Forbidden Love: Arab-Jewish sex, marriage

Journeyman, 11/14; TJDS; Sheldon S., Shauna Schwartz, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Is interracial lesbianism without marriage allowed between Ashkenazi Zionist Jews and Arabs?

Lehava: The Israeli Group Keeping Jewish/Arab Lovers Apart

(Journeyman Pictures) Have sex if you have to, Ashkenazi Jewish girls, but avoid marriage with an Arab at all costs. Think of your father!

Make love to me? - I can't. The State will kill us.

Unholy Matrimony: Meet the far-right Israeli group campaigning to ban marriage between Jewish and Arab [Muslim?] couples.

A far-right Israeli group is trying to end intermarriage and enforce strict separation between Jews and Arabs. 

• [It's just like old-timey American anti-miscegenation laws that tried to keep WASPs away from Blacks, and Christians away from Latinos and Chinese and Southern Europeans and those d*mn Irish, none of whom were "white," a socially constructed racial category that eventually let Ashkenazi and some Sephardic Jews in if they were of the right shade or looked enough like the Goyim to "pass" as white.]

Knesset member Itamar Ben-Givr and radical extremist Bentzi Gopstein (right) in 2022.

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I'm not racist, but I agree with these Jews.

This report meets the Lehava leader Bentzi Gopstein and follows the group's campaign. "Hundreds of people demonstrated outside...people wanted to ruin it."

It should have been a celebration of love, but Mahmoud Mansour and Morel Malka's wedding became a target for hate and created a national storm.

As their typical Middle Eastern reception got underway, an angry mob of intolerant Jews were calling for the Jewish bride to leave her Palestinian groom.

Lehava, the far-right group behind the violent protests, has a clear aim: to enforce the strict separation of Arabs and Jews.

Keep him away from girl Jews. - Yes, Furher.

"We came here to establish a Jewish state and if they do something that isn't right, we have every right to stand against it," leader Bentzi Gopstein declared.

In the cosmopolitan beachside city of Tel Aviv, the group take to the streets with megaphones [like neo-Nazis in khaki marching in American cities] warning Arab men [whom they refer to as "sand n****rs"] to stay away from "their" women.

They even target kids, with school playgrounds plastered with Lehava's stickers. And as the racist movement grows, [Grand Dragon] Bentzi boasts that he enjoys tacit approval from some Israeli politicians.

"Some people say, 'Well done, but don't tell anyone I said that.'"

SBS Dateline - Ref 6303

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Bhakti Fest, Joshua Tree (Sept. 9-14)

Wisdom Quarterly; BhaktiFest.com

Bhakti Fest is a Yoga-Dance-Sacred Music Festival

It celebrates the "devotional" (bhakti) path. Bhaktifest is a certified Non Profit 501c3 and has its roots in Yoga, Sacred Music (kirtan), and Meditation.

It embraces ancient and modern sacred wisdom and traditional and non-traditional spiritual practices. 

The festival is a vehicle for evolution of human consciousness through a heart-centered revolution. Bhakti Fest builds a community of people drawn to follow the path of the heart -- a devotional, prayerful, loving, healthful, respectful family. 

All the artists, presenters, and vendors embody, practice, and share the spirit of bhakti through a variety of ways, including: More

How to enter Buddhism

Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Bhikkhu Khantipalo (Sydney, Australia), Lay Buddhist Practice: The Shrine Room, Uposatha Day, Rains Residence (BPS.lk/Access to Insight.org)

If one were to read only one book on Buddhism, it might be What the Buddha Taught

The Big Buddha, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, China (Clicksnap/flickr.com)

 

I just want Truth! Me, too! Me, too!

What can a lay Western Buddhist can do even though home is far from Buddhist lands, temples, and societies?
 

There are various daily and periodic events on the Buddhist calendar. But which items can be practiced by lay Buddhists without access to monastics, monasteries, temples, relic shrines (stupas), and so on?
 

Out of the rich traditions available in Buddhist countries, let's look at only three: the daily service chanted in honor of the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha) with some recollections and meditation; the lunar observance (uposatha) days with the Eight Precepts; and the Rains-Residence period of three months intensive practice. What is important is having some daily Dharma-practice.

 

Even where isolated Buddhists are fortunate enough to be near some Buddhist center, they will still benefit from these Buddhist practices, all of which are based on similar methods used in the East.
 

Meditation is hard to begin in isolation because there are many hindrances and sharks around, subtle and overt dangers to derail one's sincere efforts (National Geographic).

 

These days there are many books on Buddhism, some reliable, some speculative, so that a Buddhist living in a country where the religion is newly introduced is likely to have some difficulty in discerning what is really the teaching of the Buddha.

However, this difficulty can be overcome by the study of the original sources, the Pali canon. Of course, if the student can gain the help of some well learned and practiced Buddhist, one will understand Dharma more quickly and thoroughly.

 

One will also be able to practice more easily. For it is a great difficulty, even if one has a good acquaintance with the sutras (the discourses of the Buddha), to know how to practice their teaching.

Finding the heart of wisdom (Horus2004)

This is more a problem for Buddhists who have to acquire all of their knowledge of the Dharma from books. One hears people like this say, "I am a Buddhist, but what should I practice?" [Buddhism is a practice, not a "belief" system.]

Is it enough to answer this question with more or less abstract categories, saying for instance, "Well, I can practice the Noble Eightfold Path!"?

