CNN:

Bartlett, an accountant from Dundalk, said he made a bargain with the multiple gods associated with his Wiccan beliefs: "You let me win the lottery and I'll teach." Both tickets he purchased had numbers chosen randomly from the computer.
...
He and his wife, Denise, were on their way to the shop where he occasionally teaches Wicca and Reiki healing when they stopped at a liquor store and bought two $5 Mega Millions tickets for Friday night's estimated $330 million jackpot.
...
Bartlett said the money won't change him, although he plans to invest in Mystickal Voyage. "I'm going to live my life like I have been," he said.

I'm a man who's not afraid of love;
I'm a moth who's not afraid of burning

We continue now with our morning theme, the 13th century. Today is the birthday of the Sufi poet known as Rumi.

BBC

For many years now, the most popular poet in America has been a 13th-century mystical Muslim scholar.

Translations of Mawlana Jalaluddin Rumi's - better known as Rumi - verse are hugely popular and have been used by Western pop stars such as Madonna.

They are attracted by his tributes to the power of love and his belief in the spiritual use of music and dancing - although scholars stress that he was talking about spiritual love between people and God, not earthly love.

Rumi, whose 800th birth anniversary falls on Sunday, was born in 1207 in Balkh in Central Asia, now part of Afghanistan.

Tehran Times

Turkey is to celebrate Rumi’s birthday with a giant whirling dervish sama performance and the celebration will be aired live in eight different countries using 48 cameras.

“300 dervishes are scheduled to take part in this ritual, making it the largest performance of sama in history,” the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Turkey Ertugrul Gunay told the Turkish Daily News on Friday.
...
The Persian service of ISNA noted that the Iranian professor of Persian language and literature Jalaleddin Kazzazi believes that Rumi’s thoughts are those of a great man who grew up in the culture of Iran, but whose philosophy is not restricted to any land or border.

“Rumi’s thoughts break the bounds of time and place. Even those who do not understand Persian and cannot read his poetry in its original language, feel astonished when they read translated versions,” he remarked.

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.

Commonweal reports that Crisis, an archconservative Catholic magazine has ceased publication and now exists exclusively online.

Have a look at this description. Remind you of any outlets for commentary in the Episcopal/Anglican world?

It has long been the practice of writers and editors at magazines like Crisis to proclaim smugly the imminent demise of “liberal Catholicism.” As Deal Hudson put it, “Dissenting and left-leaning Catholic publishing...will continue to wither away.... The leadership of in-name-only Catholics is crumbling, and a new generation has set a new agenda.”

Liberal Catholicism, and liberal Catholic magazines, are not without their problems, and Commonweal tries not to hide or minimize them. The task of handing on the faith in an often hostile culture is daunting. Assimilating what is of undeniable value in secular modernity’s embrace of religious pluralism, freedom of conscience, individual autonomy, and the equal dignity of men and women requires genuine discernment. Still, claims about the death of liberal Catholicism are premature. The ad hominem attacks one often found in Crisis—the glib assumption that every “liberal” Catholic secretly longs for the destruction of the hierarchical church-deserve a decent burial. “Why call for dialogue about teachings that the church says cannot be changed?” Hudson wrote in a good summary of his magazine’s core conviction. “A call for dialogue on settled issues is itself a symptom of dissent.”

In the New York Times earlier this week, Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, defended the Chinese Government's recent efforts to regulate religion--including Order No. 5, a law covering “the management measures for the reincarnation of living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism.” One of Zizek's more provocative arguments is that even in the West religion is largely becoming a mere matter of culture, rather than faith:

It is all too easy to laugh at the idea of an atheist power regulating something that, in its eyes, doesn’t exist. However, do we believe in it? When in 2001 the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the ancient Buddhist statues at Bamiyan, many Westerners were outraged — but how many of them actually believed in the divinity of the Buddha? Rather, we were angered because the Taliban did not show appropriate respect for the “cultural heritage” of their country. Unlike us sophisticates, they really believed in their own religion, and thus had no great respect for the cultural value of the monuments of other religions.

