Jewish

A woman mourns Danielle, 25, and Noam, 26, an Israeli couple who were killed in a deadly attack by Hamas gunmen from Gaza as they attended a festival, during their funeral in Kiryat Tivon, Israel on Oct. 12, 2023. REUTERS/Shir Torem

We all are shocked by Hamas’ horrific, inhumane attacks on the people of Israel, which killed more than 1,000 people, according to recent estimates. Israel’s retaliatory airstrikes have killed at least 1,000 more; thousands of people on each side are wounded. In both Israel and Gaza, innocent civilians are bearing the brunt in this latest round of indiscriminate, militarized lethal violence — violence that will solve nothing and only further entrench mutual mistrust, hatred, and the thirst for vengeance.

Matt Bernico 3-06-2023

A person holds a rainbow flag during the 2022 NYC Pride parade in Manhattan, New York City, N.Y., June 26, 2022. Image credit: Reuters/Jeenah Moon.

The current discourse around right-wing politics and religion has been focused on the phrase “Christian nationalism.” Christian nationalism is a catchall for a variety of beliefs that generally claim the U.S. is founded upon Christian ideas and that the country’s current laws ought to reflect those beliefs. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R.-Ga.) is perhaps one of the most well known politicians in the U.S. who identifies as a Christian nationalist, but, according to a survey done by Pew Research, “Eight-in-ten White evangelical Protestants (81 percent) say the country’s founders intended it to be a Christian nation.” Christian nationalism, as a term, is fine but imprecise. What we’re seeing from lawmakers, like those in Missouri but also in other states, too, is more properly defined as “Christofascism.”

Josina Guess 2-24-2023
A woman with brown curly hair and a cardigan is sitting on a couch and holding her baby, who has dark hair and wears a white longsleeve footie onesie. Piles of boxes, baby supplies, and furniture surround her on all sides.

From Love & Stuff

“WHERE WILL THE Judaica go?” a friend asks Judith Helfand, in reference to the material objects of her faith. Helfand is an Ashkenazi Jewish documentarian who turns the camera on herself and her family to tell larger stories. Here, she’s telling a story of becoming a “new old mother” the year after her own mother dies. She takes a deep breath of her newborn daughter’s hair and turns to her friend, who is trying to help her store and organize the too many things in her New York apartment. “That is such a good question,” replies Helfand, who embraced motherhood by adopting at age 50. “It’s the age-old Jewish question,” she continues. “Once we left the desert we were like, s---, now we have to find places for our stuff!” She breaks into laughter, that special laugh of the sleep-deprived and overwhelmed new parent, and never answers her friend’s question directly.

Love & Stuff, a POV documentary available on PBS, based on Helfand’s shorter New York Times Op-Doc with the same name, is full of age-old questions about holding on and letting go. Love & Stuff doesn’t offer easy answers or quick fixes, instead revealing the struggles and choices we make in curating our living spaces.

Abby Olcese 8-29-2022

Nathan Fielder in ‘The Rehearsal,’ HBO 

As it turns out, the person who needed The Rehearsal most was Fielder himself. His interaction with Angela in the finale reveals that the whole enterprise is actually an exploration of the inevitable pain humans cause others, even when we’re not trying to, and our need for grace and self-forgiveness.

Men walk through an almost dry river bed of Yamuna after searching for recyclable material on a hot summer day in New Delhi, India, April 30, 2022. REUTERS/Adnan Abidi 

Christian, Muslim, and Jewish leaders joined United Nations officials on Monday in urging financial institutions to stop bankrolling activities that are driving climate change, including ending support for new fossil fuel projects.

Zoya Mirza 2-09-2022

Screenshot from Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker’s testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Cytron-Walker — who led the Texas synagogue hostages to safety last month — told Congress there is a need for increased funding for the Nonprofit Security Grant Program.

The rabbi who led hostages to safety during an attack on his Texas synagogue last month said federally funded security training “gave [him] the courage to act.” Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker urged Congress to increase federal funding for a program that would help other religious leaders prepare for such assaults.

Security measures adopted by Congregation Beth Israel in Houston have included installing surveillance cameras outside its premises. Credit: Briana Vargas for The Texas Tribune

On Jan. 15, a gunman held four hostages in a standoff that lasted around 11 hours at Colleyville’s Congregation Beth Israel, a synagogue northeast of Fort Worth not affiliated with Kutner’s. The FBI said Friday it is considering the incident a terrorist act and hate crime.

Nancy Hightower 12-19-2019

Poster on King David Street near the King David Hotel, sponsored by an evangelical Christian group. Jerusalem, Israel, 22 May 2017. 

