I too am fasting, though not Jewish but in solidarity with a recently married ortho friend who can't find a decent bite to eat in her new NorCal community.

In 2004, I joined the Muslims at my office at the BBC in Ramadam. Now, that was a test of wills. But they gorge in the evenings and before dawn, so i had to learn to go to bed earlier and wake earlier to make my body realize how important feeding was.

Anonymous (one of the couple) wrote:

 I don't find his story very amazing. Rather lame ... he didn't know the Torah very well (perhaps because his story was invented by someone non-jewish), and he was quite ordinary, I think. Easily angered, not respecting his mother ... Not very sympatic, in my opinion.

Anon, you really should read Julie Galambush's The Reluctant Parting. There, you might learn that Jesus was a Jew and his followers were Jews. The people were waiting for the messiah, unfortunately, they were also waiting for a messianic age. The Jesus sect's followers could talk about a messiah, but they couldn't quite get the messianic age thing worked out. They had to tell people: wait, and your dead mother will be here, eventually. The Jesus sect only became Christian when they started proselytizing outside of the Jewish faith, until that time, they were a sect within Judaism plainly.

Michael,

I think both you and TNR have gotten this one completely wrong. Ms. Hirsi Ali is a kind of feminist that Muslims and many Christians and Jews seem to revile because she speaks out against the kind of terror of place and mind that many keep to themselves. She is former member of the VVD, a Dutch political party that combines conservative views on the economy, foreign policy, crime and immigration with a liberal stance on drugs, abortion and homosexuals. Why would she not support an invasion of Saudi Arabia? She may not be against the Bush family's ties with the house of Saud (I cannot answer for her), but she is clearly against the insulting laws and canons of Wahabi Islam. What's right about the article is that people will clap at anything, what's missed is that she is not doing enough to substantiate her position.

1. Male

2. 20s

3. I have a meeting with ADL about a piece I did on CAIR. Does that count?

4. Sometimes I show up for Temple Beth El in Berkeley, but haven't been to the new building since I left home.

5. no synagogues
6. O, my friend, many.

7. Well, I've had Laurel Snyder on my show, huh?

8. I feel most like the guy who let his friends who were skipping midrash watch TV at his house when: I show up for shabbos and am the one who has to change the channel.

9. The one where no one is reading aloud from the Post.

I was at Limmud UK this year. It was in December at the University of Nottingham, England. Like, in the middle of nowhere in a city where everyone says "yer nart far from somefink, I fink?". It was an excellent time for the one day I was there. The highlight was a forum about women and headcoverings from interfaith Jewish and Muslims perspectives. Taking part was Sarah Joseph, editor of Emel Magazine, the British Muslim magazine. It was a very polite conversation which turned into a heated argument about choice and cultural phemonemon.

If you can get to the NY Limmud, go for it. I only wonder whether OU will be taking part.

Hi Laurel,

This is a very present-minded article. I was recently at a bar in Washington, D.C. talking to the step-son-in-law of a congressional representative. He was a non-Jew married to a small r reform hot woman. He said it was hard to think of a name, but once he had one, well! the baby making would begin in haste!

Being of sound mind and body, I suggested Salathiel, an honorific of the son of the the Queen of Sheba meaning "Black King of the Jews". He liked it, paid his tab, stumbled into a taxi, and for all I know, Salathiel may be gestating in a beautiful woman's stomach at this very moment.

Cheers,

John Parman, Interfaith Voices