The significant issue for the West here is not Buddhas and lamas, but what we mean when we refer to “culture.” All human sciences are turning into a branch of cultural studies. While there are of course many religious believers in the West, especially in the United States, vast numbers of our societal elite follow (some of the) religious rituals and mores of our tradition only out of respect for the “lifestyle” of the community to which we belong: Christmas trees in shopping centers every December; neighborhood Easter egg hunts; Passover dinners celebrated by nonbelieving Jews.

“Culture” has commonly become the name for all those things we practice without really taking seriously. And this is why we dismiss fundamentalist believers as “barbarians” with a “medieval mindset”: they dare to take their beliefs seriously. Today, we seem to see the ultimate threat to culture as coming from those who live immediately in their culture, who lack the proper distance.

Perhaps we find China’s reincarnation laws so outrageous not because they are alien to our sensibility, but because they spill the secret of what we have done for so long: respectfully tolerating what we don’t take quite seriously, and trying to contain its political consequences through the law.

Read it all here.

Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Mary Lefkowitz suggests that it is time to bring back the Greek gods. She writes: By allowing mortals to ask hard questions, Greek theology encouraged them to learn, to seek all the possible causes of events. Philosophy -- that characteristically Greek invention -- had its roots in such theological inquiry. As did science.

Read it all.

From the Associated Press: When some of the world's leading religious scholars gather in San Diego this weekend, pasta will be on the intellectual menu. They'll be talking about a satirical pseudo-deity called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose growing pop culture fame gets laughs but also raises serious questions about the essence of religion.

There's no more scientific basis for intelligent design than there is for the idea an omniscient creature made of pasta created the universe. If intelligent design supporters could demand equal time in a science class, why not anyone else? The only reasonable solution is to put nothing into sciences classes but the best available science.

"I think we can all look forward to the time when these three theories are given equal time in our science classrooms across the country, and eventually the world; one third time for Intelligent Design, one third time for Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, and one third time for logical conjecture based on overwhelming observable evidence," Henderson sarcastically concluded.

Read it all. And then, on a somewhat more serious note (honest) consider the church of the Moo shoo Burrito.

In September 2007, Gillian Gibbons, a teacher at Unity High School in Khartoum, Sudan, was teaching her class about animals and their habitats so allowed her class of primary school pupils to choose the name of the class teddy bear. The class of seven year olds chose "Muhammad" and for that Ms. Gibbons spent 15 days in jail and was deported.

Ms. Gibbons was arrested for insulting Islam, after another school staffmember complained to the Ministry of Education.

According to the New York Times:

Under Sudanese law, the teacher, Gillian Gibbons, could have spent six months in jail and been lashed 40 times.

“She got a very light punishment,” said Rabie A. Atti, a government spokesman. “Actually, it’s not much of a punishment at all. It should be considered a warning that such acts should not be repeated.”

Gibbons, a British subject, who teaches at a private school, began a project on animals and asked her class to suggest a name for a teddy bear. The class voted resoundingly for Muhammad, one of the most common names in the Muslim world and the name of Islam’s holy prophet.

As part of the exercise, Ms. Gibbons told her students to take the bear home, photograph it and write a diary entry about it. The entries were collected in a book called “My Name Is Muhammad.” Most of her students were Muslim children from wealthy Sudanese families.

The government said that when some parents saw the book, they complained to the authorities. In Islam, insulting the Prophet Muhammad is a grave offense, and in northern Sudan, where Khartoum is, it is a crime. The government said it was insulting to name an animal or toy Muhammad.

Hard-line Muslim groups picked up on the incident and responded with protests. Several thousand Muslims marched in Sudan's capital Khartoum on Sunday, calling for a rough sentence.

According to news agencies, some of the protesters chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance - execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad".

