Beliefnet, that bastion of complex and nuanced writing on all things religious, was hit with a plagiarism scandal this week. To start off the new year, this repository of the hardest hitting coverage of the religious milieu was forced to shut down the blog of Neale Donald Walsch.

The longtime contributor it seems managed to lift, verbatim, a story about a Christmas Concert where one of the children mistakenly held a letter upside down, turning “CHRISTMAS LOVE” into “CHRISTWAS LOVE.” Isn’t it heartwarming? The problem was, Walsch told the story as if it was his own son’s classmates in the story. It wasn’t. Candy Chand, a different author completely, had originally penned the words over a decade before. The story was in a Chicken Soup for the Soul book.

Candy Chand was not amused, nor should she be. Walsch, hardly the first to find himself publically chastised for the sin of stealing others’ work, posted the most unbelievable mea culpa I’ve ever read. Shortly after, Beliefnet announced that his blog was no more. Excuse me, his "blogsite." That’s what he called it. He also called it a "blogspace."

Neale Donald Walsch is not a very good writer. That should be evident from the fact he plagiarized, though if you’d ever slogged through anything he’d actually written you’d not need plagiarism to seal the conviction. This is a man who, just before the mea culpa posted this gem:

You are an Individuation of Deity, a singularization of The Singularity, an aspect of Divinity. You are the Localized Expression of the Universal Presence... You are God... You are in the Realm of the Physical -- what has also been called the Realm of the Relative...which is where Experiencing occurs.

Continue reading...

Not kosher: Valentine the heart-spotted pigLast week, when I posted Alex the Videographer’s call for love, a user named Levitt8 replied “Tell me again why a Jew needs a date on St. Valentine's Day?” True, the holiday is named after an early Catholic martyr – but the “saint” part has really disappeared from the holiday. Beliefnet explains that Vatican II took the day back from St. Val because the Church was “embarrassed by the presence of saints on its calendar who might never have existed” (you know, because religious leaders around the world tend to come down hard on stuff that defies the historical record.) So even though it’s named after a Christian figure, literally no one celebrates it as a religious holiday any more.

Some Jews have another reason for staying away from the holiday: In 1349, it was the occasion of a massive pogrom in Strasbourg. So if you prefer holding 648-year-old grudges to eating candy and sharing warm feelings with your loved ones, then yes, a boycott might be in order.

Keep in mind, though, that no less a Jewish authority than Shmuley Boteach thinks you should celebrate Valentine’s Day. Boteach suggests showing up at your sweetie’s house wrapped in a bow. For the record, when I was in high school a boy actually did this to my best friend, and she was VERY impressed. It might not work on women over the age of 15, though.

 

John Spalding: Is almost this badassOkay... I don't mean to go on too long about Herod, but after my post the other day I got a weird email from my friend John, who also happens to be a religion writer and the editor of SoMA Review.  It seems that he was in Israel 3 weeks ago, doing some research for a book, and just happened to "stumble" onto the  royal tomb in question. 

So he wrote this little piece for Beliefnet about the experience, and I thought I'd follow up our Herod conversation by linking the story, which goes a little something like this:

That’s when we noticed, off to the right, the Israeli Antiquity Authorities’ tape marking a new excavation. Brian said that it must have been a very recent dig, because it hadn't been there the last time he visited. We ducked under the tape and climbed the hill till we reached the dig.

Now, John... I love you dearly, and think you're the bee's knees.  But I'm going to question your definition of "stumble" now.  In the name of Faithhacking and curiousity.

Because it makes me feel better to do so.  Since I myself, late one night, "stumbled" into Petra in a similar manner, and had one of the coolest experiences of my life.

And revisiting that night, as I read your story, makes me wonder how many other religiously-curious travelers have broken into sacred sites (not that I'm a Nabataean or anything-- but Petra is pretty clearly a sacred space!) with an eye for a personal experience.  Something off the beaten path.

