Feed the world."

The Vatican clearly has no plans to follow suit. On Thursday, a spokesman declined to comment. But the Catholic League, the U.S. Catholic civil rights organization, denounced Silverman and cable broadcaster HBO for her "obscene" and "filthy diatribe."

Continue reading "Silverman to church: Sell Vatican, feed the world" »

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

Belmont Abbey College is a small Catholic liberal arts college in North Carolina, serving nearly 1500 students. It was founded in 1876 by the monks of the Belmont Abbey, a monastery of the Benedictine Order. The school mission is "to educate students in the liberal arts and sciences so that in all things G-d may be glorified." It is, without question, a religious institution, guided by the dictates of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 2007, the College discovered that its employee health benefits plan inadvertently included coverage for abortion, contraception, and voluntary sterilization. The college president, William Thierfelder, immediately altered the plan, declaring that the school "is not able to and will not offer nor subsidize medical services that contradict the clear teaching of the Catholic Church." And at that point, several members of the faculty went running to the EEOC, charging "discrimination."

If you think that government agencies take the First Amendment seriously, you should pay close attention to this case. In March, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismissed the charge, stating that it was "unable to conclude" that the statutes had been violated. But then, in July, the District Director of the EEOC reversed course, and claimed that Belmont Abbey is discriminating against its employees. Why? The following is an unaltered quote: "By denying prescription contraceptive drugs, Respondent is discriminating based on gender because only females take oral contraceptives. By denying coverage, men are not affected, only women."

It is somewhat bizarre that the EEOC did not similarly refer to the lack of abortion coverage as "discrimination," since it is equally true that only females obtain abortions. But this is the least of the evidence that this is little more than an attack on religious freedom, using whatever spurious reasons might be found.

Continue reading "Guest post: Watch this case" »

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Rabbi Jon Konheim will step down as spiritual leader of Beth Am Synagogue next year after eight years with the Conservative Jewish congregation and 41 years as a pulpit rabbi, he announced in a letter on Wednesday.

Beth Am will launch a nationwide search to find a successor. Below is Konheim's letter, followed by another from executive board member Julian L. Lapides to the congregation.

October 14, 2009

Dear friends,

You and I will be undergoing a transition and transitions are filled with challenges. As of July 1, 2010 I will become Rabbi Emeritus of Beth Am.

I have been continuously in the pulpit since my first student position 1969. Forty-one years as a pulpit rabbi are a long time. They have been rewarding, and fulfilling, but time and the profession have taken their toll. I have been slowing down and there are medical issues that concern me. I have worked out the transition with Beth Am’s leadership and they have been supportive and more than generous. Should this year’s search not produce a successor who fits your needs I will try to do whatever is asked of me. It is important that your new Rabbi find a fully functioning congregation.

Continue reading "Konheim stepping down at Beth Am" »

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Rabbi Mark G. Loeb, who was spiritual leader of Beth El Congregation in Pikesville for 28 years until his retirement last year, died suddenly Wednesday evening in Milan, Italy, where he was serving a congregation as an interim rabbi. Further details were not available. He was 65.

Known both within and beyond the local Jewish community for a powerful and wide-ranging intellect, Loeb was deeply engaged in public affairs, from activism for civil rights in the 1960s to service on the gubernatorial commission last year that recommended the abolition of the death penalty. He was national president of MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, chaired the board of Baltimore Hebrew University and promoted interfaith dialogue as a co-founder of the Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies.

"Rabbi Loeb's life and good works were an inspiration both to his own congregation, and to our entire state," Gov. Martin O'Malley said Thursday. "He spent his time on this earth living the timeless Talmudic notion that 'the highest form of wisdom is kindness,' always standing up for our most vulnerable citizens, always fighting for social justice, always pursuing Tikkun Olam, repair of the world."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

Israel's foreign minister declared Thursday that there is no chance of reaching a final accord with the Palestinians any time soon, and suggested instead that the two sides come up with a long-term interim arrangement that would ensure prosperity, security and stability, the Associated Press is reporting.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recommended leaving the toughest issues — such as the status of disputed Jerusalem and a solution for Palestinian refugees who lost homes amid war — "to a much later stage." He did not elaborate or give a timeline.

"Anyone who says that within the next few years an agreement can be reached ending the conflict ... simply doesn't understand the situation and spreads delusions, ultimately leading to disappointments and an all-out confrontation here," Lieberman told Israel Radio.

Other conflicts have been defused with the sides making a "dramatic decision" to renounce violence and enter into a period of calm that would allow an accord, Lieberman said.

"People have learned to live with it," he said.

Read the Associated Press report here.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Jewish?

If he is not, The Telegraph reports, the bitter critic of Israel clearly has Jewish roots. So the British newspaper has concluded from a photograph taken last year of Ahmadinejad holding up an identity document that shows that his surname was once Sabourjian, identified as a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver:

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr Ahmadinejad's birthplace, and the name derives from "weaver of the Sabour", the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran's Ministry of the Interior.

Ahmadinejad has denied the Holocaust and threatened Israel. On his alleged Jewish heritage, the Telegraph quotes Ali Nourizadeh of the Centre for Arab and Iranian Studies as saying "This aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad's background explains a lot about him.

"Every family that converts into a different religion takes a new identity by condemning their old faith," Nourizadeh said.

"By making anti-Israeli statements he is trying to shed any suspicions about his Jewish connections. He feels vulnerable in a radical Shia society."

Nonsense, Meir Javedanfar writes in The Guardian. He quotes two sources as saying that Ahmadinejad's father was in fact a religious Shia who taught the Quran before and after the future president's birth and their move to Tehran, and that Ahmadinejad's mother is a Seyyede, a title given to women who are believed to be direct bloodline descendants of Muhammad.

Continue reading "Iran's Jewish president?" »

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Categories: International, Islam, Judaism, People, Politics
        

The United Nations' refugee agency is planning to include the Holocaust in a new human-rights curriculum for pupils in its Gaza secondary schools despite strident opposition to the idea from within Hamas, The Independent reports.

The director of operations in Gaza for The U.N. Relief and Works Agency told the British newspaper that he was "confident and determined" that the Holocaust would feature for the first time in a wide-ranging curriculum now being drafted.

"No human-rights curriculum is complete without the inclusion of the facts of the Holocaust, and its lessons," said John Ging, described as a "passionate advocate" for Palestinian civilians. More from the story:

The draft, to be completed within weeks and then put out for consultation with parents and the public, is built on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was agreed by the UN General Assembly in 1948 in the shadow of what it called the "barbarous acts" committed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

The one-time Irish Army officer has long been an outspoken critic of Israeli policy towards Gaza, including the conduct of last winter's lethal military offensive and what he described more than once in his interview as the "illegal siege".

Mr Ging said the curriculum would explain the genesis, and "inculcate the values" of the Universal Declaration which stipulates that "everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person". He pointed out that the UN General Assembly in 2005 unanimously urged "all countries to teach the lessons of the Holocaust to children so that we learn from history, so that we don't repeat history".

The Independent quotes religious leader Yunis al Astal, a Hamas member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, as saying that including the Holocaust in the curriculum would be "marketing a lie" and a "war crime."

Read the rest of the story at independent.co.uk.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Sun colleague Nick Madigan reveals new allegations against Rabbi Jacob A. Max in Sunday's newspaper. The allegations come from five women who spoke to Madigan after Max was convicted earlier this year of sexually molesting a younger woman at a Reisterstown funeral home.

As Madigan describes it:

The hushed accusations of Max's penchant for groping and fondling - which some women say he accompanied with a smirk and an excuse about his being a "bad rabbi" - appear to have been tolerated without inquiry for decades because of his standing and authority in the tightly knit religious community. Girls who complained to their mothers about his conduct say they were ignored. ...

News of the conviction prompted five other women to share with The Baltimore Sun their own allegations of improper advances by the rabbi. Three contacted a reporter and the remaining two were referred by others. The women said news of the conviction impelled them to come forward because they believe their charges about Max's behavior deserve to be disclosed, no matter how long ago the events occurred. ...

None of the five women had spoken publicly before the criminal case, because, they say, it was understood that members of the modern Orthodox Jewish community - especially young ones - did not divulge errors by its leaders, let alone accuse them of impropriety.