The hardline Khartoum protesters gathered in Martyrs Square, outside the presidential palace in the capital, many of them carrying knives and sticks.

But, Ekklesia reports, other Muslim groups were horrified at the calls for violence.

But Muslims elsewhere expressed horror and sadness at the treatment of Ms Gibbons, condemning also some sensationalist reporting in the tabloids.

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (Fosis), which represents more than 90,000 Muslim students in Britain and Ireland, had said it was "deeply concerned" at what was a "gravely disproportionate" verdict.

The federation's president, Ali Alhadithi, said: "What we have here is a case of cultural misunderstandings, and the delicacies of the matter demonstrate that it was not the intention of Gillian Gibbons to imply any offence against Islam or Muslims. We hope that the Sudanese authorities will take immediate action to secure a safe release for Gillian Gibbons."

Not many Sudanese, though, took part in the protests outside of those mobilized by the groups, according to the Times:

Despite the attempts by Islamic clerics to mobilize the masses against Ms. Gibbons, many Sudanese did not take to the streets.

Najla Hussein, who works at a mobile phone company in Khartoum, said she thought Ms. Gibbons should have been set free.

“Our government creates such problems to divert the eyes of the world community from our domestic problems,” Ms. Hussein said. “I am sure that the case of the British teacher is politically motivated and has got nothing to do with our prophet.”

The Times says that the arrest may have been in response to criticism of Sudanese government by British representatives to the United Nations.

Sudan’s relations with the West — especially Britain — are as strained as ever. Many developed countries are increasingly frustrated with what they consider stalling tactics by the Sudanese to delay the deployment of peacekeepers to Darfur, the troubled region of western Sudan.

Sudan, meanwhile, has accused the West of being anti-Islamic.

Beyond that, on Tuesday, Sir John Sawers, the British representative to the United Nations, criticized the Sudanese government on a number of issues, including the languishing international arrest warrants for a Sudanese official and a militia leader in Darfur.

The next day, the Sudanese government decided to press charges against Ms. Gibbons.

Read the Eklessia story here , the New York Times coverage here, and other press coverage here and here.

A Jewish record label (JDub Records) is putting on a multi-city music festival featuring acts performing "klezmer-punk, hip-hop in Arabic and folk-rock tunes" this weekend for Hanukkah, which starts today at sundown. The event is expected to draw some 7,000 people in nine cities, according to a Washington Post article about the event:

The Jewish music industry has flourished over the past decade and uses Hanukkah, a minor religious holiday that begins tonight at sundown, as a time to party.

While still tiny in the grand scheme of the overall music business, the movement that some call "new Jewish music" is seen by musicians and fans as thriving. It uses sounds and lyrics and language from the Jewish world present and past. Three labels have started since 1995, including JDub, which opened in 2002 and produced Hasidic reggae star Matisyahu as well as the rock band LeeVees, which is made up of Jewish members of better-known bands and has sold over 10,000 copies of its 2006 album, "Hannukah Rocks."

While the industry and shows go on all year for such bands, the Hanukkah is a key time in the United States because of the Christmas-driven party season. Last year, XM Radio launched a Hannukah station (which runs for the holiday's eight days), and with the increase in contemporary Jewish bands, more concert halls and bars are hosting Hannukah music parties each year.

The proliferation of music has raised a broader question: What is Jewish music? Unlike the Christian music world, most of what's coming out is not God-worshiping. Some bands have Jewish members. In other cases, musicians may be non-Jews, but the words, sounds or performance styles are inspired by Jewish history. Much of it is a blend.

Read the whole thing here.

(Updated)

The movement of the Muslim lunar calendar placed the festival of Eid al Adha (عيد الأضحى) in the week before Christmas this year. In the multi-ethnic land of the United Arab Emirates (e.g., Dubai and Abu Dhabi) this meant a prominent coincidence of these celebrations. Although the country is more than 90 percent Muslim, malls and hotel lobbies are trimmed for Christmas.

