"Dispel Every Shadow": Vatican Revisits Antisemitism
Monday, April 30, 2007

News that should make both Jews and Catholics happy: The Vatican is planning to revisit its groundbreaking but controversial 1965 document Nostra Aetate that first took some responsibility for anti-Semitism. As pioneering as it was, many Jews were dissatisfied. Now, the Vatican seems to agree.

The need to step up the fight against anti-Semitism will be a key issue for the world's Roman Catholic bishops at a meeting at the Vatican next year.

An entire section of a preparatory document released by the Vatican on Friday is devoted to the Church's relationship with Jews, noting the "close associations of the two in faith" and calling for efforts "to overcome every form of anti-Semitism."

The 60-page document, which was approved by Pope Benedict XVI, outlines the suggested topics and includes a questionnaire to be answered by local bishops.

After asking if priority is given to dialogue with the Jews, the questionnaire calls on bishops to investigate the use of biblical texts to "ferment attitudes of anti-Semitism."

'"Much has already been done, but everything must be done to dispel every shadow," the

synod's general-secretary, Bishop Nikola Eterovic said.

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Michael Chabon: Bad for Michael Chabon?

Writing is rewriting. The old adage takes on new meaning with Michael Chabon's new book. The WSJ reports on the near-death catastrophe of Chabon's first book since his Pulitzer.

"I shudder now when I think that I would have published the old draft," says Mr. Chabon, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay." Instead, after consultations with his editor, he spent about eight months reworking the entire book -- a murder mystery set in a fictional Yiddish-speaking Jewish homeland in Alaska. He added a flashback structure and pared down the language into a hard-boiled, Yiddish-inflected patois. "I felt like I had to invent a whole new dialect of English to finish it," he says.

Next week, after five years, four drafts, two trips to Alaska and a title change, "The Yiddish Policemen's Union," will arrive in stores. While long gestation periods and multiple drafts aren't unusual in the publishing industry, the time and effort expended on behalf of Mr. Chabon's vision are illustrations of the book's importance to HarperCollins, which won it in a four-way, seven-figure auction in 2002, when it was little more than a one-and-a-half-page proposal. Now the company has again bet big, printing 200,000 copies of the finished product, Mr. Chabon's first full-length adult novel since winning the Pulitzer in 2001. "The stakes are high," says Jonathan Burnham, HarperCollins's publisher, "for Michael and all of us."

Everything about this story makes me happy, especially that Michael (whom I met briefly and had dinner with more than a decade ago but have had no contact with since) is willing to discuss this process openly. It makes me admire him even more, and I deeply admire Kavalier & Klay (even with the overwrought last third). I hope writing teachers teach this article in their schools and I hope the many writers out there who contact me will listen to the honesty in this piece. Old adages aside, one adage I preach a lot is that a writer has to learn to be a good reader of his own material. Maybe this self-honesty (even his point about being defensive at first) is why Michael Chabon is a great writer.

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Samantha Power and Barack Obama

A commenter linked me to this Michael Hirsch piece about one of Obama's chief foreign policy advisers, Samantha Powers, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her 600-page book on genocide. Here's how Hirsch leads his piece: "Samantha Power is a tall, rangy redhead with the purposeful gait of the athlete she once wanted to be. She has a husky voice and often speaks in excited rushes of ideas, the words tumbling over each other. What animates Power more than anything else is her Cause, her “dream of American power being harnessed for good.”

And here's the key anecdote:

Their first meeting, several months later at a D.C. steakhouse, did not begin auspiciously. “His body language was not good,” says Power. “He had no desire to be there at all. It was, ‘Who the fuck is this person, this lily-livered Harvard softy, and tell me why I am meeting with her again?’” Still, Obama warmed up—it was supposed to be a forty-five-minute chat, but they ended up talking for three hours. “We sat down, and we started dinner. I was on my best behavior: I didn’t, like, order my trademark Jack Daniels. And then we just started talking. It was vintage Obama: question after question after question, starting with, ‘Who are you? I don’t get it. Bosnia? Whaaa? That’s weird.’ It ended up being a very personal discussion, oddly enough, but everything led to policy. That’s the way he comes to policy: What’s your story, and why do you tick the way you do? ... He’s what everybody says he is.” Before long, Power says, she had “drunk the Kool-Aid” on Obama. “At the end of the dinner, we’re walking out, and I said, ‘I’d love to help you in any way I can.’ He said, ‘That’d be great, maybe we could do some big think on a smart, tough, and humane foreign policy.’ I heard myself saying, ‘Why don’t I take a year off?’”

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How Many Diana Books Does It Take To Change a Lightbulb?
Friday, April 27, 2007

Apparently 180 is not enough! That's how many have been published up until now. But time to free up your summer: FOURTEEN more Diana books are coming this year, the tenth anniversary of her death, reports the WSJ:

Publishers -- whose only sure-fire hit this summer is the final Harry Potter novel -- are betting that readers will be as captivated as ever by the familiar arc of the princess's life, even though once-hearty sales of books about her have been flagging.

At least 14 new Diana titles are set for publication this year, but no one has more at stake in rekindling that interest than Tina Brown, the former high-profile editor of the New Yorker and Vanity Fair who banked a "healthy seven-figure advance" from Bertelsmann AG's Doubleday imprint for "The Diana Chronicles," according to the publisher.

Doubleday is printing 200,000 copies that will reach stores on June 12. The comprehensive biography promises new insights regarding Diana's pursuit of Prince Charles, her sad early years and how she used the media to her own ends. Beyond juicy details, Ms. Brown says she set out to write a book that examined the princess in a media and social context while discussing the impact of celebrity culture: "Why Diana was important, why she continues to fascinate, and what we should make of her 10 years after her death."

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God and Godless on C-SPAN

Some interesting discussions this weekend on C-SPAN-2's BookTV.

Saturday:
Live 2pm ET/11am PT
Panel Discussion on Religion: The Politics of Faith
  • Reza Aslan, "No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam"
  • Chris Hedges, "American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America"
  • Jack Miles, "Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God & God: A Biography"
  • Moderator: Jonathan Kirsch

    • Sunday:
    At 1:30pm ET/10:30am PT, a panel on the mixing of religion and culture featuring: Christopher Hitchens ("God Is Not Great"), Zachary Karabell ("Peace Be upon You: The Story of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence"), and Jonathan Kirsch ("A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization"). The panel is moderated by Thane Rosenbaum.

    Also on Sunday at 11:00 AM, a conversation with David Halberstam.

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    Babies Not in Limbo

    Speaking of Catholicism, the Vatican announced on Friday that unbaptized babies who dies can still go to heaven instead of being trapped in limbo. This leads Slate to ask, what about the babies who already went to limbo?

    They've probably been in heaven all this time, but no one knows for sure. Until the recent announcement, the limbo crowd was thought to include anyone who hadn't been baptized but would otherwise deserve to go to heaven—like infants (including aborted fetuses), virtuous pagans, and pre-Christian Jews. Those who had been baptized, on the other hand, either joined God in heaven, made up for their sins in purgatory, or suffered forever in hell....

    The fate of unbaptized babies has confounded Catholic scholars for centuries. According to church catechisms, or teachings, babies that haven't been splashed with holy water bear the original sin, which makes them ineligible for joining God in heaven. At the same time, as innocent beings, they surely don't deserve eternal torment. St. Augustine concluded in the fourth century that the babies must be punished in the fire of hell, but only with the "mildest condemnation." Eight centuries later, Thomas Aquinas thought infant souls wouldn't go to heaven, but they wouldn't suffer in the afterlife, either (and they wouldn't even know what they were missing). Theologians eventually settled on limbo as a hypothetical compromise—a state of natural, though incomplete, happiness.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    "Dog-Bites-Man" Pope

    David Gibson, author of a book about Pope Benedict, offers a modest, even downcast review of the pope's first two year's in office:

    Benedict restricted the role of lay people at Mass in order to reinforce the separate, Christ-like action of the priest, and he is expected to announce soon that he will allow widespread use of the pre-Vatican II Latin Mass, in which the priest faces away from the congregation. That would come despite the strong opposition of many bishops in Europe, the United States, even inside the Roman curia — and even though there are hardly any priests who can celebrate the old rite or worshipers who would understand what is happening.

    Predictably, Benedict has also renewed church stands against married clergy and the ban on divorced and remarried Catholics receiving communion. Changes in the role of women in the church or teachings on sexual behavior are of course out of the question. And Benedict has reinforced the primacy of the pope — an issue his predecessor had opened for debate.

    He ends with this downbeat note:

    Benedict is a “dog-bites-man” pope, notable largely for what he was not expected to do, or for actions that produce unnerving reactions, like his speech critiquing Islam last September that enraged many Muslims. The pope actually devoted the bulk of that lecture to questioning non-Catholic Christians and secular Westerners who he said were in thrall to modern rationalism.

    Certainly, Benedict has in two years preached many striking and even lyrical meditations on the beauty of the faith that is at the heart of Christianity. But in the United States, as elsewhere, the challenge is not so much a crisis of faith as a “crisis of church.” It is not a question of why believe as much as why be Catholic. People are convinced by deeds that match rhetoric, and a closer look at the actions behind Benedict’s words shows that the two are still far apart.

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    Tim Russert Pulls a Dan Quayle
    Thursday, April 26, 2007

    You know America is in trouble when ... Don't miss this!

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:31 AM 0 comments  

    Uncovering the Persophobes

    A diverting if trivial debate has broken out in the blogosphere about whether John McCain hurt or helped his campaign by singing "Bomb, Bomb Iran" a number of days ago. You know how it goes: Conventional wisdom says he hurt his candidacy, then the imperative of pundits to then challenge the CW kicks in and a number of people say it actually helps his campaign among core Conservatives. Then another minor blip emerges and the pundits and blogosphere go chasing that diversionary story for a while.

    Anyway, I was indulging in a bit of reading on this the other day when I stumbled onto Eunomia, a blog by Daniel Larson, a Conservative PhD student in Byzantine studies, who offers this sentence:

    The voters McCain most needs to win over right now are Fred Thompson-adoring Persophobes who believe, as the members of the audience in the video believe, that bombing Iran is the obviously right and necessary thing to do.
    What jumped out at me in this sentence was the word Persophobe. I'd never heard it before, and don't know its origin, but I love it! Persophobes. Perfect for the warmongering Iran-bashers out there right now.

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    Two By Two By Tinsletown

    Noah's ark is landing in Los Angeles. These pics from a new exhibition at the Skirball Center.

    Some view a strip of tire tread as trash. Brooklyn-based artist and puppeteer Chris Green envisions a crocodile. Wind turbines are zebra haunches. Pink flamingos arise from an amalgam of wood and bamboo, combs, spools of thread, flea market purses and plastic fly swatters.

    Shaped by Green's fertile imagination, the oddly lifelike critters are among the many inhabitants of "Noah's Ark," a new play-oriented, hands-on, animal-centric realization of the flood story opening June 26 at the Skirball Cultural Center.

    Five years in the making, the 8,000-square-foot, $5-million, non-religious permanent installation is a deliberate redefinition of the Jewish heritage institution as a destination attraction for families of all backgrounds, expanding the center's big-tent philosophy, says Uri D. Herscher, founding president and chief executive.

