“Wow! … You just listened to my whole anthem.” It was late at night, years ago, on North Broadway in Capitol Hill. “Miguel” had just recited his life story to me for a good 20 minutes…
When I was a child, I was terrified of the dark. I hated going to sleep, because, once the lights turned off, the sheer possibility of encountering a monster kept me awake…
When talking about religion, my father will sometimes talk about “the chosen people,” a title that Jewish people have historically adopted as a way to reference being descended from…
Throughout my life, I’ve lived by the belief that my success and achievements are not solely mine but are deeply connected to the generations of my family who came before me…
As a lazy September blows over, the otherwise slumberous city of Kolkata is set alight by the rhythm of dhols and the smell of Night-flowering Jasmine…
A recent New York Times story on the tension caused when Orthodox Jewish men request same-sex seating on airlines for religious reasons generated over 3,000 reader responses. The scenario as described in the story generally unfolds something like this: the individual reaches his assigned seat and finds that the seat next to him is occupied by a woman. He shifts uncomfortably in the aisle until the flight attendant or an alert passenger recognizes what’s going on and asks the woman to switch seats with a male so the Orthodox Jew may have his religious views accommodated. Often the woman is offended; sometimes she refuses to move. This has made for many challenging situations and some flight delays.
If there is anything new under the religious sun in the United States it is the changing patterns of how people are or are not religious. What this means for feminist studies in religion is of interest to me because it reshapes the backdrop of our work.
We were about to begin a workshop entitled “The Sacred Power of Women” at the Dialogo Multicultural Universal in Guadalajara, Mexico last month. I had been asked to facilitate a panel of four accomplished, powerful women. Laura, an American-Samoan Latter Day Saint, is a businesswoman and philanthropist. Yonina, an Argentinean writer and publisher, was a Hindu nun for nine years. Evelina is an Ecuadorian anthropologist, lawyer, and historian. And Patti, a local Indigenous leader of Irish-Mexican heritage, is a teacher and performer of sacred ritual dance.
London - Last August, two young Egyptian musicians released songs on the topic of sexual harassment against women, which has been on the rise since the 2011 uprising in Egypt. These musicians’ songs are two important examples of many similar, serious efforts by artists to help fight this problem.