» Continued from Part 2

=== Other News
20. More charges filed in case of alleged torture in Wonder Valley
21. Indonesia arrests 22 suspects in murders of alleged black magicians
22. Trial to test Utah's 104-year-old ban on polygamy
23. Screen Star James Mason Laid to Rest After 16 Years
24. Mozambique prison deaths take on supernatural dimension
25. Bushara case transferred
26. Found: temple sacred for 3,000 years

=== Death Penalty / Human Rights
27. US. Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal of mentally retarded Texas
death row inmate

=== Organ Donations
28. Alexander A. Slepukhof: Organ donations - an Orthodox perspective
29. Chris Shorow: Organ donation is a thoroughly Christian act
30. Lonnie D. Kliever: Faulty theology fuels resistance to transplants

=== Noted
31. Mexican exorcists busy in land of witchcraft, pagan rituals
32. Survey: Most Americans Believe Bible Is Relevant Today

=== Books
33. Quirky new novel delves into the mysteries of kabbalah
34. Pilgrim beats Harry Potter


=== Other News

20. More charges filed in case of alleged torture in Wonder Valley
Sacramento Bee/AP, Nov. 27, 2000
http://www.sacbee.com/news/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (AP) -- Prosecutors have filed more torture charges against three adults accused of abusing and imprisoning two brothers after one of the youths said his parents burned another sibling's body in a trash can, officials said.

The case began earlier this month when two boys, ages 17 and 12, told investigators they had been tortured for years in their Wonder Valley home. Officials say the boys were malnourished and underdeveloped and showed signs of being whipped and chained.

After the boys' parents and another adult living in the home were arrested, authorities learned that a third son, Rainbow, apparently died in 1991.

The three adults were charged Monday with torture in the beating of the third boy, which may have contributed to his death, said San Bernardino County Supervising Deputy District Attorney Linda Root.

The three, who face life sentences if convicted, are being held on $2 million bail each.

Prosecutors said they hope to show at trial that when Rainbow misbehaved, he was beaten severely by his father, John ''Rajohn Lord'' Davis and Faye Potts, another adult who shared the home with Davis and his wife, Carrie.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


21. Indonesia arrests 22 suspects in murders of alleged black magicians
CNN/AP, Nov. 25, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) -- Police in Indonesia have arrested 22 people for the killing of 20 villagers accused of dabbling in black magic.
(...)

The 20 victims were killed in attacks between July and October after locals accused them of practicing witchcraft.

Indonesia is the world's most populous Islamic nation. About 90 percent of its 210 million people are Muslim. However, many pre-Islamic traditions and superstitions are still followed here.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


22. Trial to test Utah's 104-year-old ban on polygamy
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 26, 2000
http://www.dallasnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
NEPHI, Utah - They live in a remote desert outpost near the Nevada border, in a collection of 30 mobile homes christened ''The Farm.'' And every night before bed, Tom Green picks up a Harry Potter book and reads to the youngest of his 28 children while his five wives tend to other household tasks.

''We're a family like any other,'' the 52-year-old Mr. Green insists, ''only a little larger.''

He is the modern-day poster child for polygamy, an outspoken advocate who's taken his zeal for multiple marriage on national television shows ranging from Jerry Springer and Judge Judy to Dateline NBC.

In January, he goes on trial for bigamy in a rare test of Utah's 104-year-old ban on plural marriage.

Only a handful of polygamists have ever been charged with bigamy, and prosecutors believe the last trial was in the 1950s.

Yet the Green case is only the latest in a series of actions taken to combat a practice long ignored in Utah, where even the governor descends from polygamist ancestors.

Some accuse previously indifferent leaders of trying to clean house before the Olympics come to Salt Lake City in 2002 - bringing a glaring media spotlight with them.

Others credit a group of former polygamous wives with heightening awareness of the practice and pressuring lawmakers and prosecutors to take action.

When Mr. Green was charged last spring, a group called Tapestry Against Polygamy proclaimed that ''the Berlin Wall of polygamy is tumbling down.''

Whether it collapses remains to be seen, but there have been some substantial cracks.
(...)

Prosecution of polygamists has been rare since the practice first arrived in Utah in the 1840s, when members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints settled here.