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    Thumbs Up!
    Wednesday, April 25, 2007

    Wow. And good for him. Really good for him. There was a time when I would vote his ballot on Oscar night. And, invariably, win.

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    Hispanics: More God In Politics

    Another fascinating tidbit from the Pew Study: Hispanic Catholics think churches should be a place of political activism and haven't been enough. Dems who say they want to appeal more to Hispanic voters but who also say religious leaders should stay out of politics are going to have think again. Secular liberal bloggers who call for preachers to butt out of politics are going to have a bitter wake-up call.

    Two-thirds of Hispanics say that their religious beliefs are an important influence on their political thinking. More than half say churches and other houses of worship should address the social and political questions of the day. By nearly a two-to-one margin, Latinos say that there has been too little expression of religious faith by political leaders rather than too much. Churchgoing Hispanics report that their clergy often address political matters, although the extent of that practice varies considerably by issue and by religious tradition.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 3:35 PM 0 comments  

    Habla Espanol, Benedict?

    The Catholic Church in America is changing. Quickly. The NYT:

    The influx of Hispanic immigrants to the United States is transforming the Roman Catholic Church as well as the nation’s religious landscape, according to a major study of Hispanics and faith released today.

    The study, conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center and the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, found that many Hispanics practice a “distinctive form” of charismatic Catholicism that includes speaking in tongues, miraculous healings and prophesying — practices more often associated with Pentecostalism. Among non-Hispanic Catholics, these traditions are practiced by some but are not so widespread.

    The study also found that most Hispanics are clustering in “ethnic congregations” with Hispanic clergy, Spanish-language services and where the majority of congregants are Hispanic. These ethnic congregations are cropping up throughout the country — not just in neighborhoods with a concentration of Hispanics, but even in areas where Hispanics are sparse.

    According to the survey, 68 percent of Hispanics are Roman Catholic, 15 percent are born-again or evangelical Protestants, 5 percent are mainline Protestants, 3 percent are identified as “other Christian,” and 8 percent are secular (1 percent refused to answer). This is a very different picture than that of non-Hispanic Americans, where the largest groupings are 20 percent Catholic, 35 percent evangelical and 24 percent mainline Protestant.

    About one-third of Catholics in the United States are now Hispanic.

    To read the full report, click here.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 3:31 PM 0 comments  

    Michael Chabon: Bad for the Jews?

    I can't improve on this GalleyCast post, and can't improve on its headline for sure (which I've borrowed/lifted/stolen-with-attribution above). I can make it relevant to Feiler Faster by pointing out that my brother predicted that the new Chabon novel would be a #1 NYT bestseller.

    Kyle Smith becomes the first commentator (as far as I know) to play the "Bad Jew" card against Michael Chabon for making the antagonists in his new novel, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, "a gangsterish extreme sect of Hasidim" who commit violence against other Jews to fulfill their ultra-Zionist agenda.

    At its core, Smith's broadside against the novel is of a piece with Wendy Shalit's 2005 attack on Jewish writers who failed, in her eyes, to depict the Orthodox with sufficient admiration. The Post being a far cry from the NYTBR, though, the tone isn't quite so elevated, as in a comment upon the film rights: "With Chabon's take on Jews as the central element in endless struggle, maybe Mel Gibson would like to direct." Har de har har. (Of course, I'm biased, as I think the novel in question is pegged to be one of this year's strongest award contenders.)

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:11 AM 0 comments  

    The Sam Harris of France

    The WSJ runs a fascinating piece (reprinted on this blog) on the rise of evangelical atheism in France. If you're interested in why the U.S. continues to be religious and Europe does not: First, this article will challenge your assumptions, and Second, this is a must read.

    Indifference to faith has left Europe’s churches mostly empty. But debate over religion is more intense and strident than it has been in many decades. Religion is re-emerging as a big issue in part because of anxiety over Europe’s growing and restive Muslim populations and a fear that faith is reasserting itself in politics and public policy. That is all adding up to a growing momentum for a combative brand of atheism, one that confronts rather than merely ignores religion.

    Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun and prominent British author on religion, calls the trend “missionary secularism.” She says it mimics the ardor of Christianity, Islam and Marxism, all of which have at their core an urge to convert nonbelievers to their worldview.

    Mr. Onfray argues that atheism faces a “final battle” against “theological hocus-pocus” and must rally its troops. “We can no longer tolerate neutrality and benevolence,” he writes in “Traité d’athéologie,” or Atheist Manifesto, a best seller in France, Italy and Spain. “The turbulent time we live in suggests that change is at hand and the time has come for a new order.”

    As with many fights involving faith, Europe’s struggle between belief and nonbelief is also a proxy for other, concrete issues that go far beyond the supernatural. In this case, they involve a battle to define the identity of a continent.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    Israel in Asia

    Looks like the Israeli-Palestinian issue trumps Iraq among the 50% of Southeast Asians who are Muslims. From Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek column this week.

    The Bush administration's basic policies in Asia have been intelligent. Washington has maintained good and productive relations with China while also strengthening ties to Japan, India, Australia, Singapore and Vietnam. But the relationship is plagued by two problems. First, the administration has been obsessed with Iraq, and so everything else, including Asia, gets too little sustained and strategic attention. Second, America is still beleaguered by the total collapse of its image abroad, which makes it difficult for countries like Indonesia and Thailand to take measures that are seen as pro-American.

    When I asked Prime Minister Lee how to change this dynamic, he reminded me that nearly half of Southeast Asia's population is Muslim and said, "The single most important thing that the U.S. could do to shift its image in the region would be to take a more active role on the Israeli-Palestinian issue and in a balanced way. The issue is more important for Southeast Asia's Muslims than even Iraq." Singapore's strategic elite, with close ties to the United States and Israel, aren't trying to score ideological points. They don't offer the usual stinging criticism of America's Iraq policy, for example. When I asked Lee about it, his concern was simple: "If you lose standing [because of] Iraq, it's bad for us."

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    PBS Goes Godless

    I received an email from the producers of a new documentary on atheism that will be airing on PBS in a few weeks. I haven't seen it, but I thought I would pass along the info:

    A Brief History of Disbelief, a provocative three-part series premiering on public television on May 4, will broaden the discussion of atheism.

    It seems America is ready. You may be aware that last week longtime U.S. Congressman Pete Stark publicly declared that he does not believe in a supreme being. And the top two bestselling religion books in the country are about atheism.

    Written and narrated by acclaimed British intellectual Jonathan Miller -- author, lecturer, TV producer/host, director of theater, opera and film, and neurologist -- A Brief History of Disbelief originally aired on the BBC in the U.K.
    Here's a link to more information.

    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Obama Avoids Hot Falafels
    Tuesday, April 24, 2007

    If a heated conversation I had over the weekend in Central Park is any indication, Barack Obama's chief problem is still his lack of experience, and his lack of specific ideas beyond his message of hope. Well, message to certain friends: He's beginning a set of three policy speeches to begin filling in the details. First up, foreign policy. How'd he do? Safe, I'd say, but at least no whoppers. I think he did a good job of weaving a few details into his larger theme of taking back leadership in the world with a message of hope to overlooked corners. But hard to see how he can bring that much hope. Are Americans in that generous a mood after Iraq. I doubt it.

    For what it's worth, he didn't follow Bob Wright's advice and say that living in Indonesia, a Muslim country, makes him better prepared. As I predicted, he's staying away from that hot falafel. Here's what he said about the Middle East beyond Iraq:

    Moreover, until we change our approach in Iraq, it will be increasingly difficult to refocus our efforts on the challenges in the wider region – on the conflict in the Middle East, where Hamas and Hezbollah feel emboldened and Israel’s prospects for a secure peace seem uncertain; on Iran, which has been strengthened by the war in Iraq; and on Afghanistan, where more American forces are needed to battle al Qaeda, track down Osama bin Laden, and stop that country from backsliding toward instability.

    Burdened by Iraq, our lackluster diplomatic efforts leave a huge void. Our interests are best served when people and governments from Jerusalem and Amman to Damascus and Tehran understand that America will stand with our friends, work hard to build a peaceful Middle East, and refuse to cede the future of the region to those who seek perpetual conflict and instability. Such effective diplomacy cannot be done on the cheap, nor can it be warped by an ongoing occupation of Iraq. Instead, it will require patient, sustained effort, and the personal commitment of the President of the United States. That is a commitment I intend to make.
    Read the full speech here.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 1 comments  

    Gays and "Goldilocks" Judaism

    Michael Medved offers a surprisingly hate-filled and ahistorical attack on the de facto admission of homosexual rabbis into Conservative Judaism.

    Religious liberals in Christian as well as Jewish denominations call it hypocritical to focus on biblical definitions of marriage or sanctions against homosexuality, while readily disregarding so many other rules from Scripture. Despite Old Testament references, they note, most people don't marry multiple wives today, or employ slave-like indentured servants in our homes, or avoid eating shellfish. But the Bible merely permitted polygamy and indentured servitude in certain circumstances, never commanding those practices for everyone. In Jewish law, male-female marriage, on the other hand, is a mitzvah — an obligation, a commandment. And to this day, Conservative Judaism still doesn't sanction shrimp.

    As recently as 1992, the committee of leading Conservative legal scholars found that Jewish law clearly prohibited same-sex commitment ceremonies and admitting homosexuals to rabbinical seminaries, but public pressure — not some startling discovery of ancient text — forced adjustment to 21st century trends. Arnold Eisen, chancellor-elect of The Jewish Theological Seminary, declared: "The decision to ordain gay and lesbian clergy at JTS is in keeping with the longstanding commitment of the Jewish tradition to pluralism.

    Pluralism means that we recognize more than one way to be a good Conservative Jew, more than one way of walking authentically in the path of our tradition."

    In other words, he now embraces moral relativism in its modern-day "let's not be judgmental" garb and abandons the traditional role of religion to command or at least suggest clear standards for human behavior and intimate relationships. Jonathan Sarna, professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University, justified this new direction by suggesting that Conservative Judaism couldn't survive without it. "A movement that wants to attract a younger generation of disaffected Jews had no choice but to make this decision," he told The New York Times.

    Recent history in both the Jewish and Christian communities suggests he's wrong: Disaffected young people seldom flock to watered-down versions of religious faith that lack continuity or integrity. The rapidly growing denominations are those that make demands on potential adherents and advance clear standards of right and wrong. That's why Evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity has grown while "mainline" Protestant denominations have dwindled, and why traditionalist Catholicism boasts more worldwide vitality than liberal strains of the church. Meanwhile, Mormons uphold multiple restrictions (giving up alcohol, coffee, tobacco, among other things) and yet constitute one of the fastest-growing creeds in the USA.

    In Judaism, the same dynamic applies: with tepid, uncertain versions of the faith fighting a losing battle to maintain the affiliation of their young people, while the unaffiliated explore enthusiastic, traditionalist sects. No movement in Judaism has experienced anything like the explosive recent growth of the Hassidic organization, Chabad, with its 3,300 community centers miraculously appearing nearly everywhere and transforming the face of American Judaism. The Conservative movement has been losing influence during the past 40 years not because of its unbending adherence to outmoded rituals but because of its confusion, contradictions and gradual disregard of tradition.