Clerics speak out, and are on the same page regardless of faith:

Dr Mohammad Mattar Al Ka’abi, Director-General of the General Authority of Islamic Affairs and Auqaf (GAIAA), has called upon people, with no bias towards any nationality or religion, to realise the actual meaning and real goals of the holy celebrations.

He pointed out that nowadays most people simply ignore the noble aims of the festivals.

“Extravagance and over-spending on some aspects of these celebrations, like eating, drinking, and clothing, in order to express pleasure is something unacceptable by God Almighty. Dedicating some of this money to charitable activities is much better than spending on useless ways,” said Dr Al Kaabi.

He also pointed out that this type of materialism might cause a community gap. “The revealed religions, whether Islam or Christianity, are aimed at remembering Allah (God) and spreading love, peace, happiness, and kindness among all people, not only the rich, but also the poor, the needy and the ill,” stressed Dr Al Kaabi.

As for the Eid itself, it is an opportunity for litigants to bury their hatchet, to forget and forgive.

Muslims should become more cooperative, tolerant, charitable and forgiving in such happy occasions, he stated.

Monsignor Paul Hinder, Bishop of the Apostolic Vicariate of Arabia, based in Abu Dhabi, explained that religious holidays are celebrated by two types of people: the pious ones, who are still deeply marked by their faith; and the people who practise little, if at all, their religion.

Update: I will be ending my six year stay in the United Arab Emirates in a few days, and joining the rest of the Cafe newsteam in working from a US time zone. Here's some of the things I'll miss.
- A roundup of
Christmas photos taken by Gulf News photographers.
- The 40 year tradition of Christmas in UAE. (Actually Christianity predates Islam here.)

Jane Lampman of The Christian Science Monitor writes:

Growing up in today's culture can be exciting, confusing, and chock-full of challenges.

For young American Muslims, navigating adolescence has proven especially daunting since the events of Sept. 11, 2001. They must sort out not only who they are individually but also how they fit into a society that knows little about them but holds a host of impressions.

"The American Muslim Teenager's Handbook," was written to offer some guidance.

Read it all.

The latest evolution in social responsible investing comes out of Dow Jones & Company, which has partnered with the Indian firm Dharma Investments to create new "dharma indexes" that will track the stocks of companies that observe the values of dharma-based religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

The Dow Jones Dharma Indexes are the first to measure dharma-compliant stocks and now track more than 3,400 companies globally, including about 1,000 in the U.S., according to the company. In addition to the global index, Dow Jones has created dharma indexes for the U.S., Britain, Japan and India.

...

"The principle of dharma contains precepts relevant to good conduct, but also the implicit requirement of mindfulness about the sources of wealth -- and therefore responsible investing," said Dharma Investment CEO Nitesh Gor.

Advisory committees of religious leaders and scholars will screen and monitor companies' environmental policies, corporate governance, labor relations and human rights, among other criteria. Companies from business sectors deemed un-dharmic, such as weapons manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, casinos and alcohol, are barred from the index.

Bhakti Charu Swami of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness said, "If one only considers the profit motive of an investment without recognizing how that profit was generated, one may unknowingly commit sinful activity. Every link in the entire chain of events is liable for the results."

The whole thing is here.

Juashaunna Kelly, a Muslim girl from a Washington, D. C. high school, was disqualified during an invitiational meet in neighboring Montgomery County, Maryland, after meet officials ruled the unitard she wears for religious reasons violated National Federation of State High School Associations' standards. The girl's coach pointed out that she has competed in that uniform for two years without incident.

Follow the Washington Post's coverage of this story here and here. And don't miss this slide show. Update: this morning's editorial.

The most troubling quote in either story is this one:

"What she needs to do is get some religious documentation saying it's part of her heritage and bring it with her to every meet," said Jim Vollmer, the commissioner of track for Montgomery County public schools.

