Courtesy: Huffington Post UK

It seems that controversy over the hijab – the Islamic tradition of covering a woman’s hair and body – will not die down anytime soon. Governments such as France and Germany seem to be dead set against it, while theocracies such as Saudi Arabia go the other extreme by forcing women to cover. But ask the average Muslim woman, and she will probably wonder what the fuss is all about. Since when is dress a political statement, even a weapon? FEMEN – a feminist Ukrainian protest group – seems to think it is, and is up in arms over the hijab, declaring April 4 as International Topless Jihad Day. What FEMEN activists perhaps did not expect was that Muslim women who wear the hijab are a tad possessive about their right to wear it, and don’t take lightly to a declaration of jihad (Arabic for struggle) against it.

Salvation. A word I view with suspicion. When I hear “accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior,” I have to hold back a wave of revulsion. Though I know some people’s lives have been transformed for the good at revival meetings, for me, “getting saved” (which I did three times in different churches) brings up bitter anger at the adults around me and disappointment in myself. Each time, my “salvation” meant a child collapsing under intense fear, pressure, and manipulation, abandoning her true self in order to conform and be accepted. My real salvation came through therapy and therapeutic groups.

Lita's cat, Mimi, at her new home. Credit: Lita Kurth

So when the writers’ group at the church I attend gave the prompt, “salvation,” I was stuck. Finally, I decided to write about literal salvation, saving someone from a fire, from an oncoming truck, from death.

The Salvation Story

Ironically, it was a Sunday. We sat on the concrete benches under a dead tree watching the daisies and finding snails until ten o’clock when the shelter doors opened.

The woman behind the desk discussed the cat selection. One prize beast displayed in a prominent glass box was double-priced, highly desirable, and it would go quickly. We glanced. Too large. And walked on.

Maybe I’m old school. But I was brought up to be grateful to the United States for being the best and safest home Jews have ever had.

My grandparents were immigrants who knew how lucky they were that they escaped Europe back at the beginning of the 20^th century especially after their siblings, and their siblings’ families who stayed behind, died in the Nazi death camps (one survived and made it to Israel after the war).

My parents were typical Americans of the World War II era. They loved this country, they loved Roosevelt and although Israel played a big part in their lives, this was their country just like English was their language and Judaism was their faith.

Chris Stedman was the very first atheist I’d ever met who was actively engaged in interfaith work. When I became aware of him a couple years ago on Twitter, he’d just been offered a position at Harvard as the Humanist Chaplain and he stood out from the thousands of people I followed because of his positive attitude and sense of humor. I found myself wanting to engage with him because he seemed to genuinely like other people. Back then, Stedman regularly drew fire from both the religious and atheist communities for daring to put forth the idea that people really ought to be able to live together peacefully, even agreeably, while maintaining vastly different opinions about life’s biggest questions.

When he announced he was going to publish a book, I knew it was going to be a game-changer. I watched him online over the past couple years as he went through is writing and editing process, and I’ve followed with what felt like a vested interest over the past few months as he’s Tweeted through his book tour. (Still no book tour dates in Austin, though! *hint, hint*) He’s still getting those same criticisms from both atheists and religious conservatives, but what is heartening is that I’ve watched as an ever-growing crowd of people who are on “Team Human” rally to him– people who are genuinely happy to share space with others they don’t always agree with. People who are like me–who see diversity of thought and belief as a benefit to humanity, not a liability.

"Any animal with multiple stomachs is a vegetarian," the author writes. Credit: Olivier Bataille.

Years ago, I was once teaching biblical Hebrew in an Amish farming community. During that time, I was walking with a 10-year old boy, named Samuel, through the cow pastures. I am originally from New York City and not used to walking near cow excrement. Therefore, I was not walking straight through the fields, but rather in zig-zagged fashion so to avoid stepping in the doo. Suddenly, Samuel could no longer contain his laughter. He started pointing at me, snickering, and said that I was such a sissy that I didn’t even want to step in the doo, when someone could even eat it. Then, in front of my eyes, as a daredevil, he bent down, picked up a dried piece of cow excrement and took a bite!

I was shocked by what I saw, until I realized that cow excrement is just compressed grass. It must have been that Samuel and his friends had many times played in the fields, when they had slipped, fell, and some doo got in their mouths. Or, there were even times when they threw it at each other. “No worry,” the boys’ mothers’ must have said, as it was just compressed grass.

Salomon's self-portrait

Sunday, April 7, marks Holocaust Remembrance Day. This solemn day is commemorated annually by Jews around the world, recalling that from June 1941 until the end of the Second World War in Europe in May 1945, one-third of the world’s Jewish population perished in a systematic campaign of annihilation. But instead of acknowledging the impact of this mammoth horror on why most Jews support Israel as a Jewish state, many critics and opponents of Israel today denigrate this connection, with some even denying or downplaying the reality or magnitude of the Holocaust.

