Obergefell and New Identities

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:25 pm By Max Lindenman

I would not have known this yesterday, but reading Slate on the morning after an epochal culture-war defeat can be good for the soul. In her analysis of the dissenting opinions in Obergefell, Dahlia Lithwick makes a shrewd and pertinent observation. “Everyone,” she notes, “writes about how this decision will affect them and people like them.” Well, why not? One striking feature of the majority decision was the explicit concern shown by Justice Kennedy for the quality of human experience,... Read more

In Defense of Cool Old Symbols

Last updated on: July 2, 2015 at 11:32 am By Max Lindenman

Let me begin by agreeing that it’s time for the Confederate flag to be retired from public life. At the very least it should come down from the South Carolina State Capitol building. It hasn’t been that long since Appomattox; the time when segregationists raised the flag to rally their troops remains very much within living memory. Whatever innocuous messages it may retain for certain white people – and even the Anti-Defamation League concedes that it does – it can... Read more

Give Me A Palanca, and I’ll Move the World

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:24 pm By Max Lindenman

Just this evening one of my readers PM’d me over Facebook and asked me to write a palanca for her husband, also a reader, who will be spending this weekend on a Cursillo retreat. She explained that a palanca is an encouraging letter written to someone who’s trying to deepen his relationship with God. Palanca means “lever” in Spanish, so letters by that name are meant to lift the recipients’ spirits. This palanca flowed more smoothly than I dared hoped:... Read more

The Rising Cost of Price Tagging

Last updated on: July 9, 2015 at 6:02 pm By Max Lindenman

Last Thursday, after arson damaged the administrative buildings of the historic Church of the Multiplication of Loaves and fishes at Taghba, in Israel’s Galilee region, Israeli Interior Minister Silvan Shalom promised to bring the culprits to justice. Even if Shalom spoke with sincerity, he can’t have spoken with confidence. The fire shows all the markings of an attack by Jewish West Bank settlers – the kind that normally goes unpunished. “Price tag” is the name settlers have been giving to... Read more

God and Dylann Roof: Beyond Strength and Weakness

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:24 pm By Max Lindenman

Dylann Roof, who has confessed to gunning down the pastor of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church along with eight parishioners, wavered at the last moment. Sources have told NBC News that Roof “almost didn’t go through with it because everyone was so nice to him.” In this case, “it” refers to his plans to stage a massacre that friends say he hoped would start a race war. Today in The Nation, Dani McClain, who is African American, adds some context... Read more

In Charleston: AME Martyrs of Charity

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:24 pm By Max Lindenman

Earlier today, someone set fire to the Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes at Tabgha, in Israel’s Galilee region. Found scrawled in red paint on one of the church’s outside walls was part of a Hebrew prayer calling for an end to idol worship. No suspects have been named, but the crime bears a close resemblance to other acts of vandalism and arson carried out by Jewish West Bank settlers. Whoever wants to call that an anti-Christian... Read more

Ramadan at the Mall

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:24 pm By Max Lindenman

They say Ramadan opens with a rolling worldwide cannonade: each locality keeps its own cannon, which its top dignitary fires off, ushering in the holy month with a bang. If the Turkish city of Bursa observes this custom, I missed it. Instead, I recognized that Ramadan was close at hand when the Popeye’s Louisiana Kitchen in the food court at Zafer Plaza introduced a special Iftar menu. Iftar is the sundown feast with which Muslims break each day’s fast. Popeye’s... Read more

Rachel Dolezal, John Howard Griffin and the Dangers of Race-Changing

Last updated on: July 2, 2015 at 12:03 pm By Max Lindenman

“Pray God,” wrote T.E. Lawrence in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, “that men reading this story will not, for the love of the glamour of strangeness, go out to prostitute themselves and their talents in serving another race.” By this, Lawrence didn’t mean that people should serve only their own races. He meant that serving another race – or another nation or ethnic community – means adopting a foreign view of the world, including one’s own people and oneself. The adoption... Read more

How to Live Near Section Eight Housing

Last updated on: August 7, 2015 at 9:14 am By Max Lindenman

Last Friday’s pool-party fracas in the Craig Ranch section of McKinney, Texas ended with Corporal David Eric Casebolt’s resigning from the McKinney police force after making an ogre of himself on video. But it is said to have begun with a volley of insults. Piqued at seeing her community pool swarming with unruly black teens, who apparently exceeded the two-guests-per-resident ratio by a wide margin, Tracey Carver-Allbritton allegedly told 19-year-old Tatiana Rhodes: “Go back to your Section Eight home!” In... Read more

Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Single

Last updated on: June 30, 2015 at 7:23 pm By Max Lindenman

With the vague idea that human souls enjoyed some kind of eternal existence, I have, lately, tortured myself imagining that God had assigned those originally earmarked for my kids, to Muslims. My Tancred, Guy, and Clothilde are now – I thought – embodied as Momo, Cherif, and Leila. Instead of taking top honors at Georgetown, they’re skulking around Belleville in hoodies, glowering at documentary filmmakers and making demographers jittery. Well, friends assure me that God creates a brand-new soul for... Read more