Religion

“Altars of Reconciliation” Unites Faith and Culture

by | Jun 9, 2023 9:09 am | Comments (0)

Erin Shaw

Protect Us From Ruin.

Erin Shaw’s Protect Us From Ruin shows photographs of three shadowed women confined within wooden panels like church windows. Each panel is wrapped with colorful bands that both imprison and protect the figures. 

That dichotomy, between protection and captivity, represents the friction between Shaw’s identity as a member of the Chickasaw Nation and a Christian. As long as I can remember, I’ve had one foot in two worlds,” she explains in an accompanying statement. It’s been the work of my life to live in that tension as best I can, understand and reconcile it.”

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Opinion: Call It Out

by | Jun 1, 2023 12:14 pm | Comments (12)

Paul Bass file photo

Abdussabur with Beaver Hills neighbor Rivka Fenton in November 2020 acting in response to a string of attacks on Jews in Beaver Hills.

I applaud President Biden and Vice President Harris on making an important first step to addressing the crisis of growing antisemitism our nation is facing. As someone who has spent weekends patrolling to keep my friends and neighbors safe while they worshiped, I appreciate President Biden for saying what has been evident for years in America: this is a severe problem, and it’s getting worse.

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Ghost Of Bill Monroe Welcomes The Sabbath Queen

by | May 19, 2023 8:39 am | Comments (0)

Contributed Photo

David Sasso, at far left, recording the new album with Jacob's Ladder.

Hunkered at home with his Martin D28 guitar one Blursday evening during the lockdown depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, David Sasso heard familiar melodies come out a new way.

Fast forward to May 2023: Sasso returned home to debut a bluegrass take on a traditional Jewish prayer service, with an album of said music about to drop.

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Candidate Doesn't Break Amid Ramadan Fast

by | Apr 17, 2023 4:17 pm | Comments (5)

Yash Roy photo

Abdussabur (right) talking with Sandra Beamon on the campaign trail.

With his mom, sister, and wife by his side, Shafiq Abdussabur knocked on Newhallville doors to bring his mayoral-challenger message directly to the neighborhood where he used to work as police district manager — even as he continued to fast for the holy month of Ramadan. 

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On Service Day, Albertus Tends Its Garden

by | Apr 13, 2023 3:10 pm | Comments (4)

Allan Appel photo

Albertus students, faculty planting pillars of faith Thursday.

A day of working in a garden — weeding and putting in kale and asparagus and bounty that will all be given away to food pantries and nonprofits — doesn’t usually begin with an assembly of 120 people and a reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians in the New Testament, followed by a prayer. 

It does, however, if the green acre in question happens to be the garden at Albertus Magnus, a Catholic college in the Dominican tradition, where service and community are pillars of the faith of equal importance with the two others, study and prayer.

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A Page, & A Poem, From the Independent's Passover Philes

by | Apr 5, 2023 4:00 pm | Comments (2)

Here’s a peek of how Passover, the spring festival of letting it all go and coming back again, otherwise known as the exodus from Egypt, slipped onto green expanses of Yale University. 

It’s in the words of Ari Berke, a student in Yale College’s Daily Themes course where I am doing some tutoring/teaching this semester. I couldn’t resist.

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Poor People's Champ Delivers Social Gospel

by | Apr 3, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (16)

Allan Appel photos

Rev. Barber: “God’s good news must be good news for the poor or it ain’t good news."

At Sunday's Dixwell UCC service.

There’s a real danger that Ancient Rome — with its celebration of opulence and derision of the poor — still lives, and another name for it is America.

That was one of the sobering observations offered at a Palm Sunday service in Dixwell by nationally renowned preacher and poor people’s advocate Dr. William Barber.

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20 Years On, Scientology Site Still Stalled

by | Mar 17, 2023 3:08 pm | Comments (14)

Thomas Breen photos

Neighbor Shawn Nesmith outside 949 Whalley: "Tell them to get rid of that blighted property."

Still fenced off. Still tax-exempt.

A former Westville department store remains fenced off, empty and rundown — 20 years after the Church of Scientology bought the property, five years after the church last won permission to convert the site into a religious hub, and one year after a city board found that the long-vacant building should stay off the tax rolls.

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Albertus Charts Path To Black Catholic Sainthood

by | Feb 17, 2023 1:46 pm | Comments (13)

The 6 Black Catholics under consideration for sainthood.

