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A Day to Bare Our Souls - and Find Ourselves

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The lack of ritual makes Yom Kippur's power elusive for many. How do we make meaning from the holiest but most daunting day on the Jewish calendar? By Rahel Musleah My friend Anat dreads Yom Kippur. Fasting makes her grumpy, and by morning she already has a headache. Nor does the synagogue setting encourage atonement, meditation or self-reflection for her. As a nonobservant Jew, she says, "my relationship with God is such that I can't even begin to atone for what I do—nor do I want to. What's left are my relationships with other people, and I try to take care of those on a daily basis." Still, says Anat, the strong aura of the day, redolent of childhood and community, draws her to spend Yom Kippur in the synagogue. "If this is a holy day I'll treat it as such and stand with others around me. Every year I think about the millions of people who are doing exactly what I am doing on Yom Kippur. It doesn't matter how secular I am. This is my commitme...
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MUST WE FORGIVE?

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As many of you already know, I am not a fan of the current psychobabble 'forgive & forget' model of adult discourse. Some things are unforgiveable.     I am always willing to listen, discuss, open the door to considerate communication that doesn't attack or blame and of course - genuine apology that owns the behavior that caused the rift in the first place. No one should be expected to forgive without repentance by the perpetrator. No one. But blanket forgiveness? Sorry. That, in my humble opinion, is for suckers. excerpts From the political to the persona l, Americans are caught in an orgy of forgiveness. Failure to pardon, we're constantly admonished, will blight our lives. Now a psychotherapist counters that popular claim. You can refuse to absolve your lover, spouse, parent, sibling or friend, she declares, and still be emotionally healthy. Flip to any television station these days and chances are we'll be witness to some dramatic episode of fo...
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Honor killings: When the ancient and the modern collide

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(where are the feminists? why aren't we marching in the streets to stop this heinous and barbaric practice on American soil?! Isn't FEMINISM the notion that WOMEN ARE PEOPLE TOO!) by Cinnamon Stillwell Throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, young Muslim women are being targeted for violence. Lest it be thought hate crimes are to blame, it is, in fact, their own relatives who are the perpetrators. So-calledthonor killings, whereby a Muslim male family member, typically the father, murders his daughter in order to defend the family's honor, is a growing problem. While statistics are notoriously hard to come by due to the private nature of such crimes and the fact that very few are reported, the United Nations Population Fund approximates that as many as 5,000 women are murdered in this manner each year worldwide. Undoubtedly that's a low estimate, as reports from Turkey, Jordan, Pakistan and the Palestinian territories, among other locales, are fil...
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