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    Kentucky Abraham Salon

    From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

    Highland Baptist Church, 1101 Cherokee Road, will begin a four-week study on the common ground among Jews, Christians and Muslims based on Bruce Feiler's book "Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths" at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday. Information: www.hbclouky.org or 451-3735.

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    David Halberstam, 1934 - 2007
    Monday, April 23, 2007

    Even a casual glance at bookshelves in my home, as with bookshelves of people like me around the country, would reveal multiple volumes by David Halberstam. The sheer breadth of his interests and places that he reported from in his five decades plus as a major figure in American journalism is staggering -- Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement, Japan, the baseball diamond, 9-11. Any of us who write non-fiction narratives today write in his shadow. Simply put: The genre was defined by a small number of writers who came out of a certain time and place in America. I'm thinking of Tom Wolfe, Gay Talese, Norman Mailer, John Hersey, and others David Halberstam would make the Top Ten list of these writers, and he would make it in nearly every decade he wrote. His profile was enormous. His voice (even his speaking voice) distinctive. His moral authority tremendous. His stature statuesque, in all the good senses of that word.

    Sure, in recent years, as I traveled in certain circles in New York, I began to hear stories of Halberstam submitting pieces that were too long, and too cumbersome, to be printed without serious editing. I began to notice how long some of the books he wrote actually were, which is often a sign of a writer who refused to be edited or cut down. Some of his recent work may have been more admired than read.

    But I also began to notice how brilliant his topic choices were, how he switched deftly between long, serious narratives about major public policy issues and shorter, more tightly focused portraits of a certain moment in sport. I have no doubt some of that was done for commercial reasons, and the desire to stay current. I once heard him say in an interview about mentoring a young writer, John Burnham Schwartz, who was his neighbor and later a novelist about Japan, that he would call Schwartz early in the morning and announce he had been working for two hours and wondering how much writing his junior by 30 years had done. Few writers who had achieved his stature would continue to put in that much effort at that stage in their careers.

    I remember thinking at the time that this story reflected a certain neediness on Halberstam's part, but thinking back on it tonight, I think it represents something else. An understanding of the privilege that any of us who get to write books for a living feel, or at least should feel. David Halberstam was at the nexus of America's intersection with the world for over five decades. He wrote books that will help define that period for the next hundred years. And even into his 70's, he viewed that role as a rare honor, one given to him by a combination of determination, perspective, dedication, the ability to put the world into context, and the willingness of others to listen to his stories. His life was about the triumph of stories -- and the power of those stories to remake the world. That he lived through some of the most tumultuous stories of the last half century then died in a car accident after sharing some of those stories with future tellers at a journalism school hardly seems like a fitting ending. But it reminds those of us who try to live up to his legacy that the greatest gift of all is sitting down and starting at the beginning.

    Posted by B Feiler at 9:07 PM 0 comments  

    Barbara Bush: Mormons Gone Wild

    Barbara Bush has waded into the muddy waters of God in the '08 election. First, her husband said on CNN today that the country may be experiencing a bit of "Bush fatigue" and that's why Jeb isn't running. As to which candidate he prefers? "I have no dog in that hunt," Bush said "But three good men are leading and there are some others too. Any I can't talk bad about the Democrats. It's very, very early, but it's comfortable to be on the sidelines. " CNN picks up the story from there.

    Asked if voters should be weary of Romney being a Mormon, the former president's wife, Barbara, said "not at all," noting there are "wild people" in many religions.

    "I mean it was in 1897 that bigamy was outlawed in that church," she said. "You know we have a lot of Christian wild people too, and a lot of Jewish wild people and a lot of Muslim wild people. The Mormon religion takes care of it's own, they don't have people on welfare.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 4:23 PM 0 comments  

    Paperback Row

    From "Paperback Row" in Sunday's NYT:

    WHERE GOD WAS BORN: A Daring Adventure Through the Bible’s Greatest Stories, by Bruce Feiler. (Harper Perennial, $14.95. ) In his books “Walking the Bible” (2001) and “Abraham” (2002), and again in “Where God Was Born,” Feiler — accompanied by an Israeli archaeologist — visits biblical sites throughout the Middle East, rereading the scriptural episodes that took place there.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 3:16 PM 0 comments  

    Settlers Gain Power

    Disheartening news for peace in the Middle East:

    Spring 2007 was not expected to be a time of settler assertion. After the evacuation of 9,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza 20 months ago, Ehud Olmert was elected prime minister on a platform that included removing thousands more settlers from the West Bank and an end to the occupation of large swaths of that territory.

    But much has changed in the past year. The militants of Hamas are in power in the Palestinian government, and Israel’s war with the Lebanese militia Hezbollah last summer has left Mr. Olmert politically weak.

    Those who took over the Hebron building now say with confidence that they will stay for many decades.

    “We know that we must say, ‘This is my place,’ and be determined to live in it,” said Yesca Levinger, 31, who is sharing a small room in the building with her husband and three children.

    Political analysts say the settlers see an opening.

    “They finished licking their wounds,” said Akiva Eldar, a columnist for Haaretz. “They feel much stronger because there is a kind of consensus that the disengagement was a mistake. They paid the price for the mistake, they are the underdogs and everybody in the Israeli mainstream has to ask for their forgiveness. The government will be very careful not to touch them.”

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    Welcome to the 1950's

    In light of my recent post about the 40th anniversary of legal inter-racial marriages, this article is stunning. A high school in Georgia this year holds its FIRST inter-racial prom.

    For the first time, the faces of students at the Turner County High School prom were both white and black.

    Each year, in spite of integration, the school's white students had raised money for their own unofficial prom and black students did the same to throw their own separate party, an annual ritual that divided the southern Georgia peanut-farming county anew each spring.

    That all changed Saturday as horse-drawn carriages and stretch limousines carried young couples around the downtown streets to a single prom.

    ''I couldn't be more proud of these young people,'' said Ray Jordan, the county's school superintendent. ''The changes needed to come from the student body.''

    At the start of the school year, Turner County's four senior class officers had told principal Chad Stone they wanted an official prom and they wanted everyone invited.

    Stone spent $5,000 of his discretionary fund to put together the county's first school-sponsored prom. Another $5,000 came from supporters after news stories about the plan spread across the nation.

    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    "As the Wife of a Black Man"

    A reader writes a poignant note in response to my post about inter-racial marriages.

    I agree that interracial marriage has become more accepted over the past forty years. It was not an easy journey, especially for those of us who have been in interracials relationships for forty years. I have seen the worst and the best treatment from people across the U.S. I am very happy to see that today, my children and grand children do not go through the pain and segregation that I did in the late sixties, seventies, and eighties, as the wife of a Black man. For many years the Black women in my life accepted me, while my mother, grandmothers,and aunts did not. I was closer to my mother-in-law, before she died, than I am with my mother even to this day.

    Over the past ten to fifteen years, my mother has finally accepted my children and grand children, but my sons still remember how they were treated compared to how she treated their cousins.

    We are on the path where race is not an issue, however I believe we still have some road to travel.

    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    What Do Tiger Woods, Clarence Thomas, and Barack Obama's Parents Have in Common?
    Friday, April 20, 2007

    All are (or were) in interracial relationships. And so are many more. An underdiscussed milestone gets some exposure:

    It was only 40 years ago - on June 12, 1967 - that the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a Virginia statute barring whites from marrying nonwhites. The decision also overturned similar bans in 15 other states.

    Since that landmark Loving v. Virginia ruling, the number of interracial marriages has soared; for example, black-white marriages increased from 65,000 in 1970 to 422,000 in 2005, according to Census Bureau figures. Factoring in all racial combinations, Stanford University sociologist Michael Rosenfeld calculates that more than 7 percent of America's 59 million married couples in 2005 were interracial, compared to less than 2 percent in 1970.

    Coupled with a steady flow of immigrants from all parts of the world, the surge of interracial marriages and multiracial children is producing a 21st century America more diverse than ever, with the potential to become less stratified by race.

    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    God's Top Ten

    Peer inside the "vast Right Wing conspiracy": There's a smaller, easily definable leadership of the Religious Right. Kudos to the Religious News Service for identifying the most influential religious conservatives in the country:

    · Broadcaster and psychologist James Dobson, whose Focus on the Family radio show attracts some 220 million listeners who tune in for his views on the merits – and failings – of various candidates.

    · Michael Farris, founder and chairman of the Homeschool Legal Defense Association, who one observer said had "a network of home-schoolers that will do anything for him."

    · Richard Land, the go-to political guru for the nation's 16 million Southern Baptists, who has been outspoken in declaring what is acceptable (Mormonism) and what is not (infidelity).

    · Pam Olsen, president of the Florida Prayer Network, and a mother of four who set up a network of pastors and organizers in each of the state's 67 counties.

    · Rod Parsley, pastor of the 14,000-member World Harvest Church in the battleground state of Ohio, who can use his network of pastors to help a candidate fine-tune his message to reach conservatives.

    · Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, the most powerful Christian lobbying group in Washington whose e-mail alerts reach 200,000 people each day.

    · Steve Scheffler, head of the 4,000-member Iowa Christian Alliance, the most active – and credible – religious group in the Hawkeye State.

    · Tamara Scott, Iowa leader of Concerned Women for America, who has talked with nearly every GOP candidate and is willing to back a candidate who's "truly conservative," even if he's a longshot.

    · Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice and national radio host, whose blessing on Mitt Romney's campaign was a huge stamp of approval for the Mormon candidate.

    · Don Wildmon, chairman of the influential Arlington Group and head of the American Family Association, pontificates about politics and society on the 185 radio stations that his group owns across 36 states.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    The Great Camel Race

    After trekking up and down a mountain in Petra a few years back on a camel, a scene described in WALKING THE BIBLE, I concluded that eight hours on a camel is like eight hours on a camel, and nothing else. You can imagine, then, how shocking it is to read that the Great Camel Race of Qatar has begun, and contestants ride for TEN DAYS for the chance to win the sword of the emir.

    THE annual race of thoroughbred Arabian camels for the sword of HH the Emir will kick off today at Shahaniyah race track.

    The race is to continue until April 25 with big numbers of thoroughbred Arabian and GCC camels contesting for the sword.

    The Camel Race Organising Committee led by Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Faisal al-Thani has completed all arrangements for the race. The camels from the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) member states have already arrived in Doha to contest for the race.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Where Is Devil Idol When You Need It?
    Thursday, April 19, 2007

    Samuel Jackson as God. Jim Caviezel as Jesus. Charlton Heston as Moses. These are just a few Hollywood stars who've played characters from the Bible. But who should play the Devil? You'd think it would be easy (what about Al Pacino from a few years ago), but it's not.

    Finding the perfect Jesus was no problem for Carl Amari — he just called up Jim Caviezel, who starred in "The Passion of the Christ" — but making a deal with just the right devil has turned out to be harder than hell.

    "And you need a good Satan," Amari said with a bit of exasperation, "because Satan has some of the best lines in the Bible."

    Amari is a 43-year-old Chicago entrepreneur who made a fortune in the late 1980s by salvaging old-time radio shows and repackaging them on cassette tapes. Now Amari sees a golden opportunity in giving the family Bible a serious digital upgrade — he's behind "The Word of Promise," a lavishly produced, word-for-word dramatic reading of the Bible by Caviezel and other Hollywood stars that, when it's completed, will fill 70 CDs.