Max's attorney did not make his client available to comment. Attorney David B. Irwin denied any wrongdoing by Max:

"If anyone took a friendly gesture the wrong way, as far as he's concerned, he's sorry," Irwin said. "But he never intentionally molested or inappropriately touched anyone."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Robert Barnes has a story on the cover of Tuesday's Washington Post about a World War I memorial cross on federal land in California's Mojave National Preserve that will give the Superme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. its first major opportunity to interpret the constitutional separation of church and state.

The piece begins:

It would be easy to miss among the yucca and Joshua trees of this vast place -- a small plywood box, set back from a gentle curve in a lonesome desert road. It looks like nothing so much as a miniature billboard without a message.

But inside the box is a 6 1/2 -foot white cross, built to honor the war dead of World War I. And because its perch on a prominent outcropping of rock is on federal land, it has been judged to be an unconstitutional display of government favoritism of one religion over another.

Barnes goes on to describe what's at stake:

If the court reaches the constitutional issues at hand, all sides agree it could provide clarity to the court's blurry rules on church-and-state separations. It could also carry important implications for the fate of war memorials around the country that feature religious imagery -- the Argonne Cross in Arlington National Cemetery, for instance, or the Memorial Peace Cross in Bladensburg.

Defenders of the cross include veterans groups and the federal government. In an effort to protect it, Congress has designated the site as the country's only official memorial to the nation's World War I dead, which, as Barnes points out, elevates it to an exclusive group of national treasures that inlcudes the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore.

Critics include Jewish and Muslim veterans and the American Civil Liberties Union, which says the congressional action "necessarily will reflect continued government association with the preeminent symbol of Christianity."

Read the story at washingtonpost.com.

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The Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies has announced what look to be several strong programs in October, including a local appearance by the renowned scholar of early Christianity Dr. Paula Fredrikson.

Fredrikson, the author most recently of “Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism,” will deliver the 2009 Bernard Manekin Lecture at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 15 at Chizuk Amuno Congregation, 8100 Stevenson Road, Baltimore. Her topic: “God Was Not Odd To Choose the Jews: Augustine on the Jewishness of Jesus.” The event is free and open to the public; those interested in attending are asked to call 410-494-7161 to reserve seats.

Beth El Congregation Senior Rabbi Steven Schwartz and Dr. Christopher Leighton, executive director of the Institute of Christian & Jewish Studies, will present “Finding God as Jews and Christians” at 8 p.m. Oct. 8 at Beth El Congregation, 8101 Park Heights Ave., Baltimore. Again, free and open to the public; RSVP to 410-484-0411.

A succession of Jewish, Christian and Muslim clergy will present “Children of Abraham in the 21st Century” at 7 p.m. Wednesdays in October at St. James Episcopal Church, 1020 W. Lafayette Ave., Baltimore. According to the Institute’s Web site, Schwartz, Dr. Rosann M. Catalano and Imam Sulayman Nyang will discuss “what makes us more similar than different.”

Dinner, at a cost of $5, is served at 6 p.m.; lectures begin at 7 p.m. RSVP with the St. James Episcopal Church office at 410-523-4588.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

With the death of Michael Jackson, estranged former confidant Rabbi Shmuley Boteach has revived a long-dormant book project based on 30 hours of interviews with the reclusive pop star, the Associated Press is reporting.

This strikes us as awkward.

The author of such self-help books as “Kosher Sex” and “Shalom in the Home,” the Orthodox Jewish Boteach was introduced to Jackson in 1999 and remained close with him until Jackson’s 2003 arrest on charges of molesting a child.

The interviews date from 2000 and 2001, according to the AP, when Jackson and Boteach agreed a book would help to improve Jackson’s public image. The AP says Boteach soured on the project after Jackson failed to adhere to the recovery programs they had worked out, including waking up at a decent hour and not being alone with children other than Jackson's own three children.

The AP reports that the tapes, on which Jackson talks about being beaten by his father, self-consciousness about his appearance and a desire to disappear rather than grow old, sound at times like therapy sessions.

Their posthumous release by a clergyman doubling as confidant and collaborator seems problematic, or at least potentially so. Jackson apparently submitted to – may have initiated – the interviews in the expectation that they would lead to a book.

But it sounds as if the men dropped the project years before Jackson’s death. Given their fallout, one wonders if Jackson would have wanted the opportunity to invoke clergy-communicant confidentiality before it was picked up again.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

A Swedish television program airing Wednesday claims that top Vatican officials knew that Bishop Richard Williamson was a Holocaust denier when they lifted his excommunication in January, the Associated Press is reporting.

The report comes on the eve of reconciliation talks between the Vatican and the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X, whose leaders were excommunicated in 1988 after they consecrated Williamson and three other priests as bishops in defiance of Pope John Paul II.

Pope Benedict XVI has made a priority of reconciling with the society, whose members seek a return to the church as it was before the Second Vatican Council. But the effort provoked a furor in January when Sweden’s SVT aired an interview taped in November 2008 in which Williamson denied key elements of the Holocaust. The British bishop disputed the commonly cited figure of 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis during World War II, saying the actual number was no more than 300,000, and said none were gassed.

Vatican officials have said they were unaware of Williamson’s beliefs when his excommunication was rescinded in January. But SVT says Catholic officials in Sweden knew of his remarks in the interview in November and made a full report to the apostolic nuncio in Stockholm, the representative of the Vatican in Sweden, who passed the information on to Rome.

“Naturally we passed all the information that we had on to the nuncio,” Bishop Anders Arborelius of Stockholm told SVT, according to the AP. “After that I don’t really know how it moved along.”

In a statement Wednesday, the AP reports, the diocese reiterated that it had sent a report about the interview to the Vatican last November. The SVT program says the nuncio, Archbishop Emil Paul Tscherrig, confirmed off-camera that he had contacted several people in the Vatican, including Cardinal Dario Castrillon Hoyos, who was then leading the effort to reconcile with the Society of St. Pius X.

The report contradicts the statement of Castrillon Hoyos, who told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera in January that no one at the Vatican knew of Williamson’s beliefs until after his excommunication had been lifted.

Continue reading "Report: Vatican knew of Holocaust denier" »

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Categories: Catholicism, Interfaith, International, Judaism, People, Politics
        

The current issue of the Baltimore Jewish Times has a nicely observed cover story about the murky future facing the Congregation of Israel, a small shul in the Eastern Shore hamlet of Pocomoke City that decided not to hold High Holiday services this year for the first time in its 130-year history. Managing editor Alan H. Feiler writes:

This evening, as the first faint traces of darkness fall on Pocomoke City — a picturesque but economically depressed town about 40 minutes southeast of Salisbury — Congregation of Israel’s humble, 60-year-old building will remain silent, solemn and empty at the start of Rosh Hashanah. Once a community of 20 to 25 Jewish families and considered the epicenter of Eastern Shore Jewry, Pocomoke City today has, at best, only an estimated handful of Jews.

“It’s really sad,” said Pocomoke City Mayor Michael A. McDermott. “A lot of the families had stores here and in other communities around here, and they organized this synagogue. But a lot of the families relocated or their children moved on, so it dried up. Having the synagogue in the city, even if it was lightly used, was unique. It was slowly ebbing away, but there’s a real sense of loss. We’ve lost a part of our heritage.”

Tammy Green and her family first stumbled upon Congregation of Israel while vacationing in Delaware during the High Holidays in 1972, Feiler reports. They have been back every year since.

“We wanted something intimate and different than our synagogue in Bethesda, and it’s become an important part of our lives,” she says. “Back then, there were three families to make sure that everyone had a home to go to for dinner, like an extended family. But the people started to die off. I don’t know what we’ll do this year for the holidays. [Congregation of Israel] is very close to my heart.”

Read the rest of the story at jewishtimes.com.

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Pope Benedict XVI has announced a special meeting of bishops next year to discuss Middle East peace efforts and the role of the Catholic Church in the region, the Associated Press is reporting.

We are reminded of the difficulties this pontiff has had with both Muslims (his decision in a 2006 address to quote a 14th century Byzantine emperor critical of Islam inspired riots) and Jews (who are wary of his interest in reinstating elements of the pre-Vatican II church), and wonder how receptive the region is likely to be to the Vatican’s counsel.

From the Associated Press:

Addressing bishops and patriarchs from Eastern rite churches, Benedict said Saturday that the meeting will take place Oct. 10-24, 2010, and will be titled "The Catholic Church in the Middle East: communion and testimony."

The meeting of bishops, called a synod, will gather church leaders from the Middle East and around the world.