Well-known practitioners

LDS founder Joseph Smith was a polygamist, as was church president Brigham Young. Mormon leaders encouraged polygamy, believing the practice was required by God because some Old Testament prophets took multiple wives.

Outside the church, however, the practice was condemned. In 1854, the Republican Party termed polygamy and slavery the ''twin relics of barbarism.'' And in 1862, Congress outlawed plural marriage.

Mormons continued the practice, insisting polygamy was a constitutionally protected religious freedom.

Brigham Young's private secretary even agreed to go on trial to test that theory, but the U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 upheld the anti-polygamy law.

With federal pressure mounting, the church disavowed polygamy in 1890. Six years later, as a condition of statehood, the practice was prohibited in the Utah Constitution. But prominent Mormon leaders split from the church and went underground, continuing the practice in secret.

Today, an estimated 30,000 Westerners live a polygamous lifestyle. Some practice in groups with a designated leader, such as the 6,000 followers of polygamist Rulon Jeffs who live on the Utah-Arizona state line. Others, like Mr. Green, aren't affiliated with an organized group.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


23. Screen Star James Mason Laid to Rest After 16 Years
http://library.northernlight.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
LONDON (Reuters) - Hollywood screen legend James Mason has been finally laid to rest -- 16 years after his death, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Saturday.

Mason's children buried his ashes in a Swiss cemetery on Friday after an acrimonious legal battle over the British actor's estate with their stepmother Clarissa Kaye, and later with the administrators of her estate, the paper said.

The wrangle became so bitter that for many years Mason's children, daughter Portland and son Morgan, had no idea of the whereabouts of their father's ashes. Portland finally tracked them to a bank vault in Geneva.
(...)

The children believed he intended for them to inherit his estimated 15 million pound fortune on Clarissa's death, the paper said. But Clarissa, who died six years ago, bequeathed everything to a trust with unknown benefactors.

The children believe the benefactors are devotees of Sathya Sai Baba, an Indian religious sect, which Clarissa became close to in the last years of her life. They are continuing litigation in the hope of gaining control of at least part of their father's estate.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


24. Mozambique prison deaths take on supernatural dimension
AFP, Nov. 25, 2000
http://sg.dailynews.yahoo.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Mystery deepened Friday over the deaths of at least 80 inmates in a northern Mozambique prison amid reports that they suffocated, possibly in smoke linked to traditional fighters believed to have magical powers.

''We have so far concluded that the deaths resulted from suffocation,'' investigator Eugenio Zacarias told state radio, after carrying out autopsies on more than 30 corpses.

The bodies did not show any signs of serious aggression that could have led to death, he said.

But other inmates told Radio Mozambique that there had been troubles late Tuesday in the prison when a group of detainees -- all traditional fighters believed to possess magical powers -- began fighting among themselves.

One detainee said he heard voices instigating the violence. Later, after several people were severely beaten, he said he saw huge clouds of smoke and water in the cells before he escaped the fighting.

During Mozambique's 16-year civil war, traditional fighters known as naparamas fought against RENAMO rebels, but not alongside government forces.

The naparamas fighters did not use modern weaponry, but earned RENAMO's respect as warriors. The traditional fighters believed their magic could make them bullet-proof.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


25. Bushara case transferred
The Monitor (Uganda), Nov. 24, 2000
http://www.monitor.co.ug/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The Director of Public Prosecutions has ordered for the transfer of the case against Wilson Bushara, prophet and leader of the World Message Last Warning cult and four of his followers, from Buganda Road Court to Luwero.

Wilson Bushara is charged with defilement and managing an unlawful society. The other four accused are charged with managing unlawful society.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


26. Found: temple sacred for 3,000 years
Independent (England), Nov. 26, 2000
http://www.independent.co.uk/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Archaeologists have discovered a mysterious 4,700-year-old temple that is the largest Stone Age structure ever found in Western Europe. More than a half a mile across and covering 85 acres, the site in mid-Wales is 30 times the size of Stonehenge.

A six-year research programme has revealed that the vast, egg-shaped religious complex consisted of 1,400 obelisks, each towering up to 23ft into the air. Made of oak, they were arranged as an oval with a perimeter of one-and-a-half miles. At its western end, archaeologists have discovered the site of the temple's main entrance - flanked by 6ft diameter timbers that may have stood 30ft tall.

