23 Jun
Jewish World, Latest

DC-Area Jews Demand ‘Justice for Nabra’

Two nights after the June 18 death of Nabra Hassanen, 300 people gathered in Dupont Circle in Washington DC to light candles, honor her memory, and organize against Islamophobia. “I think it’s clear that our central Jewish values call for us to stand with our neighbors when they are facing attacks,” adds Rabbi Joseph Berman, another local rabbi who attended the vigil.

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23 Nov
Culture, History, Latest, Religion

The Catholic Church Changes Gears on Interfaith Relations

By Gabriel Weinstein Last week a group of twenty cantors from the American Conference of Cantors (ACC) serenaded Catholic officials in Rome with rousing renditions of Adon Olam and other Jewish liturgical melodies.  The concert was a part of the Interfaith Information Center’s conference on Catholic-Jewish relations. Monsignor Renzo Giuliano, priest of the Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri, said it was “very important to be here together and praising our god.”  While Jewish-Catholic relations have been steadily improving for decades, a new Catholic push to mend ties with Muslims is pushing the Church’s Jewish priority to second place. For thousands of years Catholic Jewish relations were marked by antagonism and contempt. For centuries, central tenants of Catholic doctrine included Supercessionism, the belief God rejected Jews and anointed Christians as his chosen people,...

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26 Aug
Uncategorized

When Good Intentions Meet Reality

By Symi Rom-Rymer In a recent posting on the Washington Post's OnFaith blog, a Rabbi and law professor recount their experience on a joint US Jewish-Muslim trip to the concentration camps of Germany and Poland.  According to the authors’ account, “the Muslim leaders were visibly shaken by what they saw” and even those who had previously expressed skepticism about the Holocaust were moved and encouraged those with similar doubts to visit the camps for themselves. Upon their return, the participating imams issued as statement saying in part, “We condemn any attempts to deny this historical reality and declare such denials or any justification of this tragedy as against the Islamic code of ethics…We have a shared responsibility to continue to work together with leaders of all faiths and their communities to fight the dehumanization of all peoples...

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04 May
Uncategorized

Fabulous, Feel-good, and Fatwa-Free

By Symi Rom-Rymer When a Muslim and a Jew walk into a bar, it’s a joke.  When a Muslim discovers he was born Jewish, it’s a movie.  The Infidel, shown as part of the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival, is the story of Mahmud Nasir (Omid Djalili), a middle-aged Muslim man from London’s East End, who discovers after his mother’s death that he was adopted as a baby.  Not only was he adopted, but his birth parents were Jews.  Jews who named him Solomon (Solly) Shimshillewitz, or as his new friend Leonard Goldberg (Richard Schiff) suggests: Jewy-Jew-JewJewawtiz. While Nasir is trying to cope with his new identity, he also must deal with the impending marriage of his son to the stepdaughter of one of Egypt’s most radical imams, Arshad El Masri (Yigal Naor).  The movie takes off when...

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27 Jan
Latest

A Double Standard?

By Symi Rom-Rymer Michael Kimmelman’s recent article, “When Fear Turns Graphic,” offered a peek into the process behind making political art, with the recent Swiss pro-minaret ban ads as his focal point.  Unfortunately, for me, whatever insights he hoped to share were overshadowed by a surprising naïveté when addressing anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe and his condescending tone towards Americans—his readers. First of all, Kimmelman airily dismissed concerns over Switzerland’s latent racism: “Much predictable tut-tutting ensued about Swiss xenophobia, even though surveys showed similar plebiscites would get pretty much the same results elsewhere.” Then, he insulted our intelligence by equating the German and Muslim immigrant experience in Switzerland.  “A 46-year-old German (yes, an immigrant himself in Switzerland), he is the father of two adopted children from North Africa although he declined to talk about his personal life.” Finally, he patronized...

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