TruthBook Religious News Blog

Kosher and halal foods submit to nostalgia and reinvention

By: A Qasimi 02/25/2009

"Milk and Honey: Part I" is also available at this site - please click on "external source" to access this, and the first of the series.

“O, for a morsel of food free from wrongdoing [in the eyes of God] and from the favor of any creature!”—Sufi Imam Sari Al-Saqati (circa AD 850)

“Naturally the girls do not get any pork or shellfish,” begins Santa Fe Chef John Connell. Connell is on the board of directors for Creativity for Peace, a local program that brings young women from Palestine and Israel together at a summer camp in New Mexico to promote awareness, acceptance and reconciliation. Connell first became involved as the camp cook in 2003. “The first year I was involved, they requested lasagna often. They are not big on creamy dressings and Western cheese or milk products, but labne (kefir cheese) is a staple in the fridge.”

Childhood memories of visits to the US revolve around a trusty backbone of kosher products we were never without in our Muslim household: kosher hot dogs and Hydrox cookies instead of ballpark franks and Oreos (in the ’80s, the white fillings of the latter were still made with lard). My first Shabbat, observed in college, was a vegan meal cooked in earnest by an assortment of young hopefuls, all part of a burgeoning on-campus group called Jews in the Woods. I was charmed by their idealism and their folk music, but the gluten-free piroshkies? Not so much. I stopped for a cheeseburger and an ice-cream float on the way home.

Local chef, caterer and radio personality Stacy Pearl ...shares tales of a dynamic upbringing with resolute glee, saying, “My dad was raised strict Orthodox in a Hungarian Jewish family on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He remained kosher until his days in the Air Force during WWII; although the Army supplied kosher rations for all the Brooklyn Jewish boys, he discovered bacon, and the rest is history.”

Is there a Muslim cuisine? No, but unlike Jews, Muslims do not share the perception of a common culture forged by religion, and thus there has never been a distinct Islamic cuisine, per se. What Muslims do share is a common theme of etiquette and regard toward handling and consumption: always eating with the right hand, taking only from the circumference of the bowl and never blowing on hot food, for starters.

Santa Fe chef Joel Coleman, who claims he cannot live without pork, shares that his best memories are simple ones, and that they really started happening after he became a chef. “My favorite may have been a fresh loaf of challah made by my friend Matt. Another would be the best latkes ever, made by a chef in Vermont and served with beautiful lox and maple syrup crème fraîche.”

...the laws of Dhabiha halal and kashruth share a number of similarities. Though the methods and protocols for slaughter are similar, and both religions prohibit eating meat killed any other way, kosher laws are exhaustively specific beyond the scope of halal. And though halal-certified products are not considered kosher, the question of whether or not Muslims can use kashruth standards as a replacement for halal’s remains, like nearly everything when it comes to spirituality: entirely discretionary.

Labels: A Qasimi, cuisine, food, Jews, Muslims

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Jews, Latino Pentecostals together

12/12/2008
By Christina Hoag
Associated Press

LOS ANGELES -- When Randy Brown visited Hispanic Pentecostal congregations in Southern California, he was stunned by displays of Star-of-David flags, fervent prayers for peace in Israel and Hebrew words in their church names.

Brown, an executive with the American Jewish Committee, saw an opportunity to build Jewish-Latino relations and combat anti-Semitism among the immigrants, who generally have little exposure to Jews in their predominantly Roman Catholic native countries.

The Los Angeles office has since worked to forge new bonds: They have taken groups of Pentecostal Hispanic pastors to Israel, offered a course called "The Essence of Judaism" at a Southern California Pentecostal seminary, and invited Hispanic pastors and their families to Passover seders and Sukkot harvest celebrations.

While Latino immigrants in the U.S. are mostly Catholic, evangelicals comprise a notable 15 percent of the population, according to a recent study by the Pew Hispanic Project and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. Many are Pentecostal, one of the fastest-growing streams of world Christianity, known for spirit-filled worship and speaking in tongues.

