Religion-related Parries
February 2009
The Curious Case of Benjamin Buddha
If someone is living life in reverse time while the rest of us are living it forwards, then our world is Buddhist, because such an impossibility falsifies reality, which must therefore be a dream.
October 2007
I, Thou and Pastor Bob
At Rome I felt queasy that they would paint and revere scenes that occured in Israel, but here, looking at the Calvary Church campus, I felt that the religious energy is actually here, that we are far enough away from the places of the events themselves that they can finally become abstracted and spiritualized and kept relevant. An ocean and a small continent separate Fort Lauderdale from Afula.
April 2007
The Meaning Addiction
I’m reading Shardik by Richard Adams, famous for Watership Down. I chose it because it’s about religion, and Adams demonstrated such insight there with the rabbits’ religion — “Oh Frith on the hill, he made it all for us!” — that he’s clearly a contributor to our understanding of ourselves and our meaning addiction.
The Dharma Tits
Before university I’d used bookshops as other people use the I-Ching or tarot cards: whatever struck my fancy as I crossed the oceans of those shelves would set me on my next ideational trajectory.
March 2007
Tent of Contempt
Last night we saw a totally-covered woman exiting an apartment building. The man was dressed normally but she was a black shroud, as ominous as the Lost opening titles except not as sexy. Or is the issue just one of degree, that people normalized to this garb find a Western street as naked as I find a German sauna? No. A uniform that hides the face is madness, diabolical.
Religion-related Photos
Funky Jerusalem
Friday, September 17th, 2004
Funky Jerusalem
Friday, September 17th, 2004
To the Wall
Saturday, August 7th, 2004
Scottish church in Jerusalem
Tuesday, June 29th, 2004
Piety, curiousity, contempt, lust
Sunday, July 27th, 1986
Latmag does Religion
January 2010
Leon R. Kass, The Beginning of Wisdom, Pp. 406-7.
Jacob’s Summary
“ The biblical counterpart of Odysseus, Jacob must solve the fundamental human difficulties illustrated in the pre-Abrahamic chapters of Genesis. ”
September 2009
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America (paperback edition), p210-1
A Well-Scrubbed, Cute Little Boy
“ I couldn’t manage to be anywhere near a nun, let alone a pair of them, without a mind awash in my none-too-pure Jewish thoughts. ”
September 2003
Edward Lear, Journals of a Landscape Painter in the Balkans
Were it Not for this Protector
“ Not the least annoyance was that given me by the persevering attentions of a mad or fanatic dervish, of most singular appearance as well as conduct. His note of ‘Shaitán‘ was frequently sounded; and as he twirled about, and performed many curious antics, he frequently advanced to me, shaking a long hooked stick, covered with jingling ornaments, in my very face, pointing to the Kawas with menacing looks, as though he would say, “Were it not for this protector you should he annihilated, you infidel!” ”
December 2002
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Geneaology of Morals
The Great Haters
“ The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness. Human history would be altogether too stupid a thing without the spirit that the impotent have introduced into it. ”
And on the Trail
Fri 20 Apr ’12
Josef Joffe, editor of Hamburg’s Die Zeit, analyses Günter Grass’s What Must Be Said.
Wed 28 Mar ’12
Thu 15 Mar ’12
Jeffrey Goldberg, who seems to be seeing a lot of the President lately, relates what happened when he presented Barack Obama with a copy of the New American Haggadah.
Tue 21 Feb ’12
Turns out that in the USA, according to recent research by American Sociological Association, “the ‘bitter clingers’ are increasingly better educated and more affluent than the unchurched” (via Via Meadia).
Mon 20 Feb ’12
Nice review of Scorsese’s documentary on George Harrison, Living in the Material World. “Scorsese is making a film about something that matters, but never quite succeeds in conveying that.” Here’s Variety’s smarter review.
Sun 19 Feb ’12
Revenge of the Sunnis: What the Arab Spring is really about. By Edward Luttwak. In Foreign Policy.
Sat 18 Feb ’12
Sat 28 Jan ’12
Some of what you might have wanted to know about scientology by Rachel Aviv.
Fri 16 Dec ’11
Thu 15 Dec ’11
Mon 30 May ’11
Walter Russell Mead waxes deep on Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. “…The people and the story of Israel stir some of the deepest and most mysterious reaches of the American soul.”
Sat 28 May ’11
John Podhoretz judges the judge in “The Choice of Richard Goldstone”.
Mon 25 Apr ’11
An interview with the towering Kobi Oz sitting somewhere at Rothschild.
Sun 6 Mar ’11
A donut without a hole is a danish. “Secret of the Sabbath“ by Yosef Yitzhak Lifshitz in Azure.
Wed 12 Jan ’11
Thu 7 Oct ’10
A reminder of Benjamin Franklin’s folksy but wise wisdom.
Mon 27 Sep ’10
My goodness: a long juicy New Yorker piece on David Grossman.
Mon 23 Aug ’10
Video of Christopher Hitchens with the imposing Jeffrey Goldberg.
Sun 11 Jul ’10
Racism is about appearance and the material; anti-Semitism is abstract and about the conspiracy.
Mon 28 Jun ’10
Tue 13 Apr ’10
Sun 14 Feb ’10
Excellent piece of history by Daniel Kurtzer, former US ambassador to Israel, on settlements. Excellent because specific details affect the reader’s general beliefs.
Sun 17 Jan ’10
Satan’s open letter to Pat Robertson in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, as transcribed by Lily Coyle.
Thu 17 Dec ’09
The noughties, a sinister death cult.
Tue 1 Dec ’09
The Cameron Way: What American conservatives should learn from the British Tory leader, by Joseph Loconte in National Review.
Thu 18 Jun ’09
“Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”. Seriously, why marry, if it’s less stable — as it is in the USA — than not doing so?
Wed 29 Apr ’09
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