Featured speaker and guide Shingai Chigwedere.

There are 11 white Americans — and 0 African Americans — among the 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.

Zero Black American saints. Zero Americans-of-African-descent saints,” Shingai Chigwedere told a 20-person audience at Albertus Magnus College. However you want to word it, there are zero.”

That number may soon change, as the local Catholic university shined a light on the six Black Catholics currently being considered for sainthood.

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Donations, Prayers Pour Into Turkish Mosque

by | Feb 10, 2023 4:33 pm | Comments (1)

Hulya Elevli: “I’m not changing my clothes because I’m thinking, 'They can’t change theirs over there.'”

Some of the donations ready to be boxed and shipped to Turkey.

Hulya Elevli has spent every day this week sorting through donations at the Diyanet Mosque in Quinnipiac Meadows while coordinating with earthquake refugees to help them find shelter in a house she owns in northern Turkey.

On Friday morning, the end of a restless week and the mere beginning of a coordinated response to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that ravaged parts of Turkey and Syria and that has caused at least 23,000 fatalities, Elevli joined members of the mosque at 531 Middletown Ave. and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal to speak up about the need that exists abroad and offer guidance to locals about how to help.

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Podcaster Gatecrashes Ivy League Anti-Semitism

by | Jan 30, 2023 12:34 pm | Comments (1)

Allan Appel photo

Mark Oppenheimer with his high school teacher and dean Alice Baxter on Sunday.

How about a written application — as opposed to an old boys’ nod from the rowing coach — and in-person interviews to detect your excessively Lower East Side manners? 

How about a questionnaire requiring you to indicate, for example, what business your family is in? And written recommendations and aptitude tests?

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City, State, Clergy Gather Against Gun Violence

by | Jan 27, 2023 2:28 pm | Comments (5)

At Thursday's First Calvary Baptist Church-hosted conversation. Clockwise from top left: Shepard St. resident Addie Kimbrough, top state's attorney Pat Griffin, youth anti-violence organizer Remidy Shareef, Rev. John Lewis.

Before December, I had never seen anyone die,” Addie Kimbrough told a room full of police, prosecutors, clergy, and politicians. Until, on the block where she founded a community garden, she witnessed a young man lying on the ground. 

He was the same age as her grandson: 24. I saw them trying to revive him,” Kimbrough said later. That moment touched me.” 

She found herself taking the mic at a community meeting calling for change and volunteering to help. I don’t want this to happen to any of our kids.”

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In Memory Of My Friend Maurice

by | Nov 21, 2022 9:14 am | Comments (4)

Contributed photo

Maurice Gorowsky (right) with Lawrence Dressler.

The following eulogy was written by Lawrence Dressler and read on Sunday at the funeral of Maurice Gorowsky, a longtime friend of his and a World War II veteran who passed away this weekend at the age of 99. He was buried at the Beth Israel cemetery on Fitch Street between Whalley and Jewell.

Maurice Gorowsky was born on April 20, 1923 in Philadelphia to Russian Jewish immigrants Bella Liebman and Louis Gorowsky.

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As Winter Nears, Local Aid To Ukraine Grows

by | Nov 11, 2022 9:55 am | Comments (1)

Allan Appel photo

Carl Harvey with one of the three vehicles the group hopes to ship next month.

As a young nurse training at Walter Reed Medical Center during the Vietnam War, Jane Ryzewski knows firsthand how much care and how many supplies are needed to help injured soldiers.

Which is why she joined three dozen fellow volunteers at the Ukrainian Catholic Church on George Street to organize and prepare to ship out an ever-growing assemblage of medical supplies and winter clothing to the front lines of another international conflict that is now in its ninth month.

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“Radiant” Church Honors Its Pastors

by | Oct 31, 2022 11:08 am | Comments (2)

Allan Appel photo

Congregant Josue Ortiz shows how it's done.

Josue Ortiz sounded the shofar, but it wasn’t the Jewish Day of Atonement. He wasn’t even in a synagogue.

The site was the Estrella Resplandeciente de Jacob, the Radiant Star of Jacob Church in Fair Haven, where the spirit and service of long-time pastors Javier and Shari Diaz were trumpeted, along with the help of an official certificate presented by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal.

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