A 2007 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found a higher-rate of anti-Semitic views among foreign-born Latinos than among U.S.-born Hispanics. Twenty-nine percent of Latinos born elsewhere harbor anti-Jewish views, while the rate for Hispanics born in the country -- and for the U.S. population in general -- was 15 percent, the study found.

The 2007 numbers are slightly lower than those in a 2005 survey, but Jewish leaders are worried all the same, especially as Latin Americans are expected to become 29 percent of the national population by 2050.

Latin American countries are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and are steeped in a five-century-old tradition of a church that wields much influence. With the exception of Argentina, Jewish communities in Latin America are tiny and tend to keep a low profile.

By contrast, U.S. Jewish and Catholic leaders have held high-level interfaith talks for years. Several Catholic colleges in the country have centers for Jewish-Catholic understanding, and U.S. bishops heavily emphasize the Second Vatican Council teaching that Jews are not collectively responsible for the Crucifixion. That outlook influences not just Catholics, but also other Christians in the U.S.

Pastor Tony Solorzano, who heads the Iglesia Llamada Final, a 5,000-member congregation in Downey and Inglewood, said some Latinos simply need more education about Judaism to dispel stereotypes. Some consider Jews "Christ-killers."

Pentecostals, who interpret the Bible literally, believe God promised the Jewish people the historic land of Israel. Many consider the modern state of Israel a fulfillment of biblical prophecy -- and a precondition of the second coming of Jesus Christ.

They often cite a passage from Genesis where God makes a covenant with Abraham that those who bless Abraham's people will be blessed, those who curse his people will be cursed.

Jewish leaders are building on Pentecostal pro-Israel sentiment to dispel stereotypes between both groups. Many Jewish groups in recent years have accepted such support without questioning the theology behind it, which says that all people, including Jews, will ultimately accept Christ.

Pentecostal congregations, often housed in storefronts filled with rows of folding chairs, have become fixtures in Latino neighborhoods across the United States, as well as Latin America. Pastors tend to be influential opinion-makers in their congregations and some, like Lopez, have radio programs or stations, expanding their reach.

At the Latin University of Theology in Torrance, which trains Pentecostal pastors, many of the students in Brown's Spanish-language "Essence of Judaism" course hail from Latin American countries. He hopes they'll return home with new knowledge about Jews and Judaism to change negative images and misperceptions.

Nationally, the American Jewish Committee has formed a Latino and Latin American Institute, and in 2001 convened the first Latino-Jewish Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., to discuss common policy concerns such as immigration.

Labels: Anti-Defamation League, Catholic, Christina Hoag, evangelicals, interfaith, Jews, Latinos, Pentecostalism

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

God, Up Close And Personal

by Steve Lipman

The idea that God is a “person with whom people can have a relationship” seems right out of Evangelical Christianity.

Yet a new study of religion in America finds that a full quarter of Jews believe in such a personal relationship.

Is that figure high or low, and is it good for the Jews?

It’s lower than the percentage of such believers in the country’s other major faith groups, according to a major survey of religious beliefs released this week. But it’s probably on the rise, and it’s good if Jews with such a personal belief become active in synagogues and other Jewish organizations, says a spokesman for a prominent outreach organization.

It may be bad, however, if personal piety comes at the expense of connections with the wider Jewish community, says a representative for another national Jewish organization.

The release of the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life holds few surprises about American Jewry, showing the American Jewish community on the liberal — nearly secular — end of the spectrum on such issues as the importance of religion in one’s life, frequency of attending religious services and divine authorship of Scripture. (Pew interviewed some 36,000 people nationwide during the spring and summer of 2007. The Jewish sample was 682.)

Twenty-five percent of Jews in the Pew study said they believe in a personal God; 50 percent said God is “an impersonal force.” The Protestant figure for a personal God was 72 percent; Catholic, 60; Muslim, 41.

People who develop a sense of personal spirituality, in any faith, often tend to disassociate from communal life ...

Rabbi Yitzchak Rosenbaum, associate director of the National Jewish Outreach Program, says he does not share those fears. “I don’t think the broader Jewish community will suffer if Jews develop a personal relationship with God. It brings them closer — they need a community.”