    The first part of the project, a 20-CD set of the New Testament for $49.95, will arrive in stores in October. Considering the proven potency of both the audio-book marketplace and Christian retail, it might be a holiday-gift sensation. The presence of Caviezel should give it instant cachet in many Christian circles; the 100-person cast also includes Terence Stamp as God, Michael York as the narrator, Luke Perry as Judas and Marisa Tomei as Mary Magdalene. The recording sessions began in July, but, to the consternation of Amari and director JoBe Cerny, the role of Satan is still up in the air.

    "We're still experimenting," Cerny said Tuesday from the studio in Chicago. "We have some ideas and someone in mind, but nothing is for sure yet. It's a challenge because it needs to sound really devious and seductive and, uh, you know, devilish. But you don't want to be too over-the-top."
    One of the people they rejected apparently was Simon Cowell.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:05 AM 1 comments  

    If Only Elvis Was A Scientologist

    John Travolta says it saved him, otherwise he would have been Elvis or Marilyn Monroe.

    Actor John Travolta says he was as big a star as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe but he did not end tragically like them because of his values and his faith in Scientology.

    Newsweek quoted him as saying: 'I have fame on the level of a Marilyn Monroe or an Elvis Presley, but part of the reason I didn't go the way they did was because of my beliefs.'

    Travolta went on to explain that his faith in Scientology made the difference between him and the icons.

    'People make judgments about it (Scientology), but often they don't know what they're talking about. I would advise anyone who wants to know about it to read up on it. We (the Church of Scientology) are only getting bigger and we help people all over the world, from disaster zones to drug rehabilitation.'

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    No Church, Please, We're Hispanic

    Assimilation is bad for Catholicism, apparently.

    A wave of research shows that increasing percentages of Hispanics are abandoning church, suggesting to researchers that along with assimilation comes a measure of secularization.

    Several studies show that Hispanics are just as likely as other Americans to identify themselves as having “no religion,” and to not affiliate with a church. Those who describe themselves as secular are, without question, a small minority among Hispanics — as they are among Americans at large. But, in contrast to many of the non-Hispanic Americans who identify themselves as secular, most of the Hispanics say they were once religious.

    The Roman Catholic Church, the religious home for most Hispanics, is experiencing the greatest exodus. While many former Catholics join evangelical or Pentecostal churches, the recent research shows that many of them leave church altogether.

    “Migrating to the U.S. means you have the freedom to create your own identity,” said Keo Cavalcanti, a sociologist at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., and a co-author of a recent study that found a trend toward secularization among Hispanics in Richmond. “When people get here they realize that maintaining that pro forma display of religiosity is not essential to doing well.”

    A separate study of 4,000 Hispanics to be released this month by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life and the Pew Hispanic Center found that 8 percent of them said they had “no religion” — similar to the 11 percent in the general public. Of the Hispanics who claimed no religion, two-thirds said they had once been religious. Thirty-nine percent of the Hispanics who said they had no religion were former Catholics.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Thompson's Hometown Newspaper Asks Him to Resign
    Wednesday, April 18, 2007

    A Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial: "If Tommy Thompson's presidential run isn't over, it should be. And this has nothing to do with his relatively light campaign chest. His remarks about Jewish people and tradition Monday revealed him simply to be ill-suited to the presidency."

    Meanwhile, Thompson told The Politico "that fatigue and a persistent cold were to blame" for his comments.

    Via Politicalwire.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 1:28 PM 0 comments  

    Can You Teach Religion Without Endorsing Its Claims?

    Stanley Fish resumes his discussion of religion in schools over at the NYT:

    In a March 31st Op-Ed column I critiqued Professor Stephen Prothero’s claim (quoted in Time magazine’s April 2nd issue) that the “academic study of religion … takes the biblical truth claims seriously and yet brackets them for purposes of classroom discussion.” I questioned how anyone could take something seriously by leaving it at the door or putting it on the shelf. And I said that in the absence of its truth claims – claims like salvation is through belief in Jesus Christ who rose from the dead and redeemed us by taking upon himself all our sins – a religion was nothing more than a set of stories and ritual practices bereft of any transcendent meaning of which they would be the expression. You can teach those stories and practices – just as you might teach the stories and practices of baseball (which is, I know, the religion of some people) – but you wouldn’t, I insisted, be teaching religion, only its empty shell.
    He goes on to report that he was criticized, with his responders arguing that you could teach the truth claims of religion as historical and cultural facts without either believing or disbelieving in them, and teaching the exclusive truth claims of a religion as matters of fact goes against the principles of liberal democracy and liberal education.

    I stipulate to the usefulness of teaching the bible as an aid to the study of literature and history. I’m just saying that when you do that you are teaching religion as a pedagogical resource, not as a distinctive discourse the truth or falsehood of which is a matter of salvation for its adherents. One can of course teach that too; one can, that is, get students to understand that at least some believers hold to their faith in a way that is absolute and exclusionary; in their view nonbelievers have not merely made a mistake – as one might be mistaken about the causes of global warming – they have condemned themselves to eternal perdition. (“I am the way.”) What one cannot do – at least under the liberal democratic dispensation – is teach that assertion of an exclusive and absolute truth as anything but someone’s opinion; and in many classes that opinion will be rehearsed with at best a sympathetic condescension (“let’s hope they grow out of it”) and at worst a condemning ridicule (“even in this day and age, there are benighted people”).

    In short, what one cannot do is teach a religion as true, because as Patrick Tharp notes, to do so would be to teach a singular truth – “All religions can’t be taught as truth, only one” – and a chief tenet of liberal education (it is a religion too) is that a range of religious views should be taught in the sense of being noted and indexed in the manner of sociology or anthropology.

    I have to say that I don't quite see the problem here. First, I don't believe that just because one religion claims to have truth doesn't also mean that another religion can't also have truth. Plenty of religions teach that religions can coexist with other religions. Even the first of the Ten Commandments says there should be no other god before me, not that I am the only God. I also disagree with the notion that teaching religion without endorsing its claims is teaching an empty shell. We teach Marxism, for example, without endorsing all its claims. We teach different philosophies without endorsing all their claims. We teach tyrants without endorsing all their claims. The principal argument for teaching religion in school is borne out in the importance of religion in the world today. Without teaching religion we simply are not equipping our students to understand and be able to cope with the world. And that, after all, is the main purpose of education.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    When Doctors Preach ...

    patients get better?

    More than half of physicians believe that religion and spirituality have a significant influence on patients' health, according to a report in the April 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Physicians who are most religious are more likely to interpret the influence of religion and spirituality in positive ways.

    The relationship between religion and health generates controversy in the medical world, according to background information in the article. "Consensus seems to begin and end with the idea that many (if not most) patients draw on prayer and other religious resources to navigate and overcome the spiritual challenges that arise in their experiences of illness," the authors note. "Controversy remains regarding whether, to what extent and in what ways religion and spirituality helps or harms patients' health."

    Farr A. Curlin, M.D., and colleagues at the University of Chicago mailed a survey in 2003 to a random sample of 2,000 practicing U.S. physicians 65 years or younger from all specialties. The survey included questions to determine physicians' religious characteristics, general observations and interpretations of religion and spirituality and potential positive and negative influences of religion and spirituality.

    The response rate was 63 percent (1,144 of 1,820) and the average age for respondents was 49. According to the study, two-thirds of U.S. physicians believe that experiencing illness often or always increases patients' awareness of religion and spirituality issues. A majority of physicians (56 percent) think that religion and spirituality has much or very much influence on health and 54 percent believe that at times a supernatural being intervenes. The majority of physicians (85 percent) believe that the influence of religion and spirituality is generally positive, but few (6 percent) feel that religion and spirituality changes medical outcomes.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    "I Thought He Was A Little Out of His Mind"

    A reader writes:

    I have just finished your book, Learning To Bow : Inside the heart of Japan, for my world geography class and I wanted to let you know how much I truely enjoyed reading it. When my professor told us that we were going to have to read for geography I thought he was a little out of his mind. Reading about the different culture in Japan, as you had spoke about in your book, was truly a shock! To think that their beliefs on strict schooling and regime was so disciplined was beyond what I could ever imagined. I had no idea how truely diverse they were from the American way of living. I have to say that the chapter that mostly surprised me was where the boy had committeed suicide. I really never saw that coming and have to say that it was a little scary. I know how kids in American society talk about suicide and usually its just a means for attention, but for that child to jump off the balcony of his third story classroom was defintely surprising to me. Overall, I loved reading about the wedding, their different envelopes, and many other cultural things that they do in Japan that we do not do here in America. I will defintely be reading some more of your books, but on my own time instead of class assignments.
    Thanks for sticking through the assignment! I would guess over the years that LEARNING TO BOW has been assigned to more classes than any of my other books, though ABRAHAM is probably catching up quickly.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Truth Check: The Holocaust and British Schools
    Tuesday, April 17, 2007

    A worldwide furor has erupted in response to a British study that concluded that some teachers are not teaching mandated courses in the Holocaust because they offend Muslim students. The Crusades are in the same boat, apparently. You can read an editorial about the controversy in India and one in Texas. Or you can check my inbox. Last night I received this "In Memoriam."

    In Memoriam

    Recently this week, the UK removed The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it "offended" the Moslem population which claims it never occurred. This is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it. It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated with the German and Russia peoples looking the other way! Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be "a myth," it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets. This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people worldwide! Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world. Please send this e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to continue the memorial chain.
    But wait. It turns out the opening sentence of this In Memoriam is dead wrong. The govt did not remove the Holocaust from the curriculum. A government report said that some schools are dropping it. But even that is dodgy, as their case is built on scant evidence involving one school in particular. Even the Holocaust watchdog group in Britain says the problem is not widespread. Here's a quote from the Jerusalem Post:

    The study examined "emotive and controversial" history teaching in schools. Researchers gave an example of a high school in the north of England that dropped the Holocaust as a subject of study.

    The report went on to say that in another department at the school, the Holocaust is taught despite anti-Semitic sentiment among pupils. The same department, however, avoids teaching the Crusades for fear of "Muslim rage" since their "balanced treatment of the topic would have challenged what was taught in some local mosques."

    The report said some schools are using history "as a vehicle for promoting political correctness."

    A different school found itself "strongly challenged by some Christian parents for their treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict and the history of the State of Israel that did not accord with the teachings of their denomination," according to The Daily Mail report.

    Karen Pollock, chief executive of the Holocaust Educational Trust, said: "It is our understanding that this is not representative of the majority of schools in the UK and that the case in question was just one example brought to light by the Historical Association. However, this does not detract from the seriousness of the situation and highlights that more sufficient monitoring of how Holocaust education is taught in schools is needed.

    I don't think it minimizes the significance of the Holocaust to report that yet again a number of hyper-sensitive Jewish groups are misrepresenting a study to suit their own purposes.

    Update: The emailer today sent along this note: The article I forwarded to you last evening was a gross exaggeration of a much less significant incident in the British school system. I’ll try to be more selective (and suspicious) in the future… Good for him.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    Tommy Thompson: Jew By Choice

    The fascinating trainwreck of God and the '08 Presidential Election added another car today when Tommy Thompson, who is Catholic, announced that he was enjoying being in the private sector and making money because it's "part of the Jewish tradition."