The pope and the Vatican have long been active on the Middle East diplomatic front, seeking to protect Christians in the Holy Land and elsewhere in the region while supporting efforts to solve the Israel-Palestinian dispute.

Read the Associated Press story here.

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On the eve or Rosh Hashanah, Jewish leaders in the United States are asking rabbis to emphasize the faith's ethical requirements in their sermons in response to recent financial scandals involving its members, the Associated Press is reporting.

Jews have been embarrassed the past year by the arrest of former Wall Street tycoon [Bernie] Madoff, who is serving a 150-year prison sentence for defrauding investors out of billions of dollars, and several rabbis who were arrested in July on money laundering charges, said Richard Joel, president of Yeshiva University in New York.

Widely distributed images showed them being led into the FBI building in Newark in rabbinical garb and handcuffs didn't help.

Locally, Rabbi Jay Kenneth Wagner, the assistant principal at Yeshivat Rambam Maimonides Academy of Baltimore, was indicted this week on charges of stealing more than $13,000 in school checks that he deposited into his own bank account,

"It's troubling," Rabbi Moshe Kletenik, president of the Rabbinical Council of America, which comprises about 1,000 rabbis in the U.S., Canada and Israel, tells AP reporter Victor Epstein. "Ethical living is as significant a part of leading a religious life as ritual law."

Read the rest of the Associated Press story here.

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Rabbi Jay Kenneth Wagner, the assistant principal at Yeshivat Rambam Maimonides Academy of Baltimore, has been indicted on charges of stealing more than $13,000 in school checks that he deposited into his own bank account, Baltimore Sun colleague Julie Bykowicz is reporting.

We are put in mind of a recent guest post by In Good Faith contributor Rabbi Yaakov Menken on the responsibilities of clergy.

Wagner, who worked at the Orthodox Jewish School on Park Heights Avenue until recently, was arrested and released Tuesday after posting a small cash bond, according to court records.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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The Society of Saint Pius X must respect Judaism, other Christian denominations and other religions before it may be fully reintegrated into the Catholic Church, Reuters is reporting.

On the eve of reconciliation talks with the traditionalist society whose bishops were excommunicated by Pope John Paul II in 1988, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn of Vienna said these Vatican II reforms were “not negotiable.”

"It's not the case that Rome will let the Lefebvrists off easy for everything," Schoenborn told the German daily Passauer Neue Presse, calling the traditionalists after their founder Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, Reuters is reporting.

The Vatican appears to be treading carefully after the condemnation that followed the decision of Pope Benedict XVI to rescind the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, a society member who has denied the Holocaust. Benedict later said the Vatican handled the case badly.

Read the rest of the story at reuters.com.

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A week after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during Obama’s address to a joint session of Congress, faith leaders will gather in Washington on Tuesday to pray for an “end to hateful rhetoric that creates a toxic environment for immigrant families.”

Participating in the vigil outside the Capitol will be Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City, who chairs the Committee on Immigration of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Bishop Prince Singh of the Episcopal Diocese of Rochester, N.Y.; Bishop Minerva Carcaño of the Desert Southwest Conference of the United Methodist Church and Dale Schwartz of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society.

They are to be joined by Reps. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.) and Jared Polis (D-Colo.).

From the release:

On September 15th and 16th, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) – a designated Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center – will be in Washington for their annual lobby day and “radio row,” where an estimated 47 extremist radio talk show hosts will broadcast live from DC. In response to the divisive rhetoric and extreme anti-immigrant agenda of FAIR, leading faith leaders will gather in prayer to recall the humanity and dignity of immigrants, and the need for policies that will uphold our nation’s best values, not its worst instincts.

While we’re on the subject: With his outburst, Wilson was challenging Obama’s assertion that “the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.” Was Wilson correct? According to the nonpartisan fact-checking operation Politifact, no.

Continue reading "After 'You lie!' Prayers to end 'hateful rhetoric'" »

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Businessman Bernard Manekin, a former chairman of both the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore and the Jewish Community Center of Baltimore and a co-founder of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies, died Saturday. He was 95.

Read the obituary at The Baltimore Jewish Times.

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President Barack Obama continued his Ramadan-timed Muslim outreach with a White House dinner on Tuesday. But this time, he invited some prominent Israeli and Jewish leaders to join their Muslim counterparts at the fast-breaking meal called Iftar.

The guest list included Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States, Nathan Diament, director of public affairs of the Orthodox Union, and Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism.

They joined diplomats from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other Muslim countries and the chief of mission of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Also on hand were Reps. Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, the first Muslims to serve in Congress, and other prominent American Muslims.

"I want to welcome all the American Muslims from many walks of life who are here," Obama said. "This is just one part of our effort to celebrate Ramadan, and continues a long tradition of hosting iftars here at the White House.

"For well over a billion Muslims, Ramadan is a time of intense devotion and reflection. It's a time of service and support for those in need. And it is also a time for family and friends to come together in a celebration of their faith, their communities, and the common humanity that all of us share. It is in that spirit that I welcome each and every one of you to the White House.

"Tonight's iftar is a ritual that is also being carried out this Ramadan at kitchen tables and mosques in all 50 states. Islam, as we know, is part of America. And like the broader American citizenry, the American Muslim community is one of extraordinary dynamism and diversity -- with families that stretch back generations and more recent immigrants; with Muslims of countless races and ethnicities, and with roots in every corner of the world.

"Indeed, the contribution of Muslims to the United States are too long to catalog because Muslims are so interwoven into the fabric of our communities and our country. American Muslims are successful in business and entertainment; in the arts and athletics; in science and in medicine. Above all, they are successful parents, good neighbors, and active citizens.

"So on this occasion, we celebrate the Holy Month of Ramadan, and we also celebrate how much Muslims have enriched America and its culture -- in ways both large and small."

Following is the White House transcript of Obama's remarks.

Continue reading "Obama invites Jewish leaders to Ramadan dinner" »

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This was a good idea for a story, and Nicole Neroulias has done a good job with it. Following the release of “Inglourious Basterds,” Quentin Tarantino’s blood-soaked World War II revenge fantasy, the Religion News Service writer has asked several rabbis whether Judaism would condone the savagery inflicted by the film's Jewish heroes on their Nazi oppressors.

Rabbis and academics point out that Judaism distinguishes between acts of self-defense and vengeance and Jewish law frowns upon torturing an enemy – even Adolf Hitler himself, said Rabbi Joel Roth, a professor at Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.

‘On the other hand, I also understand the human emotion,’ he said. ‘Dispassionately, do you want to see them scalped? No, but you have to consider the context. And, if it's a greater deterrent that would save other people's lives, maybe one could defend it.’

Rabbi Irwin Kula, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, a New York-based Jewish think tank, heralds the film as a long-overdue ‘fun action Jewish-revenge fantasy.’

Roth, meanwhile, wonders about a backlash from depicting Jews as ‘more Goliath than David,’ giving more fodder to those who see Israel as an aggressor and oppressor rather than a haven for survivors of centuries of persecution.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, places “Basterds” in what Neroulias calls “an emerging genre of celebrated Jewish resistance, including last year's ‘Defiance,’ about a community of Jews who found refuge in a Belarus forest during the Holocaust, and 2005's ‘Munich,’ about efforts to assassinate Arab terrorists who killed Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics.”

Continue reading "Are Tarantino's 'Basterds' kosher?" »

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Over at the Baltimore Jewish Times, editor Neil Rubin has an interesting cover story on the continuing growth of Conservative Judaism in Baltimore, amid a national decline in the movement. As he asks local rabbis to explain this relative success, he reveals a vibrant community, engaged on such issues as same-sex relationships, interfaith marriage and innovations in worship.

Read the report at jewishtimes.com.

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Major Jewish groups and rabbis from the three largest branches of American Judaism say their relationship with Roman Catholic leaders is at risk because of a recent U.S. bishops' statement on salvation, the Associated Press is reporting.

Jewish groups are interpreting the new document to mean that the bishops see interfaith dialogue as an opportunity to invite Jews to become Catholic, AP religion writer Rachel Zoll writes.

In a letter to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Jewish leaders say they do not object to Christians sharing their faith, but warn dialogue with Jews becomes "untenable" if its goal is to persuade Jews to accept Christ as their savior. The signers were the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and rabbis representing Orthodox, Conservative and Reform Jews.