And, the rabbi says, the concept of a personal relationship with God has roots in the Torah. “It was a Jewish idea before it was a Christian idea. We believe that every Jew prays directly to God.”

Labels: Christianity, God, Jewish, Jews, personality, prayer, Steve Lipman

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Thursday, March 06, 2008

Pew Survey: Demographers dispute snapshot of American Jews

By Sue Fishkoff
Published: Wednesday, March 5, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- American Jews are adopting and discarding their Jewish identities with increasing rapidity in a country that is becoming less white and less Christian, according to a new study of religious affiliation in the United States. But just hours after the study’s publication on Feb. 24, Jewish demographers were disputing some of the findings on Jews.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey released by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, shows how Jews fit into a national religious mosaic that is shifting at ever-increasing speed. Some of the findings about Jews, including the high income and educational levels, came as no surprise, as they mirror the results of earlier Jewish-only population studies.

Leading Jewish demographers, including those who worked on the National Jewish Population Studies of 1990 and 2000-2001 (NJPS), dispute some of the Pew data relating to American Jewry, particularly the figures about converts to and from Judaism.

“While we can learn a lot from this kind of survey in a general sense, in terms of Jews per se we have to be cautious because they’re such a small part of the sample,” said Jonathon Ament, the assistant director of research at the United Jewish Communities and the senior project adviser on the 2000-2001 NJPS. The NJPS survey included 4,523 respondents. With fewer than 700 Jewish respondents and a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 points that Ament calls “quite high,” he said the Pew report should be “taken with a grain of salt.” Pew researchers say the sample size is statistically sound.

Finding the total number of Jews has often been a source of controversy within the Jewish community. The Pew study arrives at its own numbers, suggesting the continuing difficulty of defining who is a Jew. Pew counted an estimated 3.8 million Jews, or 1.7 percent of the total American adult population. The NJPS counted 4.1 million Jewish adults out of a total Jewish population of 5.2 million. Some thought the NJPS underestimated the Jewish population, including Brandeis University's Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, which offered its own estimate of 6 million to 6.4 million.

But it was the findings on converts to and from Judaism, which involve controversial definitions -- including "Who is a Jew" -- that drew the most skepticism among Jewish demographers. According to the Pew study, 15 percent of America's nearly 4 million Jewish adults were not raised as Jews. That means, Pew researchers said, they either converted to Judaism or embraced the Judaism of one of their parents or grandparents. The study also reports that 9 percent of adults who were raised Jewish now profess another faith. Four percent of those former Jews are now Protestant, about half of them evangelicals; 1 percent are Catholic; and nearly 5 percent belong to a non-Christian faith, ranging from Islam to Buddhism to a New Age religion.

Still, the report found that Jews and Hindus are the most successful at retaining their people.

More than 84 percent of those who were raised Hindu still identify as Hindu, followed by 76 percent of those raised Jewish who say they are Jewish today. Fourteen percent of those raised Jewish now identify with no organized religion.

Judaism, Catholicism and Hinduism are the three faith groups filled with the highest percentage of born followers. Eighty-five percent of today's Jewish adults were raised as Jews, vs. the 15 percent of today's Jews who have "joined" the community. Ninety percent of today's Hindu adults were born and raised Hindu, along with 89 percent of Catholics.

Other highlights of the Pew report include:

* Jews are tied with Mormons as the sixth largest faith group, each claiming 1.7 percent of the country’s adult population.

* There are twice as many adult Jews as adult Muslims.

* Jews rank fourth among religious groups most likely to marry in the faith. According to Pew, 69 percent of married Jews are married to another Jew -- the same figure reported by the 2000 NJPS.

* Of the 31 percent of Jews married to someone of a different faith or no faith, the largest percentage, 12 percent, are married to Catholics. The faith groups most likely to marry their own are Hindus, Mormons and Catholics.

* The most highly educated faith communities are Hindus (48 percent with post-graduate degrees) followed by Jews (35 percent), compared to the national average of 10 percent.