Journey to the Buddha (Cliksnap)

After all, what does it mean to practice it, and how? It is not easy to practice the Dharma in an alien environment where Buddhist monastics, residences (temple-monasteries called viharas), and monuments containing relics (also called stupas, cetiyas, pagodas, or dagobas) are absent.

In Buddhist lands where these and other signs of the Dharma are to be seen, the lay person has many aids to practice and has access to help when difficulties arise.

But elsewhere the layperson must rely on books. Leaving aside those that are misleading (frequently written by Western people who have never thoroughly trained themselves in any Buddhist tradition), which even if the most authentic sources are studied, still tend to be selective of the materials available so that it is possible to get one-sided views.

We made it to the top (Clicksnap)

Now it can be a good corrective to stay in a Buddhist country for some time and get to know how things are done, but not everyone has the opportunity to do this. Here then let's touch upon a few common Buddhist practices being as general as possible so that descriptions are not peculiar to the Buddhist country I know best, Thailand, but may be common to many Buddhist traditions:

• Daily Practice:
  • The Shrine Room
  • The Offerings
  • Gestures of Respect
  • The Preliminary Formula for Revering the Buddha
  • The Three [Guides]
  • The Five Precepts
  • Recollections:
    • Recollection of the Three Treasures
    • Affirmation of [Guidance] in the Three Treasures
    • The Five Subjects for Daily Recollection
    • The Development of Loving-Kindness
  • Meditation
  • Rejoicing (Anumodana)
  • Chanting
  • The Laity's Practice of Dharma
• Lunar Observance (Uposatha)
  • The Eight Precepts
• The Rains Residence
• The Purpose of These Practices
• The Discourse to Visakha on the Uposatha with the Eight Practices
• Appendix of Pali Passages

California: most diverse faith-place in the world

GOLDEN STATES OF GRACE: PRAYERS OF THE DISINHERITED

Xochitl, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Leslie Berestein Rojas (SCPR.org, Nov. 17, 2010)

Rick Nahmias says of California: "We are the most diverse place for faith in the world."

 

Zócalo Public Square once featured a great interview with Los Angeles photographer, filmmaker, and writer Rick Nahmias, author of Golden States of Grace: Prayers of the Disinherited.

His book documents marginalized faith communities practicing in California.

 

In search of inner peace (Horus2004/flickr

Among those communities are Zen Buddhists in San Quentin Prison, a Mormon congregation for the deaf, and Latina sex workers who pray to Santa Muerte ("Saint Death," a feminine Mara-like idol desperately called on for help) and the Virgin Mary (Kwan Yin), the skeletal sacred figure whose cult originated in Mexico.

Participating Communities

In the interview, Nahmias talks about how California's history as a landing place for migrants -- including 1930s Dust Bowl Okies, who brought over Baptist and Pentecostal traditions -- has made it such a rich place for religious diversity.

 

Unfortunately, this diversity does not necessarily beget religious harmony. But it's another testament to California's role as the great melting pot of the 21st century.

(Kasha Glazebrook) "Kuan Yin's Prayer"

Retreats: Religious Replenishing

Buddhism is compatible with practicing other faiths (dreamstime.com).

• Animism: the original "faith," a life dependent on the Spirits (ABC News visits a tribe deep in the Amazon, 9/23/08) VIDEO (2:28)

Replenishing the soul with religious retreats
Michael Virtanen (AP)

Hojin Kimmel is seen during breakfast at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, N.Y., Thursday, March 20, 2008. Dozens of religious retreats are nestled in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, many open to visitors seeking quiet getaways and personal enlightenment (AP Photo/Mike Groll).

NEW LEBANON, N.Y. (7/24/08) -- At the former Shaker village, where the Taconic Mountains roll into the Berkshires and New York touches Massachusetts, Yaqin Aubert read aloud Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Zoroastrian, Judaic, Christian and Islamic texts during the Sunday service at the Sufi religious retreat.

With two dozen worshippers, who mainly resembled any mostly white upstate congregation, Aubert invoked "the Omnipresent God" and repeated scriptures of peace from seven religious traditions. He told a story about Jesus, whose disciples were angry at their rude treatment by several villagers in ancient Palestine, while Jesus was unbothered.

"I can only spend what is in my purse," was his reply. "All he had inside was peace," explained Aubert, a Sufi Muslim retreat guide. Peace outside comes from peace inside.

Dozens of religious retreats are nestled in the Catskill Mountains and Hudson Valley of upstate New York, many open to visitors seeking quiet getaways and personal enlightenment. Stay for meals or overnight, you'll likely be asked for a donation or pay a small fee. Come for organized retreats for weekends, weeks or longer, with guided learning, solitary prayer or meditation, and pay program fees.

At Abode of the Message in New Lebanon, 25 miles southeast of Albany, the bulletin board by the communal kitchen had a Sufi story about how an individual's inner light can illuminate an entire city. The woman washing dishes described herself as a Sufi Christian. That afternoon, there would be a discussion of the mystical, reverent 13th-century poetry of Rumi, a key figure in Sufism.

Whatever your tradition, this mystical Sufi brand of Islam invites you to deepen your faith here without converting.

The Buddhists in Mount Tremper, 50 miles southwest of Albany in the Catskills, likewise welcome visitors at certain times, recommending the weekly Sunday morning program with beginning instruction in meditation at Zen Mountain Monastery. Senior monastics said they see no conflict between Buddhist practice and someone's search for God. The quest for greater mindfulness and compassion welcomes the question. More>>