Despite its vast size, the site is baffling archaeologists. They are certain that it had a religious function - but what was being worshipped or venerated remains a mystery.
(...)

The temple was almost certainly kept exclusively for the use of the priesthood - probably shamans whose function was to maintain spiritual contact with ancestors and deities.

However, when the Roman invaders arrived, its very sanctity seems to have made it a target. For, in common with many other native British sacred sites - including Stonehenge - the place appears to have been deliberately violated. The Romans seem to have chosen to insult local sensibilities by building first a marching camp on one part of the site and then a permanent fort on another.

The site - at Hindwell, three miles east of New Radnor in Powys - is being seen as one of the most important in Europe. ''We were bowled over by the sheer scale of the structure - and the fact that it appears to have remained sacred for thousands of years,'' Dr Gibson said.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Death Penalty / Human Rights

27. US. Supreme Court agrees to hear appeal of mentally retarded Texas death row inmate
CNN/AP, Nov. 27, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear an appeal by a condemned killer from Texas whose lawyers say he is mentally retarded and has the reasoning capacity of a 7-year-old.

The court said it will use the case of Johnny Paul Penry to clarify how much opportunity jurors in death-penalty cases must have to consider the defendant's mental capacity.

Penry's lawyers also say prosecutors were improperly allowed to use a psychiatric exam report in violation of his right not to testify against himself.

On November 16, the justices blocked Penry's execution just hours before he was to be put to death. The execution will remain on hold until the justices issue a ruling, expected by July.

Penry's lawyers describe him as having an IQ of 50 to 60 and the reasoning capacity of a 7-year-old.

However, prosecutors say he is ignorant, not retarded. Texas Attorney General John Cornyn said Penry is ''a schemer, a planner and can be purposefully deceptive.''

Penry was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Pamela Moseley Carpenter in Livingston, Texas, in 1979. Carpenter was stabbed repeatedly in the chest with a pair of scissors she had been using to make Halloween decorations.

The Supreme Court threw out Penry's conviction in 1989, ruling that his rights were violated because the sentencing jury was not properly allowed to take his mental capacity into account. But the justices also decided the Constitution allows the execution of mentally retarded killers.

Penry was retried, convicted and sentenced to death in 1990. His lawyers appealed, saying the jury again was not given enough chance to consider his mental capacity.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Organ Donations

28. Alexander A. Slepukhof: Organ donations - an Orthodox perspective
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 11, 2000
http://www.dallasnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Against all prodding and persuasion by the organizers of National Donor Sabbath, an annual event to encourage discussion of organ donation at places of worship, I will never receive a transplanted organ. Neither will I ever likely be a donor. And my stumbling block is not one of technology but one of ethics.

As an Eastern Orthodox Christian, I believe that God created me as an integrated whole, a person of spirit and body, created from the dust of the earth and enlivened by God's own breath. My flesh is an indispensable part of my being and identity.
(...)

My body, therefore, is not a temporary prison for my soul. It is not garbage to be disposed of the moment I breathe my last breath. Christian burial - whole-bodied burial - is my last confession of my faith in the general resurrection.

Medical science, drunk on the smell of its own technological achievements, offers other cures.

In times past, medical doctors knew that their tactic was to delay death, not to banish it. But now the medical community seems to promise us that with enough drugs, machines, and spare parts, death can be held at bay indefinitely.

Medicinal drugs do not bother me. I am glad for the good they do. Medical machines do not offend me, if they are not taken to the ridiculous extreme. But the use of a human body as a spare-parts bin I find morally offensive.

Organ donation depends on and encourages a wrong view of the human body and of the physical creation in general. Rather than see the body as the temple of the soul, we are taught to see it as disposable tissue, ultimately irrelevant to our ''true identity'' as purely ''spiritual'' beings. This undermines everything from our faith in the resurrection to our understanding the differences between the sexes. (It is much easier to send a spiritual being temporarily locked inside a female body into combat than it is to send a woman.)

A second objection centers on the sort of prayer that organ donation encourages. I know the stress of watching a loved one die. I grieve the recent loss of my own mother, a victim of cancer. And I know that those who pray for an organ to save their loved one's life wish no harm to anyone else. I know how carefully they phrase their prayer, how delicately they step around spiritual quicksand. But the result is the same. Modern medicine tempts people to pray, in effect, that one die that another may live. This is ghoulish. This is cannibalistic. This is un-Christian.
(...)