* Two percent of America’s 1.57 million Buddhists were raised Jewish.

When it comes to drawing a Jewish picture from the Pew study, it’s difficult to compare the results to the National Jewish Population Study because it is rare to find the exact same questions or categories in both studies. In addition, the NJPS and other Jewish-sponsored population studies use a combination of self-identification and behavioral questions to arrive at a nuanced understanding of who is a Jew, whereas the Pew report allowed respondents to declare their own religious identity.

The conversion figures offered by the Pew study differ from those of other Jewish studies. The 1990 NJPS showed that 180,000 people had converted to Judaism, comprising 3 percent of the total Jewish population. The 2000-2001 NJPS did not report the number of converts to Judaism, so it’s impossible to make comparison with the Pew report’s statement that 15 percent of today’s Jewish adults were not raised Jewish.

“What does ‘raised Jewish’ mean?” asks demographer Bruce Phillips of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, who also worked on the 2000-2001 NJPS. “To you and me it might mean someone went to Hebrew school,” but the respondents answering the Pew study were not asked to elaborate.

Similarly, the 1990 NJPS showed that 210,000 Jews had converted out of Judaism, representing nearly 4 percent of American Jewry. By the time of the 2000-2001 NJPS, that figure had risen to just above 5 percent, along with an additional 7.6 percent who said they had left Judaism for no religion. The NJPS total of 12.6 percent is less than the 23 percent of Jews who told Pew researchers that they now professed no religion or had joined another faith. But some of that difference can be ascribed to definitions used by the study organizers.

Pew researchers acknowledge these “definitional issues,” said Green, a senior researcher on the project. But that was not the focus of the Pew study. The study was concerned with measuring how much movement there is into and out of faith groups rather than in describing exactly what those faith-shifters are discarding and adopting, or why.

Labels: Hindus, Jews, Judaism, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, religion, Sue Fishkoff, U.S. Religious Landscape Survey

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Survey Data Sparks New Debate Over Intermarriage Issues

January 24, 2008

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

SAN FRANCISCO

Intermarriage: Is it a disaster for the Jews, not great for the Jews or simply a fact of Jewish life?

Ever since the 1990 National Jewish Population Study showed more than half of new Jewish marriages involve a non-Jewish partner, many Jewish communal leaders have latched on to the issue with pitbull tenacity -- and they haven't let go, even after the 2000-01 NJPS showed intermarriage had leveled off.

Now, a new round of studies is prompting more questions: Does intermarriage necessarily mean the end of that family's connection to Judaism? Or is the Jewish community focusing on intermarriage to the exclusion of other, perhaps more telling, factors?

Most studies report the data in simple comparative fashion, which shows that intermarried families are much less Jewishly involved than inmarried families, from their beliefs to their practices.

But a provocative new study out of Brandeis University questions that research method and its conclusions.

"Adult Identity of Children of Intermarriage," from a study sponsored by the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute

The study -- "It's Not Just Who Stands Under the Chuppah: Jewish Identity and Intermarriage," by Leonard Saxe, Fern Chertok and Benjamin Phillips of the Cohen Center for Jewish Studies and Steinhardt Social Research Institute -- found that when one considers the Jewish background of the Jewish partner in an intermarriage, then the difference in the Jewish beliefs and practices of inmarried and intermarried families becomes much less glaring. And in some measures, like attachment to Israel, the gap almost disappears.

A second study casts further doubt on the deterministic effect of intermarriage. Set for release next month, the study by the Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston will show that the children being raised Jewishly in the city's intermarried families look pretty much like any other non-Orthodox Jewish children.

The "Chuppah" study only considered factors from before an intermarriage occurs, primarily the Jewish education and home practice of the Jewish partner. But its conclusions have profound policy implications: Instead of writing off intermarried families or pressing the non-Jewish partner to convert, the Jewish community would do better to invest in quality Jewish education -- formal and informal -- to give the Jewish partner in an intermarriage the background and desire to create a Jewish home and raise Jewish children.