An added twist: Kelly is running winter track right now, but she also excels at cross country. Much of the high school cross-country season takes place during Ramadan, so Kelly runs 30 miles per week or so while fasting.

A University of Queensland PhD thesis come to some interesting conclusions about new-age spirituality and mental health:

Rosemary Aird examined a possible correlation between new forms of spirituality and mental health as part of her University of Queensland PhD studies.

After surveying more than 3700 Brisbane-based 21-year-olds, she found spirituality and self-focused religions may undermine a person's mental health.

"I had a look at two different beliefs - one was a belief in God, associated with traditional religions, and the other was the newer belief in a spiritual or higher power other than God," Dr Aird said.

The research found non-traditional belief was linked with higher rates of anxiety, depression, disturbed and suspicious ways of thinking and anti-social behaviour.

New-age beliefs promote the idea of self-transformation, self-fulfilment and self-enlightenment, which could see many people excluded from a community environment, she said.

"Traditional religion tends to promote the idea of social responsibility and thinking of others' interests, whereas the new-age movement pushes the idea that we can transform the world by changing ourselves.

"The downside is that people are very much on their own and not part of a community, which may lead to a kind of isolation."

Young people with new-age beliefs were twice as likely to be more anxious and depressed than those with traditional beliefs, the research found.

Why would this be the case? Aside from the lack of community, Aird notes the lack of a stable belief system:

As people have moved away from traditional religious beliefs in recent times, most have been left with a desire to find meaning and purpose in life, she said.

"People who are into the new-age spirituality tend to shop around and will often borrow from all sorts of old beliefs, like Wicca, witchcraft or Native American religions.

"It's a whole mish-mash and changes all the time, where they'll do something for a while before doing something else."

Read it all here. Hat tip to Religion News Blog.

What do you think?

As evidence of significant change in the attitudes of Conservative Judiasm, over a dozen Conservative rabbis have signed a statement supporting same sex marriage. As Forward explains, this reflects a sea change that began when the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards decided in December to allow gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex commitment ceremonies:

In 2005, when a Jewish gay-marriage activist first pressed California rabbis to sign a statement supporting full marriage equality for gays and lesbians, only a handful of Conservative rabbis lent their names. Over the course of the past two months, however, more than a dozen Conservative rabbis here have signed on to a growing list of clergy who support gay marriage in the civil realm.

What changed in between was the December 2006 decision, or teshuvah, by the Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards to allow gay and lesbian clergy and same-sex commitment ceremonies — a decision made after 15 years of rancorous argument about the issue. As a result of that long-simmering debate, observers note, Conservative rabbis, many of whom were previously uninformed on issues of gay rights in the civil sphere, did their homework and read up on the issues. Others who may have already supported gay marriage finally felt freed up to express their views publicly.

“Conservative rabbis might have been privately supportive of same-sex marriage, but they hadn’t been willing to step out,” said Denise Eger, rabbi of the gay and lesbian Reform synagogue Congregation Kol Ami, located in West Hollywood. “The teshuvah, for people who have held their own private opinions, especially West Coast rabbis, has empowered them to be able to speak more publicly.”

. . .

As of yet, Jews for Marriage Equality has corralled 92 rabbis to sign its clergy statement; 22 of them affiliated with the Conservative movement. The statement, a lengthy document affirming the right to same-sex civil marriage, calls on Jewish leaders to embrace gay and lesbian rights.

“Efforts to prevent civil marriage for gays and lesbians through legal means, such as state or federal Constitutional amendments that deprive them of the benefits and dreams others enjoy, are unjust and discriminatory…” the statement reads. “We as rabbis, cantors and community leaders committed to Jewish tradition urge all Jews to remember our heritage of justice and to recommit ourselves to not wavering on this holy principle.”