"A declaration of this sort is antithetical to the very essence of Jewish-Christian dialogue as we have understood it," they wrote in the letter Thursday.

Their protest is the latest in a series raised by Jewish leaders during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. Jews were angered in 2007 when Benedict endorsed a long marginalized version of the Latin Mass that included a prayer for the conversion of the Jews, and again earlier this year when the Vatican rescinded the excommunication of a Holocaust denier.

Continue reading "Jewish groups: Bishops' statement threatens ties" »

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We had been wanting look at the relationship between Baltimore's Jewish community and Ashkelon, the southern Israeli seaport that it adopted five years ago as a twin city, and we saw our opportunity with the visit of Tal Bouhnik and Liron Menashe, who are now finishing their year representing the Jewish state here in the United States.

The Shinshinim program that brought the two 19-year-olds here is one of several links between Baltimore and Ashkelon. Thousands of Baltimoreans have traveled to Ashkelon in the last five years for cultural exchanges, service projects, business or tourism; hundreds of Ashkelonians have visited Baltimore. The local community has contributed nearly $8 million to the Israeli city, including rapid assistance during the conflict with Gaza in the form of emergency vehicles, workshops for adults under stress and toys for children in shelters.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun

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Updated, with comment from Lenny's Owner Alan Smith

The Jewish Museum of Maryland and the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore have finalized their purchase of the Lenny’s Delicatessen property on Corned Beef Row, but the landmark restaurant will continue on the site for at least a while yet.

Lenny's Owner Alan Smith has told Sun colleague Elizabeth Large that he has signed a five-year lease to continue at the East Lombard Street property, and when the time comes to leave, he plans to stay "on or around Corned Beef Row." (Note: In a press release on Thursday, the Jewish Museum of Maryland said it was a three-year lease.)

Ultimately, the Jewish Museum of Maryland hopes to have raised the money necessary to build a new wing on the parcel, museum spokeswoman Simone Ellin said.

Lenny’s opened in Owings Mills in 1985 and added the East Lombard Street location in 1991, according to a history posted on its Web site.

The $1.5 million purchase was funded by a grant from the Herbert Bearman Foundation. The Jewish Museum of Maryland is dedicated to the interpretation of the Jewish experience in America with special attention to the collection, preservation, and study of Jewish life in Maryland.

“The Associated is excited about our purchase of the property adjacent to the Jewish Museum,” Associated President Marc B. Terrill said. “This is an opportunity to increase The Associated and the Museum’s presence in downtown Baltimore and to expand programs and services to our constituents living in the area.”

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On the death of Robert Novak, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has produced an interesting obituary focusing on his fraught relationship with the faith into which he was born.

“Robert Novak, the conservative columnist whose scoops broke many a career, made his reputation as a journalist by being unafraid to attack his ideological brethren,” the piece by Ron Kampeas begins. “The same dynamic underlay the contentious and at times ugly relationship he had with fellow Jews.”

Kampeas writes that Novak had a ‘distaste for robust Judaism” and says “his attacks on the pro-Israel community repeatedly veered into the conspiratorial. And there’s an interesting passage on his faith journey:

Novak was born to Jewish parents, but said he never felt particularly connected to the faith. "The family was not very observant," he told CNN in 2005, describing his upbringing in Joliet, Ill.

"My father had never been bar mitzvahed and his father was not a very good Jew, but I was bar mitzvahed," Novak said.

He cooperated in 2003 with the Washingtonian magazine in a feature about his conversion to Roman Catholicism five years earlier, and said that although he joined a Jewish fraternity in college, he was turned off by Judaism.

"I found the same thing in Judaism as a young boy as I did later in the Unitarian Church and then at the Episcopal Church," he said. "They seemed very ungodly. The clergymen seemed very secular."

Following his conversion, U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) reportedly quipped, “Well, we’ve now made Bob a Catholic. The question is, can we make him a Christian?”

Continue reading "Robert Novak's faith experience" »

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Categories: Catholicism, Culture, Judaism, People, Politics
        

Colleague Brent Jones has a compelling story in today's newspaper about Morris Kornberg, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor awaiting word on whether he will receive 2,000 Euros (about $2,827) in reparations from the German government.

The Waldorf man, a Polish Jew who was arrested in 1941, describes hard labor and starvation at Auschwitz. He says he doesn't know why he didn't follow fellow prisoners who killed themselves by running into the electric fence that enclosed the camp.

Now he is waiting to hear whether he will be approved for the check from the German Ghetto Workers Fund, established by the German government in 2007 to distribute money to camp survivors who have not participated in other compensation programs. If he gets the money, he says, he will donate it to The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"For going through [ the Holocaust], 2,000 is not a big deal," he told Jones. "This is not for my enjoyment. I just don't want to leave the money for [the government]."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

Chiaki Kawajiri/Baltimore Sun

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Bethel A.M.E. Church, the large, predominantly African-American congregation that has been holding Christian worship services in a synagogue since a July 1 lightning strike damaged its historic building, plans to head back home next week.

The church is set to return to the landmark sanctuary at 1300 Druid Hill Ave. in time for Holy Convocation, the annual event with which it welcomes members back at the end of summer, spokeswoman Crystal Lowe said. The four-day event, which includes guest speakers, financial seminars and a lunchtime "Hour of Power" daily, is scheduled for Aug. 24 through 27.

The first communion service is set for Sunday, Aug. 30 -- less than two months after the church sustained fire and water damage in the lightning strike.

Church members held their first Sunday services after the strike at Pier Six Pavilion in the Inner Harbor. The next week, Senior Pastor The Rev. Dr. Frank M. Reid III and Rabbi Steven M. Fink of Temple Oheb Shalom announced that the church would hold future services at the synagogue on Park Heights Avenue.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: African-American Church, Interfaith, Judaism
        

Eric Fingerhut at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency does a nice job chronicling the back-and-forth over efforts by Rush Limbaugh and others to bring Nazi imagery into the debate over healthcare reform.

The conservative radio host has drawn condemnation from the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress and the Simon Weisenthal Center for a lengthy bit in which he compared “the Democrat Party of today and the Nazi Party in German.”

“Well, the Nazis were against big business,” Limbaugh said. “They hated big business and, of course, we all know that they were opposed to Jewish capitalism. They were insanely, irrationally against pollution. They were for two years of mandatory voluntary service to Germany. They had a whole bunch of make-work projects to keep people working, one of which was the Autobahn.”

Jewish Democrats have pressured House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, a Jewish Republican from Virginia who has said the GOP needs Limbaugh, to repudiate his comments. But some Jewish Republicans say a Democratic congressman should also be held accountable for bringing “brown shirts” into the debate over healthcare reform.

Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat, had said he would not be holding public meetings with constituents during the August recess out of concern for the possibility of being ambushed by critics of healthcare reform, who have disrupted other such events.

“What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics,” Baird told the Columbian of Vancouver, Wash. “I mean that very seriously.”

According to Fingerhut, the controversy “underscores the degree to which Jewish organizations continue to lose ground in their fight to keep partisans on all sides from demonizing their political opponents as Nazis.”

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

For what it's worth, I have never met any of those ensnared in the money-laundering scandal in Deal, NJ and Brooklyn, NY. Nonetheless, it's always embarrassing when you have a scandal involving several rabbis. Clergy are supposed to do better, right?

Of course, you have the defenders coming forward and pointing out that they were trying to help their institutions rather than personal gain, or even doing a favor for a guy who'd fallen on hard times -- only to learn the hard way that he was an FBI informant. All of that will come out in court, and it's pretty unlikely that some of them will see any significant time behind bars.

But all that doesn't matter. Clergy are supposed to do better.

Less than two years ago, there was a similar scandal involving a group of schools and institutions run by a Chassidic Rebbe in California. And he, having pled guilty to significant crimes, will likely begin serving his sentence shortly.

At a hastily-arranged seminar in business ethics early this week, this Rebbe made a surprise appearance. He offered no defenses, no justification for what happened. On the contrary, he admitted that what he did was wrong, what his organizations and people did was wrong, and must never happen again.

And he also took another step forward. He disclosed that together with a team of lawyers and accountants, his institutions had created a compliance plan to ensure that it would never happen again -- that everything done would be completely above board. And he publicly offered to share that plan with others.