    Tommy Thompson (R) told a group of Jewish activists that making money is "part of the Jewish tradition," and something that he applauded, Haaretz reports.

    Said Thompson: "I'm in the private sector and for the first time in my life I'm earning money. You know that's sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that."

    After causing "a stir in the audience," Thompson only made matters worse by trying to apologize.

    "I just want to clarify something because I didn't [by] any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things. What I was referring to, ladies and gentlemen, is the accomplishments of the Jewish religion. You've been outstanding business people and I compliment you for that."
    Via PoliticalWire.

    Update: Commenters over at TPM Cafe wondered who he would nominate as VP: Don Imus or Mel Gibson?

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    The Greening of Church

    From Rick Warren to the Southern Baptist Convention, unusual coalitions of religious figures are now turning their attention to the environment. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports on one local movement that's crossing faith boundaries.

    About 50 local churches and synagogues are expected to take part in a march and rally in downtown Seattle as part of Step It Up 2007, a day of planned public events nationwide to call for action on climate change.

    Earth Ministry is one of several local environmental groups coordinating activities in the Seattle area. Beres sees this as the next step for involvement by faith communities in environmental issues.

    For some congregations, Step It Up is but a first step. And for those already involved in environmental matters, it's an opportunity to go from more congregation-level actions — such as choosing fair-trade coffee — to more public actions, such as rallying and calling for political change.

    "It's the move to advocacy," Beres said.

    Earth Ministry was founded by three Seattle-area people who saw that caring for the environment was important to some churchgoers, said the Rev. Jim Mulligan, a Presbyterian minister who's one of the founders. But the topic wasn't often mentioned in church and there weren't many resources to link theology and care for the environment.

    Now, Mulligan sees faith groups focusing far more on the environment. For instance, local Christians, Jews, Muslims and those of other faiths are organizing an Interfaith Creation Festival from May 31 to June 3 at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral. The festival is intended to launch a year of environmental activities.

    Some say this flurry of activity has come about because of all the information on global warming, the release of the Al Gore documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" and the way Hurricane Katrina showed the effects of climate intersecting with racial and economic disparities.

    "I think there's been something of another leap forward," Mulligan said.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    The West Bank at VT
    Monday, April 16, 2007

    Like everyone else, I've been watching the footage that the cell-phone "camerman" shot at the VT campus today. One question was running through my mind: Why did he stick around and continue the filming while 27 shots were being fired? (By the way, one analyst on CNN said that the shots were likely from the police, not the gunman.) Was he unnaturally calm? Does he want to be a journalist? Well, the cameraman just showed up on CNN and told Wolf Blitzer that he was born in the West Bank and lived for a long time in Saudi Arabia. Oh. He's used to this type of violence...

    Posted by B Feiler at 11:08 PM 0 comments  

    Two.
    Sunday, April 15, 2007

    Two years ago, at this hour, Mrs. Feiler Faster and I were introducing our parents to their newest grandchildren, Eden Elenor and Tybee Rose, born 32 minutes apart on Friday, April 15th. Shabbat babies. Identical twins. No one is ever quite prepared for twins. They don't run in families, that turns out to be a myth. They don't come around that often. One percent of humans are twins; one third of those are identical. That means one-sixth of one percent of humans are identical twin girls.

    One thing we heard often from parents of twins: "The first year is hell, but after two or three years twins turn out to be an advantage." When we hit one year, people told us. "Maybe it's two years." For us, after the first six months, which were impossibly difficult for a number of reasons not related to having two first babies, we could feel the work-fun ratio begin shifting every few months until, before long, the challenges had become so routine to us that we would forget we had two. Until we went to visit someone. Or someone came to us (and mind you, that was far less frequent than we had expected!)

    Either way, reaching two felt like a milestone today. They are hyper-verbal, and becoming increasingly adept at expressing themselves, narrating the world around them, and depositing joy into every encounter through words, the sheer abundance of new words, unexpected words, and fantastical connections of words. "Tybee's fire truck," Eden said on Tybee Island last week. "What about Eden?" So today, in honor of their love of language, where letters are their friends, we decorated their home with inflatable letters. We stayed up for four hours last night, along with their maternal grandparents, blowing up these colorful letters and festooning them from the ceiling. It was what I always imagined it must feel like to stay up late on Christmas stringing popcorn or creating some magical surprise for your children. Of course by this morning three of the festoons had fallen and we had to recreate them. But by the time we brought them downstairs, uncovered their eyes to show them their Alphabet Birthday surprise, they understood instantly that this was a special day. "All the letters came to visit," Eden said. Our day was made. The alphabet cupcakes in early afternoon were just icing -- though in this case icing on their cheeks, not the cake. E for Eden. T for Tybee. V for a very special day.

    Happy Birthday, girlies. Mommy and Daddy love you.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 10:05 PM 0 comments  

    The Pope Admits He's Human

    Speaking of birthdays, Pope Benedict turns 80 on Monday. His new book, Jesus of Nazareth, was released on Friday, and in an extraordinary announcement, he has pointed out that it was begun before he was pope and expresses his personal views, not church doctrine. "Everyone is free, then, to contradict me," he says.

    Love this. Nothing like an author inviting reviewers to disagree with him and pointing out that he's only human.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 10:01 PM 0 comments  

    Bigotry in Jail

    From the AP:

    A jail chaplain who distributed anti-Islam booklets with derogatory depictions of the prophet Muhammad has been suspended, officials said.

    The Rev. Teresa Darden Clapp, a chaplain at the Rockland County jail since 1994, was suspended with pay Thursday pending an investigation to determine possible disciplinary action, said William Clark, the jail's chief.

    The booklets characterize Muslims as worshipping an "idol" and devil called Allah, and portray Muhammad as a criminal and a "religious dictator." Allah is the Arabic word for God, and Muslims believe they worship the same God as Christians and Jews.

    One cartoon story says Islamic fundamentalists who commit terrorist acts are not "bad Muslims" but "very good Muslims" who act according to their religion. Another says Allah is not God, Muhammad was no prophet and the Quran is not the word of God. Both stories end with people being convinced that Islam is false, and in one, a contrite Muslim converts to Christianity.

    Muslim inmates said the insults were compounded by the booklets' drawings of Muhammad. Islam forbids the depiction of any prophet from the Quran.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 10:00 PM 0 comments  

    Is the Bible Inerrant?

    Newsweek convened a conversation between Rick Warren and Sam Harris. Here's an excerpt that begins with Jon Meachem asking Warren if the Bible is inerrant.

    WARREN: I believe it's inerrant in what it claims to be. The Bible does not claim to be a scientific book in many areas.

    Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
    WARREN:     If you're asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don't. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man's nose? If you believe in God, you don't have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it's fine with me.

    HARRIS: I'm doing my Ph.D. in neuroscience; I'm very close to the literature on evolutionary biology. And the basic point is that evolution by natural selection is random genetic mutation over millions of years in the context of environmental pressure that selects for fitness.

    WARREN: Who's doing the selecting?

    HARRIS: The environment. You don't have to invoke an intelligent designer to explain the complexity we see.

    WARREN: Sam makes all kinds of assertions based on his presuppositions. I'm willing to admit my presuppositions: there are clues to God. I talk to God every day. He talks to me.

    HARRIS: What does that actually mean?

    WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He's an intern at this church, and so I said, "God, I need you to help me with this," as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, "I'm an immigration attorney; I'd be happy to take this case." Now, if that happened once in my life I'd say, "That is a coincidence." If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

    There must have been times in your ministry when you've prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
    WARREN:     Oh, absolutely.

    So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
    WARREN:     Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I've had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I've never met an atheist who wasn't angry.

    HARRIS: Let me be the first.

    WARREN: I think your books are quite angry.

    HARRIS: I would put it at impatient rather than angry. Let me respond to this notion of answered prayer, because this is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. [Warren is laughing.] I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

    WARREN: That's a misstatement there.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 9:46 PM 0 comments  

    Pointless
    Saturday, April 14, 2007

    We've been keeping score all year here in my annual Predictions Game with my brother. A few weeks ago it looked as if I was in line to get TWO POINTS for predicting in the "outrageous" category that Prince William would announce an engagement. Today comes word that he's broken up with his girlfriend.

    Prince William and his girlfriend Kate Middleton have ended their four-year relationship, dashing hopes of a royal wedding to rival that of Prince Charles and Princess Diana.

    The Sun newspaper reported Saturday that the couple had reached an ''amicable agreement'' to separate. Sources confirmed the split to the Press Association news agency.

    William's Clarence House office refused to comment, saying it did not discuss the prince's private life, but royal sources did not deny the report, tacitly acknowledging it was true.

    The newspaper said the split was caused by the huge pressures on the young couple and by William's career in the army. The second in line to the throne graduated from Sandhurst military academy in December and is undergoing further training at an army base in rural England.

    News of the break-up took many royal-watchers by surprise. It was widely thought the couple would soon announce their engagement; one bookmaker was so certain of a royal wedding it had stopped taking bets on it.

    Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, said the couple's relationship had reached an impasse.

    ''They can't go forward because William is in the army and he's dedicated the next few years of his life to that, so he's not in a position to get married,'' Seward said.

    ''They had lived together when they were at university, so in a way their relationship has become more difficult. They have seen a lot less of each other and are under a huge amount of pressure.''

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    Posted by B Feiler at 9:30 AM 0 comments  

    Casey Kasem Does Rabbis
    Friday, April 13, 2007

    I'm catching up on a few issues that I missed while traveling the last few weeks. Nothing like a Top 50 list -- in this case, Rabbis in America -- to stir up a bit of controversy. The list, published in Newsweek Online and compiled from a few influential Jews in L.A., is here. One complaint I received in my email box from Letty Pogrebin, mentions that the list includes not enough women. You can read a bit about the controversy here and here and here. I know a number of these rabbis, and was thrilled to see Bruce Lustig, with whom I've done a lot of interfaith work, in the Top 10, but I have to agree with a number of bloggers who say that it's so idiosyncratic to be virtually meaningless. But it sure is fun.


