I’m pretty sure that my favorite story of this Hanukkah season was this one from Good Morning America:
Catching a gimel on the river
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Let Hanukkah be Hanukkah
Wise and faithful GetReligion readers! Is it a mainstream news story that the beleaguered social-events staff at the White House sent out an invitation card for the First Family’s second Hanakkah party (not the first, the second party) that referred to it as a “holiday reception”? And does this have anything whatsoever to do with the strained relations between liberal Democrats and, believe it or not, Jewish voters (see “Catholic voters”)?
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Birds of a doctrinal feather
The church-state junkie in me really does not know where to begin when it comes to evaluating the mainstream media coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case pitting the University of California’s Hastings College of Law in San Francisco against the campus chapter of the Christian Legal Society.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Why don't we stone for adultery?
On Sunday, I looked a bit at a Newsweek article by religion editor Lisa Miller. Her piece took a position I largely agree with — that there’s no need to say that accused Ft. Hood gunman Hasan is either mentally unstable or an Islamic terrorist. (Although, as I pointed out yesterday, there hasn’t been much evidence of diagnosable mental illness compared to the evidence mounting regarding terrorism.) But I had some issues with how well she made her case.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Diagnosis by journalism
The Washington Post has a story alleging that Major Nidal Hasan had stepped up his communications with a radical, American-born Muslim cleric in Yemen in the months before he killed 13 people at Ft. Hood. An FBI-led task force had obtained the emails between late 2008 and June 2009 but they were not forwarded to the military, for some reason. Some were sent to the FBI’s headquarters but they apparently weren’t considered terribly worrisome:
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Westboro's swing at anti-Semitism
We’ve debated before whether Westboro Baptist Church is worthy of newsprint. Probably not. But the group likely won’t go away if we simply ignore it, which seems to be what The Washington Post had in mind when leaving any mention of Westboro out of this story about their protest at the school the Obama girls attend.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
The fighting rabbinical student
Typically, we refer to a person studying to be a rabbi, like the newly crowned WBA junior middleweight champ Yuri Foreman, as a rabbinical student, not a rabbi-to-be. The Los Angeles Times got it right; USA Today got it wrong. But the LAT failed to deliver even a light body blow to the broader tale of Talmud and the tape. The first word of sports reporter Kevin Baxter’s article about Foreman is “rabbinical” — and not another mention of anything related to Judaism.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Courts deciding who's a Jew
I always appreciate when I have the opportunity to point out a reporter getting religion. The New York Times recently gave us one such example. But first, a little background and a bit of self reference.
Please respect our Commenting Policy
Behold, the messianic!
Jack Teitel has attracted a lot of media attention since the Sabbath. An American Jew who made aliyah in 2000, Teitel was arrested by Israeli police and charged with several acts of terror, including the murder of two Palestinians in 1997, the bombing of a leftist Israeli professor’s house and the Purim bombing of a teenage boy. Police said Teitel also took credit for killing two gay Jews in Tel Aviv in August — though he hadn’t actually been involved.
Please respect our Commenting Policy