Continue reading "Guest post: The financial watchman at the gate" »

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There are many things Evangelical Christians are good at, such as bake sales and talking to me on planes. They're less adept at other things, such as comedy and fighting lions. … So when Kevin Roose, author of the excellent new book The Unlikely Disciple, told me that Rick Warren's giant Saddleback Church has its own improv group, for the first time in my life, I felt my calling. I may not be the Woody Allen or Jon Stewart of the secular world, but in the land of the unfunny Christian, the one-joked Jew is king.

After performing with the five-member troupe (Here is what goes through your mind during 90 minutes of Christian improv: "No, no, can't say that, nope, maybe if ... no."), Stein asks Saddleback's director of creative arts the point of hosting a comedy show, or the church’s jazz and Shakespeare festivals.

"If you look back in history, most of the arts were done for the church,” Tony Guerrero tells Stein. “All the music of Bach and Mozart was written for the church. We'd like it to be a hub for the arts again."

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

“In the Mix” is the name of a monthly column by Julie Wiener, carried by The New York Jewish Week. Ms. Wiener, who is Jewish, describes herself as “married to a lapsed Catholic -- one who has encouraged me to become more involved in Jewish life.” But in her most recent column, she nonetheless grapples with her own discomfort at the thought of a rabbi entering into a relationship exactly like her own. As she puts it, “there’s something that feels, well, not kosher to me about intermarried rabbis.”

I am tempted to joke that I have been gifted with prophecy for the following prediction, but it is no laughing matter. I do predict that the Hebrew Union College, the rabbinical seminary of Reform Judaism, will be ordaining intermarried Rabbis within the next decade -- and my main concern, in terms of accuracy, is that I’m giving them too much time by half -- but that just stems from common sense and seeing the writing on the wall. To my knowledge, there has yet to be a deviance from Jewish law and tradition concerning which "a debate has swirled in progressive Jewish circles" which has not become normative "progressive" Judaism sooner or later, and usually sooner.

In most cases, the relevant conflict is between traditional Jewish values, and what today's Western society deems the morally superior position. Traditionally, men and women sit separately during prayers, men lead the service, men are rabbis, and homosexuality is prohibited.

In each of those cases, modern Western thought asserts that the contrary position is morally superior, and this becomes the position of liberal Judaism. To my understanding, similar conflicts -- and similar resolutions -- are found in the liberal wings of many other faith communities.

Continue reading "Guest post: The last taboo -- intermarried rabbis" »

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Sunday saw the first services by Bethel A.M.E. Church at Temple Oheb Shalom. Baltimore Sun colleague Stephanie Desmon had a nice story in Monday's paper:

On a typical summer Sunday, the doors of Temple Oheb Shalom are locked tight. With observances of the Jewish Sabbath taking place on Friday night and Saturday and religious school out until fall, the Park Heights Avenue building sits empty.

Not yesterday. Hundreds of congregants of a different faith poured into the sanctuary, bringing along their love of God, their upbeat music and their fervent prayer to the otherwise quiet house of worship. A fire July 1 damaged the historic Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Upton and left its flock with no place to come together. But an offer from the synagogue's leaders gave them temporary refuge as their landmark building is repaired.

"The church may have been hit by lightning," the Rev. Frank M. Reid III told church members, "but the work of the church continues in Jesus' name."

Later in his sermon, Reid continued: "We discover how our faith helps us face the fires."

If not for the symbols of Judaism - the Holy Ark storing the Torahs, the Hebrew letters on the wall - it would have been hard to tell the Bethel congregants were anywhere but home.

"It solidifies what I've always believed," said Joshua Lawton, 23, of Towson, a relatively new member of the church. "It doesn't matter what religion you are - it's all about God. Period. End of story. Everything else is just about details."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Members of Bethel A.M.E. Church, forced out of their landmark Baltimore building, will take temporary refuge at Temple Oheb Shalom, the spiritual leaders of the two congregations said Wednesday.

A week after lightning struck the steeple of the church on Druid Hill Avenue, the Rev. Frank M. Reid III and Rabbi Steven M. Fink announced that the Christian congregation would hold Sunday services at the Reform Jewish synagogue in Park Heights through Labor Day.

Fink called Reid after learning of the July 1 fire to offer Oheb Shalom’s 900-seat sanctuary to the church. The two congregations have long worked together, holding joint services in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., maintaining a community garden and engaging in the Black and Jewish Forum of Baltimore.

“We thought, in light of the hate crime that took place recently over in Washington at the Holocaust museum, with the ethnic violence going on in China at this time, that this partnership between the Jewish faith community and the Christian faith community, this partnership between the Jewish community and the black community, reestablishes a bridge that has existed between our two communities for hundreds of years,” Reid said.

“Our congregation and Bethel A.M.E. are family,” Fink said. “Our officers and board of directors decided immediately upon learning of this event to offer our facility to Bethel A.M.E.”

Continue reading "Bethel A.M.E. to worship at Oheb Shalom" »

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

Yesterday found me at the District Court of Maryland, Traffic Division, to fight a parking ticket. We had received a "Warning Notice" for failure to respond to a citation that we had never received, for our van being parked in a Transit Zone, in one of those neighborhoods in which you might be ill-advised to park in the most legal of spaces -- especially after dark, which, according to the time on the notice, it was. Mistakes happen, and the most likely explanation is that the wrong license plate number was transcribed from the citation onto the notice. Besides a compliment from the judge for having a "mean" hat (like many Orthodox Jewish men, I wear a black fedora, which he didn't want me to forget on the bench), he also gave me the Not Guilty verdict I was looking for (benefit of the doubt).

The experience was notable for a few reasons. First and foremost, the judge was (as the previous comments might indicate), very friendly and down to earth, very unpretentious. He was handling "non-incarcerable offenses" (his translation: "the only way you can go to jail is by doing something really dumb in this courtroom"), and was happy to show the friendlier side of the court system. Everyone appealing a ticket seemed to have some justification, and he was happy to give a Not Guilty to, for example, the obviously handicapped woman who was driving the wrong car on the day she was ticketed for using a handicapped spot. "Justice, justice shall you pursue..." but tempered with mercy. I was impressed.

He also told the following story, which happened to take place in the same neighborhood in which we were charged with parking illegally. He walks, he says, through all of Baltimore's neighborhoods, and on a Sunday morning a young man approached him on the otherwise-deserted street corner. "Hey man," he said, "want some weed?"

Continue reading "Guest Post: My day in court" »

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Rabbi Yaakov Menken is the Director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

No, it's not what you think. I am not referring to a healthy (and Biblically-mandated) fear of G-d and his Ineffable Name, but an aversion to mentioning G-d as a motivating force in our lives. Joel Alperson, a past national campaign chair for United Jewish Communities, wrote about this in a recent op-ed entitled "Don’t fear ‘G-d,’ ‘Torah’ and ‘Judaism’ " published by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. He writes:

I’ve collected the mission statements of the largest 17 Jewish federations in North America, and not one mentions “G-d,” “Torah” or “Judaism.” Nor do the mission statements of the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization, Hillel, the National Council of Jewish Women, The Wexner Heritage Foundation, the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah and the Jewish National Fund. Of all the organizations I looked into, only United Jewish Communities mentions but one of the three words, Torah, in its mission statement.

Mr. Alperson's theory is that these terms are avoided because they are "more particularistic. Tzedakah [Charity], tikkun olam [Repairing the World] and klal yisroel [the People of Israel] are considered universal and inclusive terms." He bemoans this phenomenon, and considers this problem to be one with a uniquely Jewish angle. He believes that the reason these terms induce such discomfort is because communal organizations, aiming to serve the breadth of the entire Jewish community, are afraid of any mention of a term that might highlight our numerous and profound internal divisions.

He may be right. But at the same time, I am reminded of an article written over 20 years ago by Daniel Polisar, today the director of the Shalem Center, and at that time a fellow student at Princeton University. He described an experience in a class in Philosophy and ethics, in which the students were asked to respond sequentially to a classic question of moral and ethical behavior: when confronted by an assailant who orders you to murder another, on threat of your own life, what are you supposed to do?

Now as it happens, Jewish ethics offers clear and unambiguous guidance on this matter: "who says your blood is redder?" Thus the Talmud prohibits murdering another person, even in order to save your own life. And this is what Dan, when asked, proceeded to tell the class: that Judaism teaches us that G-d Commanded us to react this way.

Continue reading "Guest post: Fear of G-d's name" »

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While philanthropies everywhere struggle to pry dollars loose from communities reeling from the recession, Baltimore's Jewish federation is celebrating what in these times qualifies as an outstanding result: simply raising as much money as it did the year before.