In Massachusetts, an anti same-sex marriage amendment was roundly defeated in 2005, and again in 2007 at the state legislative level. Rabbi Menachem Creditor, a former Bay State Conservative rabbi who in June of last year became rabbi of Berkeley synagogue Congregation Netivot Shalom, helped organize rabbinic efforts to defeat the Massachusetts bill. Three years ago, 97 Massachusetts rabbis signed a public advertisement opposing the proposed legislation. But according to Creditor — who founded Keshet Rabbis, an organization of Conservative rabbis who support gay and lesbian equality — only seven of those signatories were Conservative. Following passage of the law committee decision in December 2006, Creditor said, many more Conservative rabbis signed their names.

Read it all here.

While Christians are gearing up for Easter, this weekend also marks the festival of Purim in the Jewish faith, as noted in this story from the LA Times' "Babylon and Beyond" blog:

Jews in Israel and around the world are celebrating Purim, the holiday marking the escape of the Persian Jews from a plot to exterminate them devised by Haman, vizier to King Ahasuerus who ruled Persia in the 5th century BC.

The Book of Esther tells the story of the plot and the reversal of fate by which the community was saved. Among the good deeds Jews are obliged to fulfill during the holiday is "mishloah manot"- the sending of portions [of food], and "matanot la'evyonim"- gifts, charity to the poor.

(The customary masquerading, mostly by children, is another prominent if relatively modern tradition -- and is becoming more modern by the minute. Among secular kids, Queen Esther is out; SpongeBob Squarepants, sadly, is in.)

This year, Israelis went all-out with holiday spirit. They showered love, giving and gifts on the town of Sderot that has suffered rocket attacks for the past seven years. The southern town and its environs have been worn thin by years of fear, financial losses and government promises, and thousands have abandoned it in recent years. The rockets that started out crude and with more bark than bite have evolved into lethal weapons; fired from Gaza, they take a fleeting 15 seconds to land in Sderot, where mundane activities have become dangerous gambles.

That story is here.

Meanwhile, the Jerusalem Post has published Sviva Israel's list of ten tips for an environmentally friendly Purim. Many of the tips are practices we can incorporate in our own gift-giving rituals, such as:

1. Trash the baskets - What can you do with so many straw baskets and gift bags? Package your Mishloah Manot in useful, reusable containers such as storage containers, glasses, mugs and pasta drainers for year-round usability.

2. Wrap it up - For the more creative, wrap up your food items in a pretty hand towel, apron, cloth table napkins, oven mitts or other useful fabric item.

3. Sustainable stuffing - Instead of padding out your package with shredded cellophane or colored paper, use banana chips, sunflower seeds or popcorn (only for recipients over three years old).

4. Bag it - Follow the fashion trend and give your gifts in eco-friendly cloth bags that your friends can reuse for shopping.

The complete list is here.

Turns out yesterday was a convergence of matters holy. In addition to Good Friday and Purim, other notable Holy Days from around the world that took place on March 21. Among them, Eid--the birth of the Prophet, among some Muslims. More remarkable is the fact that such a convergence is incredibly rare, due to the fact that none of the major occasions marked on Friday is keyed to the same calendar date or event. You've probably seen the reports that Easter is unusually early this year, making the scramble for flowers more pressing, and that the last time it was this early was nearly a century ago.

But Time notes the significance of this year's Good Friday:

But unlike some holy days — say, Christmas, which some non-Christians in the U.S. observe informally by going to a movie and ordering Chinese food — on this particular Friday, March 21, it seems almost no believer of any sort will be left without his or her own holiday. In what is statistically, at least, a once-in-a-millennium combination, the following will all occur on the 21st:

• Good Friday
• Purim, a Jewish festival celebrating the biblical book of Esther
• Narouz, the Persian New Year, which is observed with Islamic elaboration in Iran and all the "stan" countries, as well as by Zoroastrians and Baha'is.
• Eid Milad an Nabi, the Birth of the Prophet, which is celebrated by some but not all Sunni Muslims and, though officially beginning on Thursday, is often marked on Friday.
• Small Holi, Hindu, an Indian festival of bonfires, to be followed on Saturday by Holi, a kind of Mardi Gras.
• Magha Puja, a celebration of the Buddha's first group of followers, marked primarily in Thailand.

