Christian tradition has not been kind to the Jewish claim to the land of Israel For many of the fathers of the church the fact that Rome had invaded that land and destroyed the temple in Jerusalem A D 70 seemed to be an objective marker of divine disfavor Already in the fourth century John Chr
Back in 1978 on the way to his bar mitzvah a funny thing happened to Jeffrey Goldberg now Washington correspondent for The New Yorker he started to become a passionate Zionist His assimilated secular left-wing and soon to be divorced parents thought they could avoid the predictable alrightn
A gem among the sayings of the desert fathers has Abba Lot coming to Abba Joseph and saying As much as I am able I keep my little rule and my fast my prayer meditation my contemplative silence And as much as possible I strive to keep my thoughts clean What more should I do The elder monk ros
Easter is the pivotal day in the Christian calendar As Paul wrote ldquo If Christ has not been raised your faith is vain you are still in your sins rdquo 1 Cor 15 17 At the heart of Christian faith is the paschal mystery mdash Jesus rsquo life death and resurrection some 2 000 years ago
Months ago a friend sent me an article from The Atlanta Constitution (10/22/06) about a man whose family I knew well when we all lived together at Koinonia Farm in Americus, Ga. Today Koinonia is known as the birthplace of Habitat for Humanity, but a generation ago it suffered the bitter distinction
Double StandardsZimbabwe is a failed state. Its strongman, Robert Mugagbe, has ruled since 1980; and his Big Man style of governance has turned a country that was once the breadbasket of southern Africa into a hungry wasteland. He drove off white settler-farmers, allegedly to redistribute the land t
As presidents, neither George Washington nor Abraham Lincoln spent time worrying about schools. Since the Constitution did not assign care for education to the federal government, that became the states’ concern. Until after the Civil War, however, the states pretty much left it to families an