    1. Marvin Hier (Orthodox)
    Hier is one phone call away from almost every world leader, journalist and Hollywood studio head. He is the dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Museum of Tolerance and Moriah Films.
    2. Yehuda Krinsky (Lubavitch)
    Krinsky has truly built a shul on every corner and brought the Chabad movement mainstream prominence. He is the leader of Chabad and its CEO.
    3. Uri D. Herscher (Reform)
    Herscher has built arguably America’s most culturally relevant Jewish institution and his passion has already touched hundreds of thousands of Jews and non-Jews of all ages. He is the founding president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center.
    4. Yehuda Berg (Orthodox)
    Berg has made wearing the red string a popular phenomenon in America and around the world and turned on everyone from Madonna to club-hopping young Jews to the power of the Kabbalah. He is an author and spiritual adviser at the Kabbalah Centre.
    5. Harold Kushner (Conservative)
    Kushner has written nine inspirational books including the international best seller that helped millions grapple with "When Bad Things Happen to Good People." He is one of America’s truly gifted speakers and teachers.
    6. David Ellenson (Reform)
    Ellenson is a trailblazer committed to bringing this generation’s Reform Jewish rabbis and teachers closer to traditional Judaism. He is the president of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.
    7. Robert Wexler (Conservative)
    Wexler has re-envisioned Jewish education and created the largest Jewish continuing-education program in America while building a premier rabbinical school and liberal arts college. He is the president of the University of Judaism.
    8. Irwin Kula (Conservative)
    Kula is committed to “taking Jewish public” and reshaping America’s spiritual landscape. He is the copresident of CLAL, a public television host and the author of "Yearnings: Embracing the Sacred Messiness of Life."
    9. Shmuley Boteach (Orthodox)
    Boteach has been called “the most famous rabbi in America” and his 17 books, TLC television series and celebrity friends help make that case. His book "Kosher Sex " introduced this Hasidic rabbi as a cultural phenomena.
    10. M. Bruce Lustig (Reform)
    Each year on Yom Kippur, Lustig has an audience that even the president of the United States would envy. He is the rabbi of Washington Hebrew Congregation, the largest congregation in Washington, D.C.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 11:13 AM 0 comments  

    Jesus Tomb Backtrack Continues
    Thursday, April 12, 2007

    The Jesus Tomb is back in the news. The Jerusalem Post is reporting what readers of Feiler Faster knew weeks ago, that most of the scholars in the film are now running fast from the film.

    The dramatic clarifications, compiled by epigrapher Stephen Pfann of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem in a paper titled "Cracks in the Foundation: How the Lost Tomb of Jesus story is losing its scholarly support," come two months after the screening of The Lost Tomb of Christ that attracted widespread public interest, despite the concomitant scholarly ridicule....

    The most startling change of opinion featured in the 16-page paper is that of University of Toronto statistician Professor Andrey Feuerverger, who stated those 600 to one odds in the film. Feuerverger now says that these referred to the probability of a cluster of such names appearing together.

    Pfann's paper reported that a statement on the Discovery Channel's Web site, which previously read "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters...concludes that the probability factor is 600 to 1 in favor of this being the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth and his family," in keeping with Feuerverger's statement, has been altered and now reads, "a statistical study commissioned by the broadcasters... concludes that the probability factor is in the order of 600 to 1 that an equally 'surprising' cluster of names would arise purely by chance under given assumptions."

    Another sentence on the same Web site stating that Feuerverger had concluded it was highly probable that the tomb, located in the southeastern residential Jerusalem neighborhood of Talpiot, was the Jesus family tomb - the central point of the film - has also been changed. It now reads: "It is unlikely that an equally surprising cluster of names would have arisen by chance under purely random sampling."

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    Posted by B Feiler at 1:23 PM 0 comments  

    The First Kermit
    Tuesday, April 10, 2007

    In the wake of my reporting on Atlanta as the new, go-to destination for famlies with kids, a friend writes:

    Hey Bruce, if you are in the ATL with kids you have to check out the museum of puppetry.Its awesome. They have the 1st kermit and a full size Big Bird puppet thereas well as some other really cool things for kids. Even if your kids are too bigfor sesame street its something fun to do.

    Here's a link.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 9:43 PM 0 comments  

    Why Pelosi Should Go to Syria

    Richard Holbrooke strikes back at the White House and defends the Speaker's trip to Syria. From The Horse's Mouth, a liberal blog about media and politics.

    Note how reporter David Gregory -- quite uncharacteristically -- employs one of the more vacuous and exhausted GOP talking points of this whole affair. And note Holbrooke's response:

    GREGORY: But why is it appropriate to have Congress and have Democratic leaders pursuing a shadow foreign policy?

    HOLBROOKE: David. David. They're not pursuing a shadow foreign policy. They're making trips to the region. The Republican group had gone out before her. She had Republicans on her group. Congressmen are supposed to travel to understand better how to spend the taxpayers' money, which is their responsibility.

    One other favorite bit. Holbrooke offers his diagnosis of the media's coverage in stinging terms:

    HOLBROOKE: I think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion by a deliberate ambush plan by the opposition, in this case the Republicans, and frankly, exploited by journalists who are just looking for a fake controversy. There is no issue here. Congressman Wolf, a major Republican, was in the region a few days earlier. Republicans were on her trip. There's no issue. None.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 9:34 PM 0 comments  

    The Real DaVinci Code: He Loved Sudoku

    I'm in still in Georgia with access only to dial-up, but I did run across this article.

    Nearly 500 years after it was written, a manual on magic and the power of numbers written by Leonardo Da Vinci's best friend and teacher, Franciscan monk Luca Pacioli, has finally been translated into English.

    The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the world's oldest magic text, De Viribus Quantitatis (On the Powers of Numbers), was written in Italian by da Vinci's roommate Pacioli between 1496 and 1508 and contains the first ever reference to card tricks as well as guidance on how to juggle, eat fire and make coins dance.

    It is also the first work to note that da Vinci was left-handed....

    "Sources of magic methods go back at least to the first century, but this book teaches not only the methods but also gives a glimpse into how one might perform them with an eye to entertaining an audience.

    "The book was rediscovered after David Singmaster, a mathematician, came across a reference to it in a 19th-century manuscript. "It's the foundation not only of modern magic but of numerical puzzles, too," he said.Tricks in the magic text include how to write a sentence on the petals of a rose, wash your hands in molten lead, and make an egg walk across a table ("commoners will consider it a miracle"). The book contains some of the first known European examples of numerical puzzles, which are similar to those printed in today's newspapers, such as Sudoku.

    Posted by B Feiler at 9:24 PM 0 comments  

    Atlanta Is For ... Little Ones?!
    Monday, April 9, 2007

    I'm in Atlanta for a few days doing research on my new book and I have virtually no access to a computer. In the meantime, I've run into a few articles in recent days about the changes coming to this traditionally uninteresting tourist and food city. The NYT even announces it's now a great place for kids:

    ATLANTA has reinvented itself again.

    When the city last grabbed the national spotlight as host of the 1996 Summer Olympics, it had transformed itself into a pedestrian-friendly metropolis in full party mode. Now, it has re-emerged as a tourist destination with a surprising child-oriented focus.

    The city is still a place rich with the echoes of history, the Civil War and the civil rights movement. But it's also a place that offers the teen-and-younger set — on a recent visit, my brood included my son, then 14, and my daughter, then 7 — many attractions geared especially for them, beginning with the $200 million-plus Georgia Aquarium, called the world's largest, that opened in late 2005.

    With a metro-area population of five million, Atlanta is a real city, one that may have more than its share of urban woes (traffic, crime), but one that also has bohemian neighborhoods that make for funky exploration and ethnic communities with lively shopping and dining. If your kids are old enough to appreciate what a great metropolitan center has to offer, they'll love Atlanta all the more.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 7:03 PM 0 comments  

    Molecular Gastronomy

    Foam isn't just for Spain anymore. It's come to Georgia. The AJC on bringing science into the kitchen:

    The immersion circulator is one of the many new tools transforming restaurant kitchens. Like never before, today's chefs turn to technology, both equipment and chemical, to distinguish their cooking. Some chefs are self-conscious practitioners of "molecular gastronomy" —- the high-end branch of cuisine that uses food science to confound the diner's expectations and engage their intellectual involvement. Others are simply looking for ways to make their lamb chops more tender, their carrots sweeter and their desserts silkier on the tongue.

    Take Joe Truex's banana bread pudding. Truex, the chef at Repast in Midtown, serves this showstopping dessert by the slice. It is crisp and crunchy with pecans on the outside, and so sheer and puffed on the inside the effect is nearly surreal. His recipe?

    "The guts of the pudding are very traditional," says Truex, listing cream, eggs, bananas and stale bread.

    But Truex's Rational brand adjustable steam oven takes it to the next step. He sets the oven to 180 degrees with 100 percent steam and inserts the oven's corded probe into the heart of the pudding. When the internal temperature reads a precise 173 degrees, the pudding is at maxi puff.

    Truex uses a more time-tested method to crisp the pecans. "I just pop the slices in the deep fryer," he says with a little native Louisiana drawl in his voice. "We're in the South, right?"

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    Posted by B Feiler at 7:02 PM 0 comments  

    Summa Cum Lucky

    And in honor of a wonderful few hours I spent with Andy Young this afternoon talking about his relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr., my favorite line from his superb autobiography An Easy Burden, in which he talks about how uninterested in academics he was in college: "I graduated from Howard not magna cum laude but "Oh, thank you Lordy."

    Posted by B Feiler at 6:23 PM 0 comments  

    Forget Coke Versus Pepsi, Now It's Coke Versus Jesus
    Friday, April 6, 2007

    This has Stephen Colbert written all over it.

    Drinks giant Coca-Cola doesn't mind paying millions of pounds to movie stars and sportspersons to endorse their soft-drink. However, they draw the line at having Jesus Christ do so.

    The company has made sure that an Italian film 'Seven Kilometres from Jerusalem', which shows Christ drinking from a bottle of Coke, will miss its Easter release date after complaining that the films bosses hadn't asked for their permission for using their trademark.

    Coca-Cola, in a statement, insisted that given the religious angle of the movie, they did not feel that it was appropriate for the bosses to use their product.

    "We don't think it's appropriate to use the subject of this film to create publicity for our brands," the BBC quoted the cola giant, as stating.

    "We advised the producer of this in writing, and are very disappointed that our request was not respected," it said.

    The movie revolves around the story of an advertising executive suffering a mid-life crisis when he meets a man who appears to be Jesus.

    In one scene, Jesus drinks a can of Coke, leading the ad executive to exclaim: "God, what a great endorsement!"

    And though the scene seems funny, Coca-Cola was not amused and asked for it to be cut.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    Ben Asks About God

    A friend of mine and tech guru is in a mixed marriage and is raising his children as Christians. He is also deeply interested in the Hebrew Bible. He's been chronicling his experiences teaching his children about God on a wonderful, animated website he's created. Here's a note and a link to "Ben asks about God."

    I've been really anxious to complete the story "Ben Asks about Circumcision" that was inspired when I found myself unable to give Benjamin a quick explanation about why I had chuckled after reading your description of David as a "penis scalper". I have the illustrations (not circumcision, of course) and comments from a priest, pastor, rabbi and imam. The person I really need to include is an old friend from high school who lives just down the street and is a pediatrician as well as a mohel that does not believe in circumcision. (he justifies his position by saying that if parents insist on circumcising their boys better he do it than someone less compotent). It has been almost impossible to pin him down as he is a very popular doctor. The first frame of the story would be of me reading Where God was Born with Ben looking on. It will be interesting to see if there is any spike - even a small one - in book sales after the story is publicized. Hey, if Oprah can do it, why not Ben & Esther?!

    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    The Camel Hub of the Web



    Yes, there's a website devoted entirely to camels, including this section, "Historic Camel Photos in America." These two are from the first decade of the 20th century.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 7:59 AM 0 comments  

    Why Israel Wants Pelosi in Syria
    Thursday, April 5, 2007

    Josh Marshall moves beyond the faux brouhaha over the White House criticism of Pelosi's trip to Syria (after all, Republicans are there now, the Baker-Hamilton Commission went to Syria, including now SecDef Gates) to point out that the Israelis actually sent a message via Pelosi to the Syrian leadership.