"Half the world's population is going to be celebrating something," says Raymond Clothey, Professor Emeritus of Religious studies at the University of Pittsburgh. "My goodness," says Delton Krueger, owner of www.interfaithcalendar.org, who follows "14 major religions and six others." He counts 20 holidays altogether (including some religious double-dips, like Maundy Thursday and Good Friday) between the 20th (which is also quite crowded) and the 21st. He marvels: "There is no other time in 2008 when there is this kind of concentration."

And in fact for quite a bit longer than that. Ed Reingold and Nachum Dershowitz, co-authors of the books Calendrical Calculations and Calendrical Tabulations, determined how often in the period between 1600 and 2400 A.D. Good Friday, Purim, Narouz and the Eid would occur in the same week. The answer is nine times in 800 years. Then they tackled the odds that they would converge on a two-day period. And the total is ... only once: tomorrow. And that's not even counting Magha Puja and Small Holi.

Unless you are mathematically inclined, however, you may not see the logic in all this. If it's the 21st of March, you may ask, shouldn't all the religions of the world celebrate the same holiday on that date each year?

No. There are a sprinkling of major holidays (Western Christmas is one) that fall each year on the same day of the Gregorian calendar, a fairly standard non-religious system and the one Americans are most familiar with.

But almost none of tomorrow's holidays actually follows that calendar.

The story is here. HT to ePisco Sours.

Passover is being celebrated by Jewish people around the world beginning tonight at sundown. Passover celebrates the Exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt and one of the most important events in the history of the Jewish people.
Some customs and laws of Passover are:

To prepare for the holiday, houses are cleaned thoroughly and dishes and utensils are replaced with those used on Passover only.
Bread and other leavened food (chametz) is forbidden and removed from the home before Passover begins. Many Jews will eat only food specifically marked as "Kosher for Passover."
Matzah, a flat bread made just of flour and water, is eaten.
Work is prohibited on the first two and last two days (in Israel, the first and last days only), when rules akin to those followed on the Jewish Sabbath are followed.
In Temple times, Passover was one of three annual pilgrimage festivals to Jerusalem.
The Seder Ritual: The seder is held on the first night or two (depending on custom) of Passover. Some characteristics of this ritual meal are:
The story of the Exodus is retold, using a book called a "Haggadah."
Bitter herbs are eaten to recall the pain of slavery, and greens to celebrate the onset of spring. Other foods include haroseth--a fruit, nut, and wine mixture--and of course, matzah.
The youngest at the table recites the Four Questions.
Four cups of wine are consumed.
A festive meal is eaten.

Passover takes on new meaning in each generation with the incorporation of the present struggles for liberation with those of the original event. Beliefnet reports:

The custom of customizing even extends to Judaism's most traditional branch. The Orthodox Jewish publishing house, Artscroll Mesora, offers some 50 different Haggadahs, one of which is written by Hasidic rabbi and addiction specialist Abraham Twerski to address the experience of substance abusers.

Adapting Passover's message to fit a range of needs is practically as old as the holiday itself.

"Over and over again, the Bible itself uses the Exodus to justify all sorts of things," from caring for the poor to "any number of laws and practices," Sarna said. "So the idea of trimming the Exodus to justify whatever it is you want to justify really has very deep roots."

Even before people fiddled with the text of the Haggadah, they incorporated illustrations that reflected their times, depicting the modern-day Egyptian as a Russian warrior or Nazi soldier, said Sarna, adding that even the traditional text requires reinterpretation.

"It says in every generation, they arise to destroy us and God saves us. Well, if that's the message," then "obviously we are supposed to interpret this story in light of contemporary events," he said.