The annual campaign of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore hit the mark Tuesday, the last day of the fiscal year, organization officials said. The $30.8 million they raised means they will be able to fund all of the Associated's local educational, cultural and assistance programs at the same levels this year as last.

"What's at play here is provision of service," Associated President Marc B. Terrill said Tuesday. "We have to be the mouthpiece for the people that can't speak for themselves. So we went in with an attitude essentially that failure is not an option."

His organization's feat comes in a bleak environment for philanthropy both locally and nationwide. U.S. charitable giving fell 2 percent in 2008, according to a report released last month by the Giving USA Foundation. More than 80 percent of the nonprofit organizations surveyed by the Center for Civil Society Studies at the Johns Hopkins University early this year reported experiencing some level of fiscal stress, and close to 40 percent described the stress as "severe" or "very severe."

Among 157 Jewish federations in the United States and Canada, the pace of giving is off 13 percent this year, according to a spokesman for United Jewish Communities/Jewish Federations of North America. As a result, spokesman Joe Berkowfsky said, some federations are extending their annual campaigns beyond the June 30 close of the fiscal year.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Rabbi Gila Ruskin has agreed to stay on as spiritual leader of Temple Adas Shalom/The Harford Jewish Center in Havre de Grace through June 2012, its board of trustees announced Wednesday. Ruskin has been serving in that role on a temporary basis since the fall of 2007.

“Rabbi Ruskin has already brought a renewed energy to the congregation”, congregation President Brad Cogan said in a statement. “In the short time she has been with us, membership is increasing, feedback from our congregants has been overwhelmingly positive, and she has already had a big impact with many of the youth – especially those nearing the age of Bar or Bat Mitzvah.”

Ruskin, who is vice president of the Baltimore Board of Rabbis, has a long history in the city. She was spiritual leader of Chevrei Tzedek for 15 years, and then spent two years as the only Jewish faculty member at St. Frances High School. Her work as an instructor of Bible and Holocaust studies was the subject of a Baltimore Sun story in 2006. That story began:

The Hebrew words echoed through the halls of the Catholic school. Inside a classroom decorated with a crucifix, a rabbi led the African-American students in song.

Rabbi Gila Ruskin had lit the Sabbath candles, recited a blessing over her young charges and passed around a basket of animal crackers. Now, strumming the guitar, she sang: "Shabbat Shalom" -- Sabbath Peace.

Justine Jones double-clapped on the beat. Styinyard Blue stomped his feet. For juniors at St. Frances Academy, virtually all of them Baptist, Catholic or some other stripe of Christian, the weekly celebration of the Jewish Sabbath is a highlight of religious studies class.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Categories: Judaism
        

Local Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim congregations are praying for an end to violence this weekend during a citywide Peace Sabbath.

Faith leaders agreed to the first event of its kind last month as part of three-point plant to promote peace in Baltimore this summer. The other points:

• To call on city leaders to keep parks, recreation centers, libraries and polls open during the summer months, when children are not in school and crime typically increases; and
• To encourage churches, synagogues and mosques to designate job sites for the city’s Youth Works program, and to host youth centers other programs to provide safe havens for kids.

The Archdiocese of Baltimore, one of organizations participating in the Peace Sabbath, is asking Catholics to bring a dollar to Mass this weekend to support the city’s Safe Streets initiative. The churches of St. Ann and St. Wenceslaus in East Baltimore and St. Veronica in Cherry Hill currently host Safe Streets programs.

According to the archdiocese, Cherry Hill saw a drop from 14 shootings in the eight months before the program started at St. Veronica to one shooting in the eight months after. Now funding for the program at St. Veronica is running out and additional revenue is needed to keep it going.

Local faith leaders warned last month that planned budget cuts were threatening their hope of a “summer of peace.” As Baltimore Sun colleague Peter Hermann reported, Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien called on Mayor Sheila Dixon to reverse course.

Continue reading "Congregations praying for peace" »

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The Maryland Board of Regents agreed unanimously Friday to allow Baltimore Hebrew University to become part of Towson University, closing one chapter in the life of the 90-year-old institution of Jewish learning and opening another.

Read the story by Baltimore Sun religion writer Arthur Hirsch at baltimoresun.com.

The vote taken at the board meeting at Frostburg State University means that BHU -- with 55 graduate students, seven instructors and a library of some 70,000 volumes -- will move a few miles northeast from its single building in Park Heights to the suburban campus of more than 21,000 students.

The BHU graduate programs and the Joseph Meyerhoff Library collection will be in place at Towson for the fall. For now officials of both institutions are celebrating the partnership.

"I think it's very, very exciting," said Robert L. Caret, president of Towson University, after the vote was taken. "It's an opportunity that just presented itself."

BHU's interim president, Erika Pardes Schon, said "we are delighted by this decision. The faculty of BHU look forward to introducing a new tier of graduate courses at Towson University in the fall."

Baltimore Hebrew University will close, but its work will live on in three master's degree programs and in the new Baltimore Hebrew Institute to open on the Baltimore County campus. With Schon as director, the institute will carry on BHU's community activities in offering adult continuing education, public lectures and scholarly symposia.

Continue reading "It's official: BHU, Towson to merge" »

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The American Jewish World Service says the Obama administration is “sending contradictory signals in recognizing the magnitude of what has taken place and continues to occur on the ground in Darfur.”

The organization, long active on Darfur, expressed concern Friday after Gen. J. Scott Gration, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, referred to conditions there as the “remnants of genocide.”
Earlier, Ambassador Susan Rice, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, had described the current situation in Darfur as “genocide.”

"We believe that when conditions are as deplorable as they are, when millions remain displaced from their homes — many of them victims of rape and assault — lacking sufficient food and drinking water, it is dangerous to disagree in public about whether the genocide continues," AJWS president Ruth Messinger said in a statement.

"What is essential is that we get assurances that the full complement of humanitarian aid has been completely restored and that the Obama administration recognizes that the status quo of the past seven years is unacceptable,” she said. “This is particularly the case when the onset of the rainy season continues to pose the threat that waterborne illness will spread rapidly among the population in the camps. This would cause widespread and rapid loss of life, advancing the concerted effort of the Sudanese government to cause a massive civilian death toll.

Continue reading "Group: Administration sending mixed signals on Darfur" »

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The University of Maryland System Board of Regents is expected to approve the integration of Baltimore Hebrew University with Towson University on Friday, allowing the 90-year-old institution of Jewish learning to move from Park Heights to the campus of the larger public university in time for the start of the fall semester.

Under an agreement negotiation by the two institutions, BHU’s programs, faculty and courses are to be dispersed among different schools and departments at Towson. One floor of Towson's Albert S. Cook Library will be cleared to accommodate BHU's 70,000-volume Joseph Meyerhoff Library, which school officials describe as the largest collection of Judaica in the Mid-Atlantic region, and a new Baltimore Hebrew Institute will offer continuing education and other programs for the community.

The board of regents are expected to approve the merger during its regular meeting Friday at Frostburg State University.

BHU, which was founded in 1919 to train teachers for local Jewish schools, has grown with the community to offer master's degrees and doctorates. A high school that operated from the 1930s through the 1980s graduated thousands of students.

But declining enrollments and rising costs have made it increasingly difficult for the institution to remain independent, school officials say, leading its sole donor, the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Greater Baltimore, to direct administrators to find a new model.

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A former director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum sees in the shooting there last week evidence of the return of anti-Semitism, after a long period of relative quiet.

“The Holocaust was so massive an orgy of violence — so systematized and so organized by one of the most modern and cultured countries — that anti-Semitism itself became, for the next few decades, a spent force,” Walter Reich, a psychiatrist and professor at George Washington University, writes Thursday in The Baltimore Sun.

“Now, after this vacation of a few decades, anti-Semitism is back,” he writes. “That prejudice, which has been the norm of history, has returned. It's resurgent across Europe and proliferating wildly in the Middle East.”

James von Brunn of Maryland has been charged with two counts of murder in the shooting death last week of Stephen T. Johns, a security guard at the Holocaust museum. An FBI affidavit for a search warrant of his Annapolis apartment describes von Brunn as espousing “hate speech directed specifically toward Jews for an extensive period of time.”

Reich sees a “pressing” need “to stop, or at least minimize, anti-Semitism's deadly consequences.”