Saxe presented the study's findings with Chertok last month at the Union for Reform Judaism biennial in San Diego.

Chertok and Saxe drew the strongest audience reaction when they displayed two charts, one showing the Jewish involvement of intermarried versus. inmarried families without any controls, and one showing results after they were controlled for the Jewish partner's religious background.

Without controls, 78 percent of inmarried couples said they were raising their children Jewishly versus 39 percent of intermarried couples. Those figures are used by most Jewish researchers, noted Chertok and Saxe.

But when controlling the other factors, including the Jewish partner's religious upbringing, the gap closed, with 71 percent of inmarried couples and 51 percent of intermarried couples saying they're raising Jewish kids.

Similarly, the 53 percent of inmarried versus 12 percent of intermarried families who reported being members of Jewish organizations became 45 percent and 32 percent when the controls were applied.

The differences become even more striking when controls are applied to the data on the Jewish identity of the adult children of intermarriage.

A simple comparison, one used in most studies, states that 89 percent of adults who grew up with two Jewish parents identify as Jewish versus 24 percent of adults who grew up in an interfaith home.

When the background of those individuals was taken into account, the gap shrunk to 94percent of the adults with two Jewish parents versus 76 percent from intermarried homes.

The Second Generation

Among those who are not convinced by the Saxe-Chertok line of argument is Steven Cohen, a professor of Jewish social policy at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York. He has conducted several studies that all show the determinative effect of intermarriage.

Cohen's first question is how the researchers defined "being raised Jewish." But he also says that they need to look at the second generation: According to the 2000-01 NJPS study, just 13 percent of the grandchildren of an intermarriage -- that is, people whose grandparents were intermarried -- now identify as Jews.

On those grounds alone, declares Cohen, the Jewish community should "not grow complacent" about intermarriage, but should continue to combat it as a real threat to Jewish continuity. "In fact, intermarriage over two generations is more powerful than any other factor in predicting ritual observance and certainly in predicting whether the grandchildren will be Jewish."

Cohen's conclusion is supported, in part, by a new report on the U.S. Jewish population prepared for the 2007 American Jewish Yearbook by professors Ira Sheskin of the University of Miami and Arnold Dashefsky of the University of Connecticut.

Comparing data from 49 U.S. Jewish communities, Sheskin and Dashefsky note that, while some cities "have been more successful than others in convincing intermarried families to raise their children Jewish," it is nevertheless "clear that intermarriage has a negative effect on measures of Jewishness and Jewish continuity."

Intermarriage has a snowball effect, the Sheskin-Dashefsky study concludes, but the ball can roll either way, with much depending on the larger Jewish community.

Sheskin and Dashefsky just concluded a study in Portland, Maine, showing its intermarriage rate as the highest among the cities studied: 61 percent. But a very average 47 percent of its intermarried families are choosing to raise Jewish children. Yet in Detroit, with a low intermarriage rate of 17 percent, just 31 percent are choosing to raise children as Jews.

A community like Detroit's, Sheskin posits, may not feel outreach is a priority, given its low level of intermarriage. The result is that few intermarried families join synagogues.

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, an organization that encourages Jewish institutions to be more welcoming, says that it all comes down to what individuals believe will help them lead better, richer lives.

"When you're a parent, you make decisions on the basis of what's good for you and your family, not what's good for the Jewish community."

Labels: Cohen Center for Jewish Studies, intermarriage, Jews, National Jewish Population Study, Steinhardt Social Research Institute, Sue Fishkoff

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Saturday, January 12, 2008

Survey: 'Unchurched' Americans say church is 'full of hypocrites'

Compiled by Tribune wire services
Article Last Updated: 01/11/2008

Almost three-quarters of Americans who haven't darkened the door of a church in the past six months think it is ''full of hypocrites,'' and even more of them consider Christianity to be more about organized religion than about loving God and people, according to a new survey.

Almost half those surveyed - 44 percent - agreed that ''Christians get on my nerves.''

