What is the the Qur’an? An Agnostic Jew Speaks. Lesley Hazelton at TEDx

I appreciate Haroon’s keen analytic mind, which you can see over at Avari. But then, every so often, he just comes out with poetry that I didn’t know he had in him. Haroon Moghul: This Ramadan, Myself and God, Before I Was Born. It is the Muslim belief that the memory of this moment is buried inside of us. Though we do not inherit sin, though we are each born innocent, though no one can be tried for the errors of another, still somehow this memory courses through each of us. It may appear as a flash, a moment of…

Hebrew Is the Focus of a Brooklyn Charter School – NYTimes.com. Every so often, Aalim Moody, 5, and his twin sister, Aalima, break into a kind of secret code, chatting in a language their father does not understand.  Walking along Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, they make out the lettering on kosher food shops and yeshiva buses, showing off all they learn at the Hebrew Language Academy Charter School in Midwood, where they both attend kindergarten.  …  Aalim and Aalima are not Jewish. They worship at a mosque affiliated with the Nation of Islam. But at the Hebrew Language Academy, they…

I decided to take a week to talk about the passing of Pope (may God have mercy on him) for a few reasons. One, he was an extraordinary figure, and one needs time to digest a life like that. Two, I needed to understand what it meant to me personally. Three, the constant coverage was somewhat sickening. As a result, I’ve decided rather than talking about the person of the Pope, I would rather talk about the figure of the Pope, and what his passing made me understand. For those of you who wish to have an understanding of how…