    The Israelis use of Pelosi as a go-between between them and the Syrians tells not only the specific but the larger tale. Isn't this what the US -- or whatever country has the pretense of being the great power in the region -- is supposed to do?

    Here's what the message was about. As often seems to happen between these countries, the Israelis had been picking up hints that the Syrians thought the Israelis were going to attack this summer. And the Israelis worried that the Syrians would preemptively attack on the Golan Heights to get a jump on the Israelis. But the Israelis say that they're not planning anything like that. So they asked Pelosi to convey this message to Damascus -- to prevent a possible chain of misunderstandings leading to war.

    This seems of a piece with February's news that the Bush administration was insisting that the Israelis not pursue exploratory talks with the Syrians about a potential peace deal.

    Pelosi's trip is an embarrassment for the president because it shows an American actually involving herself in realities on the world stage rather than stuck in denial and fantasy. That may sound a bit starry-eyed. But think about it and I'll think you'll see that that's a lot of what this is about.

    Update, from the AP: Three Republican congressmen who parted with President Bush by meeting with Syrian leaders said Wednesday it is important to maintain a dialogue with a country the White House says sponsors terrorism.

    "I don't care what the administration says on this. You've got to do what you think is in the best interest of your country," said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va. "I want us to be successful in Iraq. I want us to clamp down on Hezbollah."

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:11 AM 0 comments  

    "Rangers Lead the Way ..."

    In correcting blog posts. The other day I posted to a review by Jacob Weisberg of the latest book President Bush was reading. In it he mentions some mistakes that the author made about the Rangers creed. Well, it turns out Jacob was a bit mistaken, too. Here's what a reader of Feiler Faster wrote:

    "RANGERS LEAD THE WAY"
    Is the ranger motto.
    BUT, The Ranger creed states;

    ....."I will never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands
    of the enemy".......

    paragraph 5

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:06 AM 0 comments  

    Call at Midnight

    A few years ago I wrote a piece for GOURMET called "Pocketful of Dough" about how to bribe your way into a restaurant. That makes me a magnet, and a sucker, for similar stories. The WSJ did an exhaustive study of how to crack an uncrackable reservation. The results are behind the firewall, but here are a few tips.

    Nearly 400,000 attempted reservations later, we discovered some basic rules for booking tables anywhere, as well as some that apply to specific restaurants. One rule: Plan ahead -- but not too far ahead. It turned out the "sweet spot" for advance booking is four weeks out, a window that gave us a success rate on OpenTable of about 47%. That dropped to 35% when we tried to book 40 days ahead.

    Not that spontaneity doesn't pay off. From Excelsior in Boston to New York's Morimoto, certain restaurants shared a pattern. Tables were plentiful with about two weeks notice, then scarce a week out. But around Thursday the week we wanted to dine, a bunch of spots opened up -- the likely result of restaurants confirming reservations two or three days out then putting cancellations back in the system.

    There are also techniques to be learned from people who make it either their business or their hobby to get into so-called impossible places. Aren Sandersen, a 28-year-old software engineer in San Francisco, spent several nights, throughout the course of a few weeks, staying up late and pinging OpenTable again and again, searching for a table at the famously difficult French Laundry in the Napa Valley. Eventually, he discovered that success was most likely if he set his clock to Time.gov, then clicked "reload" at exactly 11:59:55 p.m.

    After what he calls an "exquisite," meal at the restaurant, Mr. Sandersen created a Web site called TheSandersens.com where he posted his tips and started offering a free service to help others book at the restaurant. "Are you struggling to make French Laundry reservations? Tired of calling and getting only busy signals?" a note on the home page reads. "No longer!"

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    Spamming for God: The New E-vangelicals

    The next wave of proselytizing: Internet ministry.

    While an evangelism trip to a foreign country may be impractical or impossible, technology is enabling Christians to reach even closed countries through the media, especially the Internet. Residents of restricted-access countries can study the Bible in their own language via the World Wide Web. Those without a computer at home may experience religious freedom at an Internet café.

    Peggie Bohanon of Springfield, Missouri, knows that it's possible for Christians to share the gospel on the Internet once they establish rapport with non-believers. Bohanon has operated a "fun 'n' faith" Christian Web site (http://www.peggiesplace.com) for a decade in an effort to both encourage Christians and to witness to non-Christians.

    Her site, with more than 500 original devotionals and thousands of Christian and family-friendly links, has received in excess of 13 million page views from 190 countries and has the plan of salvation in a multitude of languages. People around the world, including Internet users from restricted countries, visit Peggie's Place regularly, and she responds to e-mails with discretion and discernment.

    Defending Christianity online to those from American Samoa to Zimbabwe is quite a stretch for a stay-at-home mom and writer who had no idea how to operate a computer until 1994.

    "If God calls you to Internet ministry you need to respond in faith and with Pentecostal anointing so you can reach out effectively to a needy world," says Bohanon, a member of Springfield's Central Assembly of God. "With a little creativity and ingenuity you can share the gospel with people around the world any time of the day or night."

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    Wheel of Death

    Glenn Collins of the NYT tackles the so-called Wheel of Death. One of the pioneers of this act was Elvin Bale, who starred in Ringling in the 1970s and was later crippled after flying over the bag in a canon act in Hong Kong in the 1980s. In a wheelchair, he plays a central role in my year in the circus, described in UNDER THE BIG TOP. With animals being run from the ring and clowning a dying art in America (and no longer a way to sell tickets), circuses may be back to selling risk.

    “We take all the safety precautions we can,” said Nicole Feld, 29, who is producing the new show with her father, Kenneth. “But the wheel is a calculated risk.”

    It has justified its billing. In 1994 a 20-year-old, Neville Campbell, was performing in the act at the Blackpool Tower Circus in Blackpool, England, when he lost his footing and fell 15 feet to his death.

    The new act, performed after intermission, is officially called the Wheel of Steel this year because, according to Mr. Feld, Ringling’s chief executive, “We want people’s dreams to come true in this show, so why emphasize the negative?”

    But circuses have hardly shied away from using the D-word to promote other attractions to ladies and gentlemen and children of all ages. Consider the Globe of Death (where motorcyclists roar upside down within a steel-mesh ball) and the Dive of Death, where performers slide headfirst down a chute or wire, stopping inches from the tanbark. Then there is the Cirque du Soleil’s death wheel, permanently installed in Las Vegas, with five performers in five whirling cages.

    The Ringling wheel is so dangerous because — as Mr. Nock and Mr. Wallenda cheerfully explained on a recent afternoon — a safety net would be too narrow to prevent injury, and protective harnesses and wires would be impractical since the performers have to be unfettered to race atop the wheels — literally as fast as they can run — at a speed of nearly 20 miles an hour.

    “Circus fans have come to expect the Wheel of Death, and it looks especially scary when they are running on top, high up in the arena,” said Erin Foley, the archivist of the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, Wis.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Is the K-word the new N-word?
    Wednesday, April 4, 2007

    As we know, some blacks have a made a political statement out of turning the N-word from an insult into a badge of honor. Now at least one Jew is trying to do the same with the K-word. (Seems this is still very loaded. I considered spelling out the K-word and N-word in the headline to this post but Mrs. Feiler Faster went, well, ballistic.) Here's part of the story from the Hollywood Reporter:

    Are you a Jew? Don't ask Jamie Kastner. The question annoys the Canadian documentarymaker. He gets asked it a lot.So Kastner shot "Kike Like Me," a road movie bowing at Toronto's Hot Docs documentary festival on April 24.

    In the film, Kastner answers a hypothetical "yes" when asked whether he's Jewish, followed by an equally terse "Why do you want to know?" to gauge how friend and foe reacts."I saw theatrical possibility from seeing how Jewish identity plays out in so-called civilized cultures where we've gotten over all 'that,"' Kastner explains.

    The results are revealing. Kastner underwent a shotgun bar mitzvah from proselytizing Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn asking passersby "Are you Jewish?"; got turfed from Pat Buchanan's living room after asking why the TV pundit attacks Neocons for being Jewish; debated Israeli-born Gilad Atzmon, a self-described "devoted opponent of Israel and of Zionism," in London; and partied with Amsterdam soccer hooligans proudly calling themselves "Joden" (Jews).

    The film's title is a play on "Black Like Me," John Howard Griffin's classic 1961 book about a white reporter dying his skin black to experience bigotry first-hand.But there's more of a connection with Elia Kazan's 1947 movie "Gentleman's Agreement," where Gregory Peck plays a crusading reporter pretending to be Jewish for a magazine article exposing racial intolerance.Kastner does the same for his documentary. Like Peck's character, he is at first peeved by early prejudice, until Kastner gets more than he bargained for when asking Parisians of Middle Eastern background what they think about Jews.

    And his breaking point comes at Auschwitz when Kastner abruptly tells his cameraman they won't be joining the tourist hordes visiting the original ovens, and instead will just go ome. "They were perceived as Jews, and died for it. And I'm perceived as a Jew, and it suddenly doesn't sound like ancient history," Kastner says at the end of a personal journey in which he appears aloof and wise-cracking as the film begins, to experiencing profound menace at its end.

    Not surprisingly, the 10 broadcasters who prelicensed "Kike Life Me" -- including BBC Storyville, the U.S. Sundance Channel, Canada's TVOntario, AVRO in Holland, Denmark's TV2, YLE in Finland and Australia's SBS -- felt equal menace over the film's title.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    No Church, Please, We're British

    How low can church attendance go? Really low. I wonder when this God gap between the U.S. and Britain will begin to affect our "special relationship?"

    One in 10 people in the UK attends church every week and one in seven goes once a month, according to research.

    Christian charity Tearfund's survey of 7,000 people puts the UK among Europe's four least observant countries. Two-thirds of those polled had not been to church in the last year, except for baptisms, weddings or funerals - but 53% identified themselves as Christian.

    Tearfund said nearly three million more people would attend regularly if given the "right invitation".

    It said churches could do more to offer encouragement to potential worshippers. The poll, conducted last year among people aged 16 and over, suggests that one in four UK adults attends church at least once a year.

    Tearfund said 53% of people identified themselves as Christian, compared with almost three-quarters who had in the last census in 2001.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    Just saw an employee feather-dusting jars of whey protein!

    Few things are brilliant. This is brilliant.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Who Gets to Go to Syria?
    Tuesday, April 3, 2007

    Nancy Pelosi is in Syria today for talks in an attempt to sway the Administration's policy and the White House attacked her hard for talking to the enemy. Here's the NYT on the visit and the controversy:

    Ms. Pelosi, the third-highest ranking elected official in the United States government behind the president and vice president, is the most senior American leader to visit the country since Syrian-American relations faltered in 2003.

    The United States has been trying to isolate Syria diplomatically, accusing the country of allowing militant fighters safe passage into neighboring Iraq and of meddling in Lebanese politics. The government in Damascus denies the accusations. Ms. Pelosi, who is leading a group of Congressional representatives visiting the country, was greeted at Damascus airport this afternoon by Walid al-Moallem, the Syrian Foreign Minister, who whisked her away for a tour of old Damascus. She made no public remarks.

    The group of lawmakers is expected to meet with members of the Syrian parliament and opposition leaders over dinner this evening at the American ambassadorial residence in Damascus. The United States recalled its ambassador in 2005, following allegations that the Syrian regime may have had a hand in the assassination of the former Lebanese Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri.

