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5 days ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — I remember the first time I heard God speaking. It wasn’t specifically to me. It was to everyone — or, at the very least, anyone who was watching “The Ten Commandments,” the classic 1956 film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Charlton Heston as Moses. It was a remake of DeMille’s 1923 silent film, and the 1956 film was to have been his final cinematic effort.
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1 week ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — The cold-blooded killing of Israeli Embassy employees Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, as the couple left an event last week at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., still echoes within our hearts. It is time to talk about another apparent casualty of that shooting: the antisemitism of Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.
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1 week ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — When I look back on my career as a Reform rabbi, I come to the following observation: For almost half of those years, I was a Southern rabbi. I served congregations in Georgia and south Florida. Mind you: Some people think that south Florida is another county of New York City. Wrong. Florida is the South. If you don’t believe me, check out its politics. The South is the three Bs: Brooklyn, Buenos Aires, and yes, Biloxi. I started my career in Miami in 1981. Today, it is an international city.
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2 weeks ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — It was always going to come to this. Last evening, a gunman, Elias Rodriguez, opened fire outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., killing two Israeli Embassy staff members: Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim. The couple had just attended a “Young Diplomats Reception” hosted by the American Jewish Committee. Yaron had recently purchased a ring, intending to propose to Sarah during an upcoming trip to Jerusalem.
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2 weeks ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — “Of course, you know that Hitler negotiated with Herzl.”I heard those words in a university classroom as a sophomore in college in 1974, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War. I raised my hand, and I said: “How is that even possible? When Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism, died in 1904, Hitler was 15 years old. What did they possibly have to negotiate about?”That happened more than 50 years ago, but I will never forget it. It was a clear attempt to link Zionism with Nazism.
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3 weeks ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — I don’t know about you, but ever since Pope Francis died, TikTok has been sending me some very weird videos. Those videos are all about heaven and hell — or, at least, certain Christian perceptions of heaven and hell. A common theme is of an AI-created Pope Francis dying, lying in an open coffin, being kissed by the Virgin Mary and rising into heaven.
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3 weeks ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — Habemus papam! We have a pope!By “we,” I do not only mean the Roman Catholic Church. For the first time, “we” includes the United States of America, as Pope Leo XIV is the first American pope, the first pope from Chicago and, arguably, the first pope to be a Cubs fan. Or, is he a White Sox fan? This was to become the first theological dispute of his papacy. I would root for both teams, but then again, I am a pluralist on such matters.
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1 month ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — “I think that your house was where Tom and Daisy Buchanan lived.”So said the late author Kurt Vonnegut when he attended a benefit for the American Civil Liberties Union at the home of friends in an old mansion in Sands Point, New York, on the north shore of Long Island. Sands Point had a starring role in “The Great Gatsby.” It was East Egg, where Tom and Daisy Buchanan lived. Jay Gatsby lived across the bay in West Egg, which was Kings Point. Vonnegut was pretty sure F.
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1 month ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — “There’s no place in this world where I’ll belong when I’m gone,” sang the late folk singer Phil Ochs in “When I’m Gone.”I found myself singing it as I walked through the Woody Guthrie Center in Tulsa, and its neighbor, the Bob Dylan Center. Both are worth a trip to Oklahoma. The Guthrie Center houses archives on the life and legacy of Ochs, who had a formative influence on my life. He died far too young and far too tragically.
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1 month ago | 
religionnews.com | Jeffrey Salkin
(RNS) — Let me tell you the story of a Jew from Ukraine. His name is Naftali Herz Imber, and he was born in 1856. In 1878, he wrote a poem — “Tikvateinu,” “Our Hope”:Our hope is not yet lost,The ancient hope,To return to the land of our ancestors;The city where David encamped. As long as in his heart within,A soul of a Jew still yearns,And onward towards the ends of the east,His eye still looks towards Zion. In 1882, Imber emigrated to Palestine. People fell in love with his poem.
