assimilation

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Progress for American Jews? Tis the season for lots and lots of Hanukkah junk

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Progress for American Jews? Tis the season for lots and lots of Hanukkah junk

It's hard to do justice to ancient holy days in throw-pillow slogans.

Consider the Zazzle item offering a menorah with an un-orthodox number of candles, along with: "Imagine if your cellphone was at 10% but lasted 8 days. Now you understand Hanukkah."

Maybe not. Or how about the Bed, Bath & Beyond pillow stating: "Why is this night different from all other nights? Happy Hanukkah."

Actually, that's the most famous question from rites during a Passover Seder dinner.

"There's no quality control with any of this stuff. No one's being careful with decisions about what's good and what's bad," said journalist Mira Fox of the Forward, a progressive Jewish website. "The point is to sell stuff. It doesn't need to be good stuff. It's just stuff.

"Basically, it's a lot of people saying, 'We can find a way to sell stuff to Jews during the holidays, along with selling lots of stuff to everybody else.' "

Hanukkah began rather early this year, starting at sundown this past Sunday (November 28) and extending for eight days. This placed the "Festival of Lights" closer to Thanksgiving -- near the start of the merchandizing frenzy known as The Holidays.

The story at the heart of this home-centered season dates to 165 B.C., when Jews, led by the Maccabee family, defeated Greek and Syrian oppressors. When the victors reentered their temple, only one container of ritually pure oil could be found for its eternal flame. Tradition says this one-day supply burned for eight days. Thus, Jews light menorah candles during Hanukkah, one on the first night, increasing to eight.

"It's not a biblical holiday. Hanukkah is not in the Hebrew Bible. … God is not a huge part of this story," said Fox. "Honestly, I don't think a lot of people understand what this holiday is about."

That's certainly true in the American marketplace.


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Twist on familiar assimilation questions: Where are trends leading Islam in U.K. (and U.S.)?

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Twist on familiar assimilation questions: Where are trends leading Islam in U.K. (and U.S.)?

THE QUESTION:

Where are current trends leading Islam in the U.K. (and what about the U.S.)?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

As in the United States, the Muslim minority population is growing steadily in the United Kingdom, up 107% since 2001 to exceed 3 million -- even as participation in many Christian churches declines.

The odds are good that British society will be reshaped by the inner workings among followers of the world's second-largest religion. That underscores the importance of the new book "Among the Mosques: A Journey Across Muslim Britain" (Bloomsbury) by Ed Husain.

This depiction of Britain is rather unnerving, though France apparently faces a more fraught situation. There the enforcement of "laicite," rigid separation of religion from the state originally aimed at Christianity, limits sensitivity to Muslim concerns and adds to long-running alienation and failure to assimilate. Current disputes, for instance, involve public schools' headscarf bans and unwillingness to provide alternatives to pork on cafeteria menus.

British author Husain is a practicing Muslim, political consultant and adjunct professor at America's Georgetown University. A sympathizer with militant "Islamism" in his younger days, he now advocates a tolerant and modernized form of the faith and that shapes his narrative.

Just before COVID-19 hit, Husain toured London and five other cities in England, two in Scotland, and one each in Wales and Northern Ireland, mingling with fellow believers and non-Muslims at the grass roots to discern trends. His knowledge of the faith, reputation as an author on Islam, study overseas and command of languages like Arabic and Urdu aided the sort of access denied to outside investigators.

While older British Muslims tended to assimilate, he found, many more recent immigrants are suspicious or hostile toward their adopted nation and their neighbors, isolating to create what's somewhat a country within a country.


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New York Times attacks anti-Muslim tensions in small-city Minnesota, but reality is more complex

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On the face of it, Thursday’s New York Times story about a Minnesota city that doesn’t want any more Somali refugees sounds like a racist-town-hates-Muslims kind of piece.

I decided to look deeper into it and ask a few questions the article didn’t raise to see why everyone’s so upset why a 16 percent growth in non-white residents –- and mostly Muslim ones at that -– has frazzled the populace.

As you would expect, there’s lots of information here about politics and life in the Donald Trump era — complete with red “Make Saint Cloud Great Again” hats and lots of references to locals reading conservative websites online.

However, this is also a story in which it is important for readers to pause and do some math. The bottom line: It’s simple to write a story about racist right-wing Christian bigots who don’t want any more Muslims moving in. It’s not as easy to look at some of the other factors, like overcrowded classrooms in public schools; school districts having budget money for interpreters and ESL instructors; crowded emergency rooms at local hospitals and a tax base that’s not being greatly added to by all the new arrivals.

First, here’s the opening of the story:

ST. CLOUD, Minn. — John Palmer, a former university professor, has always had a cause. For decades he urged Minnesota officials to face the dangers of drunken driving and embrace seatbelts. Now he has a new goal: curbing the resettlement of Somali refugees in St. Cloud, after a few thousand moved into this small city where Mr. Palmer has lived for decades…

On Thursdays, Mr. Palmer hosts a group called Concerned Community Citizens, or C-Cubed, which he formed to pressure local officials over the Muslim refugees. Mr. Palmer said at a recent meeting he viewed them as innately less intelligent than the “typical” American citizen, as well as a threat.

“The very word ‘Islamophobia’ is a false narrative,” Mr. Palmer, 70, said. “A phobia is an irrational fear.” Raising his voice, he added, “An irrational fear! There are many reasons we are not being irrational.”

In this predominantly white region of central Minnesota, the influx of Somalis, most of whom are Muslim, has spurred the sort of demographic and cultural shifts that President Trump and right-wing conservatives have stoked fears about for years.

So “right-wing conservatives,” and people who rally in church pews, are all basically racists?

That does appear to be the thesis of this Times article.


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