Tag Archives: secularism

(Mid-century Modern) Protestant Catholic Jew (Will Herberg)

Posted on February 2, 2015 by

Reading for the first time Will Herberg’s classic Protestant-Catholic-Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (1955), I was surprised to see so many interesting things. To start, I’ll only say that the most obvious problem with the book is the … Continue reading →

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Irregular Surfaces (In Jerusalem) Tisha B’Av (At the Wall)

Posted on July 15, 2013 by

  Is this really Israel? Last year I posted a post, “I like Tisha B’Av.” This year, in Jerusalem at the Jewish Quarter and Western Wall, not so much. Not just right wing and orthodox, but stone-like and hermetically sealed. … Continue reading →

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Zionist Culture Criticism (anti-Judaism)

Posted on September 20, 2012 by

(Joseph Hayyim Brenner) It’s probably not a bad idea to remember that Zionism also has a face. I said awhile back that I wasn’t going to post about either it or Israel, that I wanted to take a break, and … Continue reading →

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Eat (Secular) (Rational) (Deuteronomy)

Posted on August 19, 2012 by

Are the origins of secularity culinary? The book of Deuteronomy is insistent about centralizing the cult in one specific place, “the place where I will show you,” namely in Jerusalem. “There you shall offer your burnt offerings…But whenever you desire, … Continue reading →

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Jewish secularism – Secular judaism (New Media) (Knowing Where/How to Look)

Posted on May 14, 2012 by

(Frank Stella, Avicenna [1960]) I saw the interview with Dov Elbaum in Haaretz last week,  and then he popped up to speak at Ansche Chesed. Elbaum runs a “secular yeshiva” in Israel called Binah and runs a television program on channel … Continue reading →

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Writing about Religion in the New York Times

Posted on April 10, 2012 by

This was the photo that appeared on the front page of the “Sunday Review” in the New York Times. The section was loaded with religion, I’m sure for Easter weekend. Check out these articles by Ross Douthat, Nicholas Kristof, Maureen Dowd, and … Continue reading →

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Political Theology or Liberal Religion (Scale)

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

(views over Harlem on a spring or summer day from Morningside Park)   I don’t think the political theology theorists have carefully considered the ways in which religion is a non-static phenomenon that scales up and down between different types … Continue reading →

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