Advertisement
Advertisements
August 27, 2007 | 7:33 pm
An editor once told me to avoid quoting officials from Americans United for Separation of Church and State because, he said, they lack any constituency and its executive director, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, often looks like a caricature of a religious libertarian.
But this morning, as I listened to a report on NPR’s Day to Day about more public schools teaching children transcendental meditation, and as I began to ponder how I would blog about the religious implications of such a school program, a lawyer involved with AU was quoted on the segment saying much of what I had been thinking:
“It’s not the business of the public schools to lead kids to inner-peace through a spiritual process. ... If you teach transcendental mediation, you open the floodgates and allow any spiritual or religious group to have access to formal teaching of its edicts in public schools.”
The goal of the program is to “reduce stress, increase focus and bolster achievement,” and the principal of the inner-city school featured on the report said that attacks on TM as religious ritual are overblown. “I’m a Baptist. ... I have one God.”
Still, I have serious reservations about a movement reportedly spreading to 100 schools nationwide by next year. School prayer cannot be institutionally driven when it is Christian or Muslim or Jewish in theme. So why would religious prayer be OK when it has roots in an eastern religion?
Tangentially: A great episode from the third season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm”—they’re all great—is ”The Special Section,” in which Larry David gives Richard Lewis his meditating mantra, “Jai-ya.” The phrase, which Larry had said thousands of times before, is not actually something that brings peace, but causes more of the chaos common to Larry David’s life. It means “F--- me.”
Posted by Brad A. Greenberg in 0 Comments — Leave your comment
Share this post:
del.icio.us
Digg
Facebook
Google Bookmarks
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Technorati
YahooMyWeb
We welcome your feedback.
Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details.
academia america american jews anti-semitism atheism barack obama books capitalism catholicism christianity crime death education entertainment europe evangelicals god holidays holocaust iran iraq islam israel jesus jihad john mccain judaism los angeles media middle east mormonism personal politics president bush president 08 science sexuality sports the law war
Advertisement
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
Advertisements
JDub was never supposed to be just a record label, and as JDub records celebrates its fifth anniversary with a free concert on July 27 downtown at California Plaza, it is more clear than ever that the organization's founders have greater ambitions than merely putting out good
Diet books don't often include approbations from rabbis, but they're appropriate for "The Life-Transforming Diet," a structured eating plan based on the writings of physician and Torah scholar Maimonides.
Barack Obama arrived in Israel and stressed the historic ties between the United States and the Jewish state. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee is on a Middle East and European tour aimed at shoring up his foreign policy credentials.
But the surveys had bad news for Obama: If the U.S. presidential election were held today, American Jews would support the Illinois senator at a significantly lower level than they did his most recent Democratic predecessors.
The new Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco is a hip amalgam of modern art. Daniel Liebeskind's peculiar architectural dazzle looks like a giant Rubik's Cube in metallic steel, standing on its tip beneath the city's downtown skyscrapers. Beside it is the Jessie Street
Jewish groups have taken lead roles in drawing attention to China's policies and specifically sought to spotlight the country's record in advance of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. Yet it appears as if China will suffer no significant international sanction when the
"I wish I had 10 percent of the success with the Israeli government as I have with private donors," sighed Moshe Kaveh, the president of Bar-Ilan University.
Jewish groups have taken lead roles in drawing attention to China's policies and specifically sought to spotlight the country's record in advance of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing. Yet it appears as if China will suffer no significant international sanction when the
Parshat Pinchas (Numbers 25:10-30:1) "God spoke to Moses, saying: 'Pinchas, son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the Kohen, turned back My wrath from the children of Israel with his zealotry for My sake ... Therefore ... I grant him My covenant of peace....'"
Natan Sharansky's previous book, "The Case for Democracy," changed the world. It inspired a generation of U.S. policymakers and influenced President George
W. Bush in his decision to go to war against Saddam Hussein. So when Sharansky's second book, "Defending Identity," came
Serving a community of 600,000, The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angles is the largest Jewish weekly outside New York City. Our award-winning paper reaches over 150,000 educated, involved and affluent readers each week. Subscribe here.
© Copyright 2008 The Jewish Journal and JewishJournal.com
All rights reserved. JewishJournal.com is hosted by Nexcess.net