And I wonder too if this has something to do with the way we experience religious places when we travel.  If, after plodding through a sacred site with an enormous tour group full of snot-nosed kids begging their parents for ice cream, one doesn't feel the desire for a more personal experience in a sacred site?  One doesn't feel some need to sit in a silent ancient space and touch something real... reach back in time, or into the silence, and explore faith. 

Is it possible there are all kinds of people who've broken into sacred space?

Which leads me to this... I want to know if any of our other Jewcy readers have done things like this.  If so,  I want  to know what their experiences were like... 

I'm not advocating anyone go breaking into the Temple Mount  in the name of "practical spirituality".   Of course I'm not. 

But for those of you who have, can you tell us about it?  Jewcy minds want to know!

What is: A Jew?So I took this silly quiz about Judaism, “Do you know your Matzoh from your Moshiach”, and I got a question WRONG!   

Guess which one? 

Some of the questions were what I expected (I assume this test was mostly designed so that  non-Jews could prove their multicultural chops).  Moses. Torah. Blah blah blah… 

But some of the questions are pretty odd, and lead me to believe that a Jew was NOT asked to write the quiz.  Like this one:

Q12. What do Jews believe will happen when the Messiah comes?

1. All Jews will be redeemed and will gather in Israel to rebuild the Temple.

2. All the righteous will be raptured into heaven.

3. The universe will end.

4. All of humanity will convert to Judaism.

Is that possible, that Beliefnet didn’t bother to ask a Jew to write the Jewish quiz?  That they got some pre-Seminary Jewish studies major who happened to be interning in their offices to do it?

I mean, what’s up, Beliefnet?  Isn’t there some way to think about the world that doesn’t pit Judaism against Christianity?  Isn’t there some way to describe/imagine the mystical future of human existence without turning to Christian ideas and juxtaposing Jewish concepts against them?

I don’t mean to get all het up about this. I don’t.  I really like Beliefnet in general, but something about this bugs me.  Because it resembles so much the way Christians tend to see Jews.  As non-Christians. 

Passover is not the Jewish Easter.  A bris is not “kinda like a baptism”.   

Hrm!

Why don’t you go take the quiz and tell me what you think. Am I just completely overreacting?   And who do you think they had in mind when they wrote this quiz?  Who is their target audience? 

Religious photography: Revealing images or simplified caricatures?Beliefnet has a really stunning photo gallery up right now, called The World at Prayer.  Totally worth a visit to the site. 

The images are from a book called Talking to God: Images of the World at Prayer, which includes text by some major players in the faith-biz— The Dalai Lama, Thomas Merton, Elie Weisel…

And it’s all worth your time… but in particular, I want to mention two aspects of this project:

1. I want to suggest that you take a moment to scroll through the images once quickly, and take note of your own different reactions to each image.  As a way of checking in with your baser instincts. 
   
   I’m going to suggest that we think about “faith” differently when it resembles our own more… or less.  I’m going to suggest that you’ll feel a different kind of surge when you see “foreign” faiths” than you’ll feel when you see your own, or something that resembles your own. I’m going to suggest that for some of us, faith is not equal (in a raw, human, way) and that we need to work on our baggage.
   
   By which I mean that I need to work on this.  By which I mean that I need to see about addressing my own fascination for “National Geographic” faith, and my own disdain for white American people in  mega churches… 
   
   
2. I want to ask what you think about the fact that the Jewish images are all orthodox…  it bugs me, and I wonder if this is all we are to the world. Ancient old men, praying in funny clothes.
   
   And I wonder if maybe this happens in reverse, if we, as Jews, imagine all Muslims to be fundamentalist, traditionalist?  Do we imagine all Catholics to be old Italian women?  All Buddhists to be bald monks?
   
   Do we all see other religions as caricatures of faith?
   
   It’s interesting that these images struck me so hard.  Something amazing about receiving information visually… when I spend so much time reading/thinking in an academic way.