    President George W. Bush criticized Ms. Pelosi’s visit today during a news conference at the White House. He said the visit sent “mixed signals” that “lead the Assad government to believe they are part of the mainstream of the international community, when in fact they are a state sponsor of terror” and supporter of anti-Israeli militants like Hamas and Hezbollah. “Sending delegations hasn’t worked,” Mr. Bush said. “It’s just simply been counterproductive.”

    But as Josh Marshall quickly showed, plenty of Republican delegations have visited Syria in recent months and one is in Syria right now! In other words, it's okay for Republicans to visit Syria but not Democrats.

    I knew as a general matter that the White House was just bamboozling the press with this Pelosi-in-Syria malarkey since plenty of Republicans from Congress have recently gone there too. But I didn't know the precise details. In addition to recent trips by other Congressional Republicans there's actually a GOP House delegation in Syria right now, according to ThinkProgress. And in March a senior State Department official held talks in Damascus about flow of Iraqi refugees.

    Enough with the petty politics. Follow the bi-partisan Baker-Hamilton report: Talk to Syria and Iran.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 3:36 PM 0 comments  

    "If You're Reading This I'm Probably Dead"

    A blogger, "Random Thoughts and Nonsense," reviews WHERE GOD WAS BORN:

    I picked this up at the airport bookstore on the way back from the More Light Presbyterians winter board meeting in Santa Fe. I like to find reading material at airports sometimes -- the selection is limited, and sometimes I'll find something that I wouldn't have picked up otherwise. I'm often suspicious of books on the bestseller list, which is probably a sign of my intellectual snobbery (I grew up in a trailer park and went to a public university, so go figure), and also tend to roll my eyes at books that tend to pander to the fluffy religiousity of some parts of the evangelical movement. So it seemed like I might be taking a chance on this book on Biblical history from the ABQ book mart.

    This turns out to be a great read. Feiler, an American Jew, is interested in the relationship between the stories in the Bible, and the places where those stories took place, and the people who live there now. He has written two earlier books which look at Abraham and the first five books of the Bible, and the intersections between Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. This book focuses on the prophetic texts of the second half of Hebrew testament, and follows his journeys to Israel, Iraq, and Iran.

    At times the book reads like a journalistic adventure yarn, other times like a starter course in old testament theology or biblical archeology. Himself a fairly secular Jew, Feiler encounters people with deep faith and a strong connection to the places where the live and the history of those places.

    The moments that made the strongest impact on me are the contrasts between his preparations for leaving for Iraq and Iran, and what he finds in both places. Given the danger for an American Jew in Iraq, Feiler doesn't take his wife with him, and pens a "If you're reading this I'm probably dead" note which he hides in case he doesn't return. His wife does accompany him to Iran, and they both fall in love with the land and the people there. I found these portions especially eye-opening, as much of the history of this part of the world is mostly unfamiliar to most Americans.

    I've decided to read the rest of these, although I'm a contrarian so I'll read them in reverse order.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:03 AM 0 comments  

    Wiki-Faithful

    I received an interesting press release about Catholic lay people recruiting fellow congregants to be their eyes and ears on abuse and other issues of concern to Catholics in a sort of Catholic Drudge Report. Any other faiths doing this?

    Pewsitter.com, a unique recently launched Catholic web site combines the concept of a news aggregator site, like DrudgeReport.com with that of a user-driven content site, like Yahoo’s You Witness News web site, to give the lay Catholic faithful a powerful, new voice within the Church.

    Pewsitter represents a new paradigm within the Church. It provides a mouthpiece for faithful Catholics to report news of positive developments as well as abuses within their local parishes and communities. Once submitted and verified, Pewsitter will promulgate this information to the universal Church, with the objective of bringing about positive change within the Church and the culture at large

    “The concept behind the site is to enlist an army of “pewsitters” to be the eyes and ears for this new site”, stated Pewsitter’s founder, James Todd. “For far too long, faithful Catholics have witnessed abuse after abuse within the Church and have been powerless to do anything about it. No more! By submitting newsworthy items to Pewsitter, the laity can help shape and influence the Church and be a powerful force for positive change.”

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    Will Kevin Federline Get Britney's Book Royalities?

    That is, if Britney ever wrote a book. Apparently not, as she had an air-tight prenup, reports say, giving him only $1 million from their marriage.

    But Mrs. Walter Mosley gets plenty: 25% of books published even after they were divorced!

    Walter Mosley, author of Devil in a Blue Dress, is being sued by his ex-wife for money she says he agreed to pay out of income from several of his books.

    Joy Kellman says in court papers that Mosley owes her at least $500,000, plus interest, from earnings on 11 books as provided by their divorce agreement. Some of the books were published after their divorce.

    The two were married from Sept. 5, 1987, until June 19, 2001, and had no children.

    Mosley, whose Devil in a Blue Dress was made into a movie starring Denzel Washington in 1995, is author of a crime series featuring private detective Easy Rawlins and sidekick Mouse. These and a few other books are the subject of Kellman's lawsuit.

    Mosley's attorney, Kenneth Burrows, said he had no comment on the lawsuit.

    Kellman's court papers, filed Wednesday in Manhattan's state Supreme Court, say Mosley failed to pay her 25% share of income from new editions or movie and TV versions of the books and from new formats such as audio books.

    Mosley also did not provide tax returns, royalty statements and other documentation about his income from 2001 through 2004, as required in the divorce agreement, until 2006, her court papers say, and much of the required information is still missing.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

    Seder in Berlin
    Monday, April 2, 2007

    I'll be celebrating Passover this week with my in-laws in Boston. Whether you're observing the holiday, or not, you may be interested in this story about having a seder in Berlin. Here's an excerpt:

    Our haggadah dates from 1945, when it was printed "for the members of the Armed Forces of the United States," as its cover proclaims, sponsored by something called the New York National Jewish Welfare Board. According to the flyleaf, it's one of 260,000 copies, printed (with increasing urgency) between 1943 and 1945. When our haggadah was crisp and new, Germany was falling, and Allies were liberating concentration camps, peopled with the dead and nearly dead. Bringing "freedom" to such places is almost bitterly laughable: even if your body survives, who would ever feel free of such memories?

    We bought this haggadah during the year we lived in East Berlin, to celebrate our very first seder among Germans and Americans. An odd mission for me, a German-American ex-Catholic and for my husband Seth, an American Jew of remarkable laxness, both of us atheists. Our Jewish credentials are an unorthodox American mix: ten years living in New York, some Hebrew school, a growing if miscellaneous bookshelf of Jewish-American writers. And our plan in holding a seder in Germany, I realize now, was just as all-American: artlessly simple to start, mind-bogglingly ambitious to complete.

    We wanted to start our own Jewish tradition: to teach our German friends something about Judaism that does not revolve around grainy documentary footage and the inescapable guilt of their grandparents. And most audaciously, to bring a little levity to this experiment: fewer bombs, more humor, even if it's clouded by the gallows. Modern Germans rub up against Jewish culture constantly as a culture of crisis, of national shame and of pervasive memorial. What really jarred me was how little contact they seemed to have with actual Jews. What about ongoing Jewish life, beyond its attempted annihilation in the past?

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:01 AM 0 comments  

    The Presidential Reading List

    My old friend and onetime neighbor Jacob Weisberg write a powerful and persuasive takedown of the latest book on Bush's bedside table, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 by conservative British writer Andrew Roberts. Here's Jacob's summary before he really drops the hatchet:

    At the core of the book is Roberts' notion of what might be called the Super-Special Relationship. When Britain could no longer rule its empire in 1946, he argues, it handed responsibility for the rest of the world over to its successor, the United States. "Just as in science-fiction people are able to live on through cryogenic freezing after their bodies die, so British post-imperial greatness has been preserved and fostered through its incorporation into the American world-historical project," Roberts writes. He views British colonialism and American hegemony as alike in their selfless benevolence and effectiveness. Like Bush, he is peeved that the recipients of our generosity are not more grateful. The answer, Roberts says, "is the first law of modern imperialism: that no good deed goes unpunished."

    As a historian, Roberts is present-minded in the extreme, returning at every stage of his narrative to justifications for Bush's actions in Iraq. The neoconservatives who want to spread democracy in the Middle East are the heirs to compassionate Victorians who sought to civilize India, China, and Africa. While the reader is still choking on the casting of Richard Perle as Lord Macaulay, Roberts is hard at work grafting Bush's head onto Winston Churchill's body. The president's prosecution of the war on terror is "vigorous" and "absolutely unwavering." His and Tony Blair's Iraq war has provided "excellent value for money" to the taxpayer. That Bush has brought "full democracy" to Iraq is stated as unequivocal fact.

    The this:
    Roberts is as sloppy as he is snobbish. I am seldom bothered by minor errors from a good writer, but Roberts' mistakes are so extensive, foolish, and revealing of his basic ignorance about the United States in particular, that it may be worth noting a few of those I caught in a fast read. The San Francisco earthquake did considerably more than $400,000 in damage. Virginia Woolf, who drowned herself in 1941, did not write for Encounter, which began publication in 1953. The Proposition 13 Tax Revolt took place in the 1970s, not the 1980s—an important distinction because it presaged Ronald Reagan's election in 1980. Michael Milken was not a "takeover arbitrageur," whatever that is. Roberts cannot know that there were 500 registered lobbyists in Washington during World War II because lobbyists weren't forced to register until 1946. Gregg Easterbrook is not the editor of the New Republic. "No man gets left behind" is a line from the film Black Hawk Down, not the motto of the U.S. Army Rangers; their actual motto is "Rangers Lead the Way." In a breathtaking peroration, Roberts point out that "as a proportion of the total number of Americans, only 0.008 percent died bringing democracy to important parts of the Middle East in 2003-5." Leaving aside the question of whether those deaths have brought anything like democracy to Iraq, 0.008 percent of 300 million people is 24,000—off by a factor of 10, which is typical of his arithmetic. If you looked closely enough, I expect you could find an error of one kind or another on every page of the book.
    So he has me up to there, but Jacob then ends with this:

    With this book, Andrew Roberts takes his place as the fawning court historian of the Bush administration. He claims this role not just by singing the Bush administration's achievements but by producing a version of the past that conforms to and confirms its prefabricated view of the world. A History of the English-Speaking Peoples feeds Bush's growing preference for the unknowable future to a problematic present, by assuring him that history will vindicate him, as it did Churchill and Truman, if only he continues to hold firm.

    Other recent favorites Bush has cited fall into this same, self-justifying category, including Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy and Mark Steyn's America Alone. Are we sure we want a president who spends so much time reading? The leader who loves books that tell him he is great and right may be worse than the leader who does not love books at all.

    Here, I'm afraid to say, my direct experience punctures this theory fairly soundly. As readers of Feiler Faster know, President Bush last month announced on C-SPAN that he had just finished ABRAHAM, my book about the shared ancestor of Jews, Christians, and Muslims. That book expressly contradicts much that is contained in the neo-Conservative worldview by positing a foundation of inter-religious dialogue as an antidote to war and is hardly fits into the "self-justifying category" of Sharansky and Steyn. Roberts' book may be biased, but it's not the only thing Bush is reading.

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    Posted by B Feiler at 8:00 AM 0 comments  

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