Without fail, Passover offers a fitting backdrop for any number of modern-day struggles.

That's why the American Jewish World Service, an international relief organization, dispatched a mass mailing to U.S. synagogues with readings that offer a "fifth question" to Passover's traditional four questions asked at the Seder table. The cards depict a refugee from Darfur and ask: "How can we make this year different from all other years?"

Click here for more coverage of the many aspects of Passover.

In other Passover news, according to Rachel Zoll of AP, Pope Benedict XVI became the first pope to visit an American synagogue Friday, bringing greetings for the Passover holiday and accepting gifts of matzo and a seder plate. Benedict, 81, stopped briefly at Park East Synagogue on Manhattan's Upper East Side, near the Vatican residence.
Read it here.

Yesterday's New York Times included a very interesting profile of the first gay men permitted to attend the Jewish Theological Seminary:

Aaron Weininger stood in the ballroom of a Florida hotel last April, a college senior given the compliment of leading the Passover Seder for an audience of university administrators. He reached the sentence in the Hagaddah that implores each generation to feel that it was the one liberated from Egypt. There were few passages in the liturgy he had known better or longer.

In this particular moment, though, the words rippled with new meaning. One week earlier, the leading seminary of Conservative Judaism had dropped its longstanding ban on admitting, teaching or ordaining openly gay students to be rabbis. Ten days later, Mr. Weininger had his interview at Jewish Theological Seminary, seeking to be the first person to break those barriers.

“That line of the Haggadah spoke so directly to me,” Mr. Weininger, 23, recalled in an interview. “To feel what it was like to be liberated from a narrow place. Egypt can mean different things in different generations. And I felt like I was on the threshold of crossing the sea, of leaving that place of narrowness. I hadn’t reached the Promised Land yet, but I was on my journey.”

As Passover of 2008 commences Saturday night, Mr. Weininger, along with Ian Chesir-Teran, is one of two gay rabbinical students at J.T.S., as the seminary is routinely known. Their presence has essentially, if not always easily, settled decades of roiling debate within the Conservative movement over homosexual members of the clergy.

While the centrist Conservative denomination in its middle-of-the-road way operates with three different policies on ordaining gay men and lesbians — two opposed and one in favor — the facts have been established, probably irreversibly. Even before J.T.S. made its decision, the Conservative movement’s other major seminary, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, had done so.

Conservative Judaism reached a similar juncture a generation ago when it first admitted women as candidates for the rabbinate. Mr. Weininger was born in the same year, 1985, when J.T.S. ordained its first female rabbi, Amy Eilberg. In the months just before he won admission to the seminary, he happened to bump into Rabbi Eilberg at a synagogue in Jerusalem and solicited her advice.

“I encouraged him to remember that since he is a pioneer, some people will project onto him feelings and assumptions that they have about ‘the cause,’ ” Rabbi Eilberg recalled of their conversation in an e-mail message. “As hard as it is not to take others’ criticisms and attacks personally — since they are personal — it is essential to work at remembering that this is about the larger issue.”

Interestingly, the seminary chancellor who permitted gay rabbinical students to enroll, Arnold Eisen, spoke of Mr. Weininger and Mr. Chesir-Teran in almost an opposite way. “Face to face,” Mr. Eisen said in an interview, “you get to know the people and you get to like the people, not as representatives of a cause or an ideology.”

The tension between being an individual and being an emblem animates both Mr. Weininger and Mr. Chesir-Teran. Both had staked out public positions as advocates of gay equality in the Conservative movement even before being allowed to apply to the seminary. Both were involved last month in a major conference at J.T.S. about issues of inclusion, provocatively titled “Adam and Eve, Meet Adam and Steve.” Mr. Chesir-Teran’s taste for the limelight even includes his current stint in an Israeli reality-TV series in which the parents of two gay households swap families.

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