February 7, 2008
Quixotic Atheist Militancy
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Hitchens and Boteach’s Great Debate - Forward.com, February 6, 2008
Acclaimed polemicist and atheist Christopher Hitchens traded wit on science and scripture last week at a debate titled “Does God Exist?” with his opponent, Orthodox rabbi and television host Shmuley Boteach.
Ticket holders filled the auditorium at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y to capacity; many hoped that Hitchens would demonstrate his irreverent, razor-edged reasoning. The fans weren’t disappointed.
“We’re all atheists,” Hitchens argued in his dry British timbre. “We no longer believe we need to tear the beating heart out of a virgin to make the sun rise. We no longer believe in the sun god Ra or in Zeus, and we now must go one step further.”
February 7, 2008
Israeli Culture War, Israeli Religious Right
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In attack-conscious Israel, even a crematorium needs protection - Haaretz, February 6, 2008
In terrorism-conscious Israel, security has been beefed up even for the crematorium of a company providing Israelis a choice of burial services, but the potential assailants are apparently Jews.
The firm, called Aley Shalechet (”Autumn Leaves”), was the first company in Israel to offer “alternative burial services,” notably cremation.
In August 2007, a day after the location of the company’s crematorium was revealed in an ultra-Orthodox newspaper, unknown assailants broke into the grounds of the firm on Moshav Hibat Zion and torched its facilities, causing serious damage to the crematorium, and igniting a public debate on burial services outside the Orthodox Jewish norm.
No one has been charged in the relation to the arson, though Yehuda Meshi-Zahav, founder and public face of the ultra-Orthodox ZAKA rescue service an the self-styled operations officer of the Eda Haredit religious organization, was temporarily detained by police after reports surfaced that he was seen at the site the morning of the crime.
The company had kept a low profile until the attack, its offices situated at the end of a hallway in a nondescript mall in central Israel. Since its operations were publicized, however, Aley Shalechet has been the subject of concerted efforts by religious authorities to have its activities banned, saying that it violates Jewish law and desecrates the memory of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, whose bodies were incinerated in Nazi ovens.
February 7, 2008
Catholic traditionalism, Christianity, Antisemitism, and the Holocaust
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Pope Benedict XVI (AP)
ADL slams Vatican over revised prayer for conversion of Jews - Haaretz, February 7, 2008
The Vatican has come under fire from Jewish groups in recent days for changing its Good Friday service to include a prayer urging God to let Jews “recognize Jesus Christ as savior of all men.”
Earlier this week, Pope Benedict ordered changes to a Latin prayer for Jews at traditionalist Good Friday services, deleting a reference to their “blindness” over Christ.
But the Anti-Defamation League has called the changes “cosmetic revisions,” saying that the prayer is still “deeply troubling” because of its call to convert Jews.
Apart from the deletion of the word “blindness,” the new prayer - which has retained the name Prayer for Conversion of the Jews - also excludes a former a phrase that asked God to “remove the veil from their hearts”.