Continue reading "Did it ever go away?" »

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Categories: Judaism
        

The Maryland Higher Education Commission has signed off on the integration of Baltimore Hebrew University into Towson University, bringing the merger within a vote of becoming reality.

The commission issued letters to Towson President Robert L. Caret and BHU President Erika Pardes Schon on Wednesday saying it had approved a merger agreement signed by the two institutions. Approval by the University of Maryland System Board of Regents on Friday would allow the 90-year-old center of Jewish learning to complete the move from Park Heights to the campus of the larger public university in time for the start of the fall semester.

The two schools agreed to the merger earlier this year. With the approval of the regents, BHU programs, faculty and courses will be dispersed among different schools and departments at Towson. One floor of Towson’s Albert S. Cook Library will be cleared to accommodate BHU’s 70,000-volume Joseph Meyerhoff Library, which school officials describe as the largest collection of Judaica in the Mid-Atlantic.

Founded in 1919 to train teachers for local Jewish schools, BHU grew with the community to offer master’s degrees and doctorates. A high school that operated from the 1930s through the 1980s graduated thousands of students.

But declining enrollments and rising costs have made it increasingly difficult for the institution to remain independent, leading its sole donor, the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Greater Baltimore, to direct administrators to find a new model.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 4:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Rabbi Yaakov Menken is director of Project Genesis, a Jewish cyber-outreach organization based in Baltimore.

In the wake of the shooting attack at Washington's Holocaust Museum last week, many organizations issued public statements. Most of those were similar to these words from President Obama: "This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms."

Agudath Israel, the Jewish communal organization representing the interests of traditionally Orthodox Jews, issued a statement as well. Its statement, though, was different -- it consisted solely of an open letter to the young son of the security guard who gave his life defending the visitors to that Museum.

This letter's personal touch reminds us all that this was not only an outrage against the national consciousness, but an acutely personal tragedy as well.

To the Young Son of Stephen Tyrone Johns:

Your name wasn’t mentioned on the ABC-Nightline report where you were briefly interviewed after the tragic death of your father. But what mattered were your words, that your Dad was “a loving father” and your “hero.”

I want you to know that he is a hero to us too.

Your father died protecting people, young and old, of many races and religions, who had come to a very special place: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He was the victim of a terrible hatred -- a hatred cut from the same ugly cloth as the hatred that killed my grandparents in Europe, a hatred the museum was designed to warn us about, and to help erase from the world.

May we soon see the day when such irrational hatred in all its forms will be erased from the world. And may you derive comfort, even as you mourn your terrible loss, from the fact that your father was not only a hero in your life but died a hero to the world.

 

Rabbi David Zwiebel

 

Executive Vice President

Agudath Israel of America

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Asked about Holocaust museum shooting suspect James von Brunn, Baltimore Jewish Council Executive Director Arthur C. Abramson tells The Baltimore Sun "we are aware of his past, but he's not a name that immediately came to mind."

Sun colleagues Scott Calvert, Brent Jones and Paul West have produced an interesting report examining the 88-year-old von Brunn's history and views. The World War II veteran and commercial artist apparently was well known among hate groups and those who track them.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, von Brunn's "magnum opus" was a self-published anti-Semitic book called Kill the Best Gentiles. He has written many anti-Semitic essays and in recent years maintained an anti-Semitic Web site, holywesternempire.org.

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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Categories: Judaism
        

We went to the website of the Anti-Defamation League to look for comment on this afternoon's shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. What we found was criticism of a recent Doonesbury comic strip.

In a letter to strip creator Garry Trudeau, the ADL says the installment of May 31 "misquotes the Bible, maligns Judaism, and promotes a Christian heresy, all within eight panels."

At issue in the Sunday strip is an exchange between longtime characters Boopsie, her daughter, Samantha, and the Rev. Scot Sloan, about "the money lenders," whom Samantha describes as the only group against whom Jesus "really snaps."

"What is it about money lenders?" Boopsie asks.

"They do seem to set people off, don't they?" responds a smiling Sloan.

To the ADL, the reference to "money lenders" recalls the stereotype of Shylock, the enduringly controversial character from Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. As the ADL notes, it was the money-changers, not money lenders, against whom Jesus rails in the Gospel accounts.

"Doonesbury's Reverend Sloan is guilty of promoting anti-Jewish stereotypes and biblical illiteracy," the ADL says. "He owes both Jews and Christians an apology."

Continue reading "ADL: Doonesbury strip "crosses a line"" »

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At least two people were shot Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, the Associated Press is reporting.

Washington police spokeswoman Traci Hughes said a person walked into the museum about 1 p.m. with a rifle and shot a guard. Hughes said the shooter was also shot. Hughes said the conditions of those shot were not known. Both were being rushed to a hospital.

CNN is reporting that the shooter was an 88-year-old white supremacist.

U.S. Park Police told the Associated Press that three people had been shot. Fire department spokesman Alan Etter told CNN a third person was hurt after being cut by broken glass.

Read the rest of the story at The Baltimore Sun.

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Categories: Judaism
        

While the number of anti-Semitic incidents logged by the Anti-Defamation League nationwide declined in 2008 for the fourth consecutive year, Maryland saw an increase in reports of vandalism and harassment targeting Jews.

The ADL counted 27 such incidents in 2008, up from 19 the year before. Of the 2008 events, 17 involved harassment and 10 involved damage to property. In 2007, the ADL counted 5 instances of harassment and 14 of vandalism.

Nationwide, the number of reports fell to 1,352 in 2008 from 1,460 the year before, according to the ADL’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents, for a drop of nearly 8 percent.

"It is encouraging that the number of anti-Semitic incidents continues to decline, but the sheer volume of incidents reported and the violent nature of many of the physical assaults is a reminder that we cannot be complacent," ADL National Director Abraham H. Foxman said in a statement. "Had law enforcement not thwarted the alleged terrorist bombing plot against synagogues in Riverdale, New York, it would have been a horrific anti-Semitic attack."

Continue reading "ADL: Attacks on Jews down across U.S., up in Md." »

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Categories: Judaism
        

Rabbi Amy R. Scheinerman, the spiritual leader of Beth Shalom Congregation in Westminister, has received an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, her alma mater.

Rabbi David Ellenson, president of HUC-JIR, described Scheinerman’s life as "one of dedication.”

“Her devotion to Jewish learning has led to her broad-based involvement in Jewish education,” Ellenson said. “As chaplain, she counsels those incarcerated and gives comfort to the terminally ill; as a columnist, she uses the power of the written word to share Jewish insights with the community at large. Her extensive involvement in the Baltimore Board of Rabbis has brought rabbis of all persuasions together to learn from each other.”

A graduate of Brown University and HUC-JIR, Scheinerman is vice president of the Baltimore Board of Rabbis, a columnist for the Baltimore Jewish Times and the Carroll County Times and a chaplain for the Howard County Police, Carroll County Hospice and Jewish Hospice Network.

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On Wednesday, we mentioned the "Summer of Peace" announcement by local Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders. Peter Hermann, our former Jerusalem correspondent and crime reporter extraordinaire, has a more complete report in today's Baltimore Sun:

The leaders of the city's Catholic, Jewish and Muslim faiths have a plan to turn Baltimore's summer into the "summer of peace."

But they complained Wednesday that the mayor is making their efforts difficult because of plans to close recreation centers and pools and curtail library hours.

Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien mentioned the issue in passing in his remarks after meeting with city officials on preventing youth crime, but when questioned he openly leaped into the political fray and called for the city's chief executive to reverse course.

Cutting money to youth programs, said the leader of a half-million worshipers of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Baltimore, "will make it very difficult for us to follow through" on initiatives to save lives and save children.

His auxiliary, Bishop Denis J. Madden, said, "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to understand that rec centers and pools are going to give kids something to do."

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Local Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim leaders announced a three-point plan on Wednesday to promote peace in Baltimore this summer.

In what participants said was the first interfaith gathering of local religious leaders to discuss violence, the group held a 90-minute meeting at St. Mary's Seminary and University, and then emerged to greet the press.

Members resolved:

   • To call on city leaders to keep parks, recreation centers, libraries and polls open during the summer months, when children are not in school and crime typically increases;

   • To encourage churches, synagogues and mosques to designate job sites for the city’s Youth Works program, and to host youth centers other programs to provide safe havens for kids; and

   • Designate the weekend of June 19 to 21 as a “Peace Sabbath,” during which all churches, synagogues and mosques will pray for peace. At Masses that weekend, Catholic churches will collect $1 per parishioner to support peace-promoting initiatives such as the city health department’s Safe Streets program.