Surprisingly, much about this history remains to be learned. A recent NY Times article tells us that researchers have discovered evidence of “42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe,” rather than 7,000 sites thought previously to comprise this world of enslavement and genocide.

Suskind & daughter

In another few years there will be virtually no living witnesses. “The Diary of Anne Frank” and “Schindler’s List” are iconic portrayals, but many more dramas transpired as well. It shouldn’t surprise us that literary and cinematic remembrances still proliferate.

The life and death of a 26 year-old artist, Charlotte Salomon, reminds us of Anne Frank. Although not a diarist, Salomon documented her family background in Germany and her life as a refugee in vivid color paintings (known as gouaches), framed with bits of narration akin to a graphic novel, presented as if an illustrated script for an opera representing her life, replete with stage directions and musical suggestions. (Her stepmother had been an opera singer.) Real-life characters are given different names, and some plot elements may have been invented, but the basic narrative of “Life? or Theatre? A Play with Music“ encapsulates Salomon’s life. Opinions differ as to whether she had a romance with her stepmother’s voice coach, as her work suggests, or if an infatuated young woman let her imagination take flight.

And just as there are by now thousands of survivors and descendants of people saved by Oskar Schindler, there are a similarly large number of Jews who owe their lives to the ingenuity and heroism of Walter Suskind. But this Jewish Schindler, his wife and young daughter all perished.

The Obama administration, Congress and the media are finally showing some concern about the threats that have been emanating from North Korea since the beginning of the year. The Pentagon is moving an advanced anti-missile system to Guam just in case North Korea’s threats turn out to be more substantial than the administration clearly thinks they are.

That follows the announcement that the North Korean military has been cleared to wage an attack on the U.S. using ”smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear ” weapons. On Tuesday, Pyongyang said that it is restarting operation of its uranium-enrichment program at Yongbyon for use in expanding its nuclear weapons arsenal. In March, it declared that it will no longer abide by the 1953 armistice that halted the Korean War. And in February, it conducted its third nuclear weapons test.

Pope Francis with Foreign Diplomats, Credit REUTERS/Tony Gentile

The news out of the Vatican seems to be getting more and more fascinating every day. An avid researcher of all religions – and especially interested in all things Catholic because of my educational ties with convents – I have been following the abdication of Pope Benedict and the election of Pope Francis, and all that’s happened in between these two major events, with great interest. When Benedict resigned, I felt a moment or two of incredulity, because it’s practically unheard of. Then I followed the whole voting process, including the betting, with bated breath. And I haven’t been disappointed, for Pope Francis is proving to be an absolute gem in so many ways. As I said, fascinating news… even though I’m a Muslim.

Late one evening in April 1963, Dick Gregory came crashing through the door of his Chicago apartment – drunk – and was informed by his wife that the president of the United States was looking for him. As Diane McWhorter related in her 2001 book, Carry Me Home, about the drive to desegregate Birmingham, Alabama, the comedian returned the phone call to the White House and spoke with John F. Kennedy, who reportedly told him, “Please, don’t go to Birmingham. We’ve got it all solved. Dr. King is wrong, what he’s doing.” Gregory, a celebrity at 30 years old, replied – “Man, I will be there in the morning.”

Kennedy and his aides were hardly the only ones pleading for racial calm in that place, 50 years ago. Birmingham’s liberal white clergy and even its black newspaper had urged Martin Luther King Jr. (who died 45 years ago, on April 4) to jettison plans for a campaign of nonviolent direct action. They feared that an escalation of tactics would only make the segregationists angrier.

The single great question of human being is this, How may I become who I am to be? How may we become who we are to be? All other questions are either that question dressed differently, or less important questions. Why is our becoming the only great question? Because awareness of the possibility that we may become greater than now we are is the only way we show that we know we have been created in the image of Creator. Apart from human awareness in all the known universe, there is no becoming. Certainly, things change. Flowers bloom and fade, bears give birth and die. Planets swing through their orbits, stars explode. But only humans have a destiny before them. When a human cares not a whit about possibility, whether because she is satisfied with all her arrangements, or because he has lost all care or all hope, the light goes out; their humanity goes to sleep. When a society loses hope of its destiny, or when their urge is only for more of what they already are, the light goes out and their humanity fades.

The life and death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is all about and only about the great question, how an individual may become and how all humanity may become who and what we are called and created to be. Every story in the gospels offers a guide to the great question. How will you become who you are to be?