Trump’s latest executive order is yet another chapter in the spiritual story created by evangelicals. 

Esther L. Lederman 12-16-2019

Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner, Robert Kraft, and others stand behind Donald Trump after he signed an executive order on anti-semitism during a Hanukkah reception in White House. Dec. 11, 2019. REUTERS/Tom Brenne

Trump's executive order undermines the freedom of Jewish self-definition. 

These faithful Christians may not realize that they have inherited the long historical lineage of Christianity that, since the early centuries of the common era, has partaken in a deliberate or unwitting de-Judaizing of Christianity. The distancing from its original Jewish leadership, the replacement of Passover with Easter, the changing of names: Yeshua to Jesus, Miriam to Mary, Saul to Paul, continue to this day, despite Christian scholarship, altruism, and the progressive ideal of honoring a diversity of cultures.

Juliet Vedral 2-14-2018

Image via CBS/Living Biblically Facebook video screenshot 

Based loosely on A.J. Jacobs’ book The Year of Living Biblically, the show centers on Chip, a man who, after losing his best friend and learning that his wife is pregnant, decides to do a sort of “soul-cleanse” by living his life completely by the Bible. Chip, played by Jay R. Ferguson, rather than taking the advice of his priest to live generally by the Bible, chooses instead to live literally by the Bible. With the help of his “God Squad,” Father Gene (Ian Gomez) and Rabbi Gil (David Krumholtz), the grudging support/tolerance of his wife Leslie (Lindsey Kraft), his best friend Vince (Tony Rock), and his boss Ms. Meadows (Camryn Manheim) Chip explores his faith and how to live it out, often to hilarious effect.

Kimberly Winston 2-01-2018

Image via RNS/Twitter

“I see you have me on this list,” New York magazine and HuffPost writer Yashar Ali tweeted. “I’m not Jewish…I’m a practicing Roman Catholic. But I’m in some pretty good company on this list…so feel free to say I’m Jewish.”

Tom Heneghan 1-09-2018

Image via Karen Gillerman Harel / Shutterstock

But with Holocaust Memorial Day coming up on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz, her Christian Democrats have decided to wait no longer. They want the Bundestag, the German parliament, to pass a resolution calling for migrants who promote hatred of Jews to be expelled.

Menachem Wecker 8-29-2017

Image via Nicole S Glass / Shutterstock.com

In past weeks — in the wake of Trump comments about white supremacy widely condemned as too late and too soft — disagreements among Jews about the president played out on a very public stage

Image via RNS/Philly.com/Ed Hille

Though they gave respectable answers, I was amazed no one directly quoted the Christian Gospels on the subject.

The Gospel of Mark provides one saying of Jesus directly applicable to this situation. But when we examine subsequent uses of that saying in the other Gospels, we can see why none of the 60 Minutes interviewees dared quote that particular verse.

Billy Honor 5-30-2017

Most often Pentecost comes to us as a momentous Christian occasion of spiritual power, ethnic unity, gender equality, multi-generational comradery, and immigrant hospitality. But when the moment has passed, it gives way to the more ignoble features of life and community, like spiritual apathy, sexism, racial prejudice, ageism, xenophobia, etc.

Image via RNS/Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

President Trump will deliver an “inspiring yet direct” speech on the need to confront radical ideologies during his upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia.

The speech will come during an afternoon lunch with leaders of more than 50 countries with mostly Muslim populations, White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster announced on May 16.

Karyn Wiseman 5-08-2017

Image via Benoit Daoust/Shutterstock.com

Through the Sisters of Salaam Shalom, Jewish and Muslim women are coming together to discover their similarities and bond together as friends and fellow travelers in the world. They are finding common ground, language, or customs to be bridges to relationships. They are not allowing the world to separate them.

It is the tragedy of Christianity that the first hate crime in our constellation of texts is Matthew’s, in his telling the story of the passion. Jesus was a great teacher, an inspiring healer, and a man whose radical compassion touched everyone — women without honor, under-employed fisher folk, Roman soldiers, gentiles, Samaritans, scholarly Pharisees. The hearts of Palestinian Jews flocked to him, and this terrified the Romans. They tried to abort his movement by making his death a spectacle of cruelty and unutterable degradation.

Image via RNS/Creative Commons/DOD/C.M. Fitzpatrick

Since winning the election with strong support from conservative evangelical voters, President Trump has invited their leaders to the White House, and banned government funding for groups that support or perform abortions overseas.

But he has yet to move on one item that many of them care about.

No one has been named to direct the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships, which, since 2001, has linked government with a broad range of religious groups.