The meeting was hosted by Catholic Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien. Attendees included Baltimore Jewish Council Executive Director Arthur Abramson, Imam Earl El-Amin of the Muslim Community Cultural Center of Baltimore, Deputy Police Commissioner Anthony Barksdale, interim City Health Commissioner Olivia Farrow, Tim Hanavan of the Central Maryland Ecumenical Council, Catholic Auxillary Bishop Denis Madden, Bishop Douglas Miles of Koinonia Baptist Church, Bishop John Raab of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland and Rev. Dr. Frank Reid III of Bethel AME Church.

The group agreed to continue meeting quarterly to discuss ongoing threats to peace in the city and to work together to promote peace.

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The board of directors of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Baltimore voted Wednesday to allow the Jewish Community Center in Owings Mills to open on the Jewish sabbath.

The proposal by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore to offer Saturday hours has highlighted a divide in the local Jewish community. JCC officials say the move will meet the needs of the largely nonobservant community in the northwestern suburb.

But Orthodox Jews, who refrain from driving, operating electrical equipment and other activities on the day known as Shabbos or Shabbat, say it will violate Jewish law. Thousands rallied in Park Heights last week in support of the Jewish sabbath.

In a statement, Associated President Marc B. Terrill called the differing positions “noble in their intent.”

“The ultimate goal of everyone involved in this communal conversation is to connect individuals and families to the beauty of the gift of Shabbat,” he continued. “I only hope and pray that the decision today serves as an opportunity to broaden its observance. A day of reflection and inward thinking makes a great deal of spiritual and pragmatic sense.”

The final vote by the Associated board was 97 to 33 in favor Saturday hours, with four members abstaining.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, a leader of the Park Heights rally, said the decision left him “deeply disappointed” and “tremendously sad.”

Continue reading "Associated votes to open JCC on Saturdays" »

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Categories: Judaism
        

The board of directors of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Greater Baltimore is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a controversial proposal to begin opening the Jewish Community Center in Owings Mills on the Jewish sabbath.

The proposal by the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, which operates facilities in Owings Mills and Park Heights, has revealed deep divisions within the diverse local Jewish community.

The JCC says the move would help meet the needs of the largely nonobservant community in Owings Mills.

But Orthodox Jews, who refrain from driving, operating electrical equipment and other activities on the day known as Shabbos, say it would violate Jewish law. Thousands of Orthodox Jews rallied in Park Heights last week in support of Shabbos.

The board of the Associated, which owns the property, will meet at noon behind closed doors. We’ll post results and reactions here, as soon as we get them.

(Photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor/The Baltimore Sun)

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Categories: Judaism
        

Local Christian, Jewish and Muslim leaders will come together on Wednesday to discuss a new plan to promote peace in the city this summer.

The group, to be hosted by Catholic Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien at St. Mary’s Seminary and University, will include Arthur Abramson of the Baltimore Jewish Council, Imam Earl El-Amin of the Muslim Community Cultural Center, Bishop John Rabb, suffragan bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland, the Rev. Frank M. Reid, III, pastor of Bethel AME Church, and the Rev. Johnny Golden of New Unity Church Ministries and the Interdenominational Ministerial Alliance.

The group plans to meet with interim Health Commissioner Olivia Farrow, and then hold a press conference to announce a summer peace initiative. Watch here for more details.

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What is the nature of God? Is it possible to force a postponement of death? How is true piety manifested? What is the power of sin and repentance? What happens to souls in the afterlife?

Rabbi David Greenspoon of Beth El Congregation concludes his five-month exploration of the Zohar, called “the most important literary work” of Jewish mysticism, with a "Lunch & Learn" session at noon Tuesday at Baltimore’s Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies.

“Come and join us as we delve into the mystical world of the Kabbalists,” invites the institute, located at 956 Dulaney Valley Road. Those interested are asked to bring a brown-bag dairy lunch; all texts are to be provided in translation. RSVP to info@icjs.org; more information is available here.

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Did the Evangelical vote put Kris Allen over the top in the American Idol finale? That’s one of the theories that has emerged in the hours after the surprise ending Wednesday to the pop music competition.

The discussion is premised on the widely held expectation that Adam Lambert, adventurous in both performance and appearance, would win the final vote.

Certainly the falsetto-prone glam rocker left a deeper impression than the humble church singer from Arkansas. Even Allen, a worship leader at New Life Church in Conway, Ark., appeared taken aback by the result; when host Ryan Seacrest called his name, his first words were “Adam deserves this.”

But a legion of Christian voters is saying the right man won. Chief among them: Allen’s pastor at New Life, who has been boasting of a faith-based campaign for Allen.

“Churches go crazy with support!” the Rev. Rick Bezet told Fox News. “Thousands of churches twittering and facebooking! It’s been a blast.”

Fox News and other speculate that Allen got a boost from supporters of Danny Gokey, who was eliminated in the week before the final. Another evangelical Christian, Gokey was worship leader at Faith Builders International Ministries in Milwaukee and Beloit, Wisc., prior to qualifying for American Idol.

Continue reading "Faith-based support for the American Idol?" »

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For its annual meeting Thursday, the Baltimore Jewish Council has enlisted a trio of heavy hitters to discuss the state of civil rights in Maryland.

Appearing from 4 to 6 p.m. at Beth Tfiloh Congregation at 3300 Old Court Road in Baltimore will be Kweisi Mfume, the former congressman and former NAACP president, Rabbi Mark G. Loeb, for 32 years the spiritual leader of Beth El Congregation, and WYPR news analyst C. Fraser Smith, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, editor and columnist.

Dana P. Moore of Venable LLP will moderate. The event is open to the public.

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Megan Goldsmith is approaching her graduation from Baltimore Hebrew University with mixed emotions.

The 25-year-old Pikesville woman talks about the joy of completing her master's degree in Jewish communal service, the honor of having been selected by her classmates to deliver the student commencement address, and the anticipation of her new career.

But she speaks also of nostalgia. With state officials expected to approve the integration of Baltimore Hebrew into Towson University next month, she and 14 fellow degree recipients Thursday night are likely to be the final class to graduate from an institution long at the center of local Jewish cultural and intellectual life.

"There's been so many different people that have gone through that building," says Goldsmith, who was inspired to apply to the school in part by a series of mentors who held BHU degrees. "It's really sad that it's ending. I mean, it's been around for 90 years."

Read the rest of the story at baltimoresun.com.

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As promised, Torah.org has posted video of Sunday's rally for Shabbos, here and above.

Posted by Matthew Hay Brown at 12:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Judaism
        

As we reported in Monday's Sun, thousands of Orthodox Jews rallied in Park Heights yesterday in support of Shabbos. (Moshe Hoffman, above, was among those at Sunday's rally.) Now torah.org has put audio from the event online, with video to come.

Orthodox rabbis organized the rally as Jewish leaders consider a plan to open a community center in Owings Mills on Saturdays. Officials at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Baltimore, which operates facilities in Owings Mills and Park Heights, say the move is necessary to meet the needs of the largely nonobservant community in the northwestern suburb. But the Orthodox, who refrain from labor, operating electrical appliances and other activities from sundown on Friday until nightfall on Saturday, say it would violate Jewish law.

The final decision rests with the board of directors of the Associated: Jewish Community Federation of Greater Baltimore. A vote is scheduled for next week.

Continue reading "Audio from Sunday's Shabbos rally" »

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Categories: Judaism
        

It’s looking as if the 15 men and women set to receive degrees at Baltimore Hebrew University this week will be the last graduates of the 90-year-old institution.

After months of negotiations, BHU administrators have signed a memorandum of understanding to integrate the school into Towson University. The Maryland Higher Education Commission and the University System of Maryland Board of Regents are expected to approve the merger next month, with the new Baltimore Hebrew Institute opening this fall on the Towson campus.

BHU's imminent demise has lent a valedictory air to commencement week. The school is planning a dinner Wednesday to honor the memory of Louis L. Kaplan, its president from 1930 to 1970; to give its distinguished leadership award to board member Lowell R. Glazer, who helped to shepherd the merger negotiations; and to grant an honorary doctorate to Marc Terrill, president of the Associated, the city’s most prominent Jewish organization.

Commencement is Thursday.

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