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Arrival Day 2005

Jonathan of Head Heeb fame is convening the third annual blogburst for Arrival Day. Arrival Day commemorates the arrival of Jews to old New Amsterdam, and each year, the burst has a theme. According to Jonathan, “this year, the focus is on American Jews as part – or, more accurately, parts – of a larger whole.” After last year’s Arrival Day I read Philip Roth’s Operation Shylock – no causal relationship. In it, Roth’s protagonist, Philip Roth #2 (you really need to read the book) preaches an idea he calls “diasporism,” as a counter to Zionism. Now, regardless of what…

NYT on Turkey’s New Riches

Newfound Riches Come With Spiritual Costs for Turkey’s Religious Merchants – NYTimes.com. There are some choice examples in this article of the rich religious. My favorite is the sofa that lifts up off of the ground during prayer time. I wonder how far they had to dig to find people who saw a strong dichotomy between being wealthy and being religious. I think this quote "The businessmen describe themselves as Muslims with a Protestant work ethic, and say hard work deepens faith," is rather telling. How many Turks are thinking of the Protestant work ethic? The class differentials in Turkish society seem to be the real story. The conflict between the material and the spiritual world seems to be a reach that they shoe-horned into the article.

Mecca Development Veers to Kitsch – Critic’s Notebook – NYTimes.com

Mecca Development Veers to Kitsch – Critic’s Notebook – NYTimes.com. It is an architectural absurdity. Just south of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, the Muslim world’s holiest site, a kitsch rendition of London’s Big Ben is nearing completion. Called the Royal Mecca Clock Tower, it will be one of the tallest buildings in the world, the centerpiece of a complex that is housing a gargantuan shopping mall, an 800-room hotel and a prayer hall for several thousand people. Its muscular form, an unabashed knockoff of the original, blown up to a grotesque scale, will be decorated with Arabic inscriptions and…