But the survey of ''unchurched'' Americans by LifeWay Research also found that some 78 percent said they would be willing to listen to someone who wanted to tell them about his or her Christian beliefs. Researchers, affiliated with the Southern Baptists' LifeWay Christian Resources, defined ''unchurched'' as Christians who haven't attended church in six months as well as non-Christians such as Jews, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists.

The findings echoed a previous study by The Barna Group that found the vast majority of young non-Christians view Christianity as anti-gay, judgmental and hypocritical.

The study was based on an overall sample of 1,402 adults who were interviewed by phone in 2007, including 900 ages 18-29 and 502 age 30 and older. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

- Religion News Service

Labels: Buddhists, Christian, Hindus, hypocracy, Jews, LifeWay Research, Muslims, unchurched

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Monday, December 24, 2007

U.S. Jews and Muslims seek paths to harmony

By Michael Conlon, Religion Writer

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Muslims and Jews, a tiny slice of the U.S. population, are looking for new ways to get along that could set a worldwide example for two ancient but often alienated faiths, religious leaders and experts say.

"I've encountered (among Muslims) a more centrist, a more moderate voice that is looking to the Jewish community to help project that voice ... to the greater world," said Rabbi Marc Schneier of New York, speaking of a national summit of imams and rabbis he helped organize earlier this year.

He also cited a recent incident in a New York subway "where four young Jews were being verbally and physically assaulted on a train for wishing the passengers a happy Hanukkah, and the only individual to come to their rescue was a young Muslim man," Hassan Askari, of Bangladeshi heritage, who was beaten.

"That is a very, very powerful example" of what can happen. The challenge is to try to strengthen Jewish-Muslim cooperation and have it serve as a paradigm for communities around the world," added Schneier, who founded the New York Synagogue in Manhattan and also the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding.

On another front, leaders of the Islamic Society of North America and the Union for Reform Judaism, representing respectively the largest U.S. Islamic organization and the largest organized Jewish segment in the country, have agreed on a tutorial for dialogue.

SMALL PERCENTAGES

In a country of 315 million, Muslims number about 2.4 million, according to a recent Pew Research Center study, which also found them to be mostly middle-class members of mainstream society. Others believe the figure is several million higher, and no estimates are available on how many practice the faith.

There are perhaps 6 million Jews in the United States, only about a third of them affiliated with a congregation. Of those who do attend synagogue, 38 percent are Reform, 33 percent Conservative and 22 percent Orthodox, according to one survey.

Zahid Bukhari, director of the American Muslim Studies Program at Georgetown University, said Muslim-Jewish dialogue "is a new beginning."

One difference, he said, is that in places like Europe "within each country you will find a concentration of Muslims from a certain country," such as Algerians and Moroccans in France or South Asians in England.

"In America we have Muslims from 80 different countries. They are younger, they are more educated, more professional, more integrated into society and they feel more comfortable. And the host society here is different," he said.

But what is happening is a "model which I hope we could duplicate" globally, he said.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, author of the newly published "You Don't Have to be Wrong for Me to be Right," said one thing that sets the U.S. situation apart is that no one speaks for all Jews or Muslims and this allows for openness.

"Even religious Muslims and religious Jews are more integrated into the fabric of general American society than in other countries like Britain and France. It is possible to be deeply and visibly religious and still participate in the public culture -- that's not true everywhere," he said.

Farid Senzai, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, said there is a real effort at the local effort by mosques to develop joint activities with synagogues, and it goes down to the individual level as well.

"Muslims in this country have it much better off than elsewhere in the world," he said. "The Muslim community in the United States will in fact have a tremendous impact on Muslims elsewhere because they are able to debate and influence each other."

Amaney Jamal, of Princeton University, said Jews and Muslims share more in common in the United States than elsewhere "due to Muslim assimilation, but not in the cultural sense, rather in the socioeconomic sense. Muslims and Jews find themselves having to interact in many forums, be it university campuses or professional work places." (Editing by Alan Elsner)

Labels: dialogue, Jews, Michael Conlon, Muslims, Pew Research Center survey