Jews and Judaism

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On Tim Tebow, 'spirituality' and stating the obvious

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Now, I live in the land of purple and black here in Maryland, home of the World Champion Baltimore Ravens (it’s still fun to say that), where if anyone asked the local faithful to nominate a few candidates for the role of Antichrist, New England coach Bill Belichick would be right near the top of the list. Thus, the announcement that You Know Who had signed with the Patriots (Tim Tebow plus Patriots; get ready for an IRS audit) created quite a bit of amazement.


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A ghost in here? IRS targeting Jews too?

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Fear not religion news reporters, you too can jump into one of the hottest news stories on the wires. Buried deep within an article reporting on the Internal Revenue Services’ harassment of conservative advocacy groups lurks  a religious liberty news story. That may not sound too exciting but you could rephrase the story pitch this way for your editor: Has the IRS created a religious test in order to define what it means to be a loyal Jew?


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Jewish Identity and the Western Wall

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You couldn’t, he thought, find three Jews in the world who would agree on what it meant to be Jewish, yet there were apparently fifty million of these people who knew exactly what it meant to be German, though many of those on deck have never set foot in Germany.


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Winners and losers in our do-it-yourself religion era

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No one on the national religion-news scenes writes with more vigor and enthusiasm about America’s sharp turn away from religious doctrine and traditional religious institutions than veteran scribe Cathy Lynn Grossman of USA Today. Her journalistic glee is completely justified, in my opinion, because this is one of the most important religion-beat stories of our age, especially on the religious left.


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Telling the 'truth' in Hamas-Israeli conflict

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Here’s another story that I wanted to cover last week before I got injured and was in too much pain to be of much use to anyone. But the delay gives us more to talk about.


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Antisemitism and when context matters for the NY Times

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This week, the conservative Weekly Standard broke a story that was headlined: Michelle Obama and John Kerry to Honor Anti-Semite and 9/11 Fan. Written by Samuel Tadros, the story explains that an award was going to be given today from the U.S. State Department to a Muslim woman from Egypt:


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Ultra Orthodox or fervently religious Jews?

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The Jewish Daily Forward has a fascinating discussion of terms used to describe Haredi. It begins by noting that newspaper legend Seth Lipsky recently referred to “the leader of the largest grassroots organization of fervently religious Jews, Rabbi David Zwiebel of the Agudath Israel of America.”


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