Alexander A. Slepukhof is an Orthodox Christian layman who lives in Lewisville.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


29. Chris Shorow: Organ donation is a thoroughly Christian act
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 18, 2000 (Chris Shorow / Special Contributor)
http://www.dallasnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The subject of organ donation never crossed my mind until I was privileged to be a pastor to people on both the giving and receiving ends of donation.
(...)

However, organ donation offers so many a second chance at life. It brings life out of death. And isn't that the message of the Christian faith? That our God has not only given us the precious gift of life, but has defeated death through resurrection.

While Christianity supports every individual's right to his or her own opinions and beliefs, I felt a need to offer another Christian perspective on organ donation after last week's guest column by Mr. Alexander A. Slepukhof.

It seems to me that the Christian faith is about overcoming death and about second chances and forgiveness. While I agree that we should not artificially separate the spiritual from the physical aspects of our bodies, I do believe that the essence of our being is in our spirit. How can we say to those brave individuals who have lost limbs or been disfigured that they are not whole beings, created and loved by God?

Rather than see the whole body as ''disposable tissue,'' the organ donor sees the body as a precious gift from God - an irreplaceable gift from God, just as each organ is. The truth is, Scripture doesn't say anything about organ donation. The concept would have been unthinkable at the time. But we are told that we have ''this treasure in earthen vessels'' - our bodies - and that we are ''fearfully and wonderfully made.'' While we may not be directed toward organ donation, certainly the idea of giving life and life anew is at the core of our faith.
(...)

Our faith supports life coming from death. It is important for me to share that the key is for families to talk about donation when they can think clearly and when there is no emergency at hand. Each family should discuss donation and consider what they would do in the face of a tragedy if they had the opportunity to provide life for others.

Would you provide that life? Most of us would.

The core of the Christian message is that God gives us life out of death. How much more Christian an act can there be?

Chris Shorow is pastor at East Dallas Christian Church. He has worked at Dallas' Methodist Hospital and also in Georgia, visiting with families about organ donation.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


30. Lonnie D. Kliever: Faulty theology fuels resistance to transplants
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 25, 2000 (Lonnie D. Kliever / Guest Columnist)
http://www.dallasnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
I was troubled by Alexander A. Slepukhof's column, ''Organ donations: an Orthodox perspective'' (Religion, Nov. 11). I am well aware and deeply appreciative of Eastern Orthodoxy's sacramental view of flesh and matter. That view underwrites reverence for the natural world and the human body and affirms the psychosomatic wholeness of the self - views that I endorse, though on other philosophical grounds. But I question the conclusions that he draws from his Orthodox tradition about the resurrected body, whole-bodied burial, and transplant candidates.

I believe that it is only right to acknowledge that I am a kidney transplant candidate. I have End Stage Renal Disease and am undergoing dialysis. I have recently completed the arduous process of qualifying medically for the kidney transplant list. If I do not receive a kidney transplant, I will continue to spend three mornings a week, four hours a day, connected to a machine for the rest of my life.

While there is no cure for kidney disease, receiving a new kidney is a far better way of managing my disease than dialysis with its unrelenting time and dietary demands and its cumulative debilitating effects. Though I have a vested interest, my criticisms of Mr. Slepukhof's column will be argued on philosophical rather than personal grounds.

Mr. Slepukhof advocates a physicalistic view of the resurrected body. For him, the body that dies is the body that rises. But this view of life after death equates resurrection with resuscitation of the physical body. Granted that some of the early church fathers held this crudely materialistic view of the resurrected body, but St. Paul knew better than that.

When asked by the church at Corinth about the resurrected body, he replied that it would be a spiritual body that he could describe only by analogy.
(...)

Mr. Slepukhof's view of what he calls ''whole-bodied burial'' apparently rests on his physicalistic view of the resurrected body.
(...)

What happens to the person who is buried minus organs that were destroyed by trauma or disease? What happens to the person whose entire body is destroyed by fire or explosion?

Whole-bodied burials are impossible in those circumstances. Surely God's hands would not be tied in those situations when he resurrects the dead. Why then should he face any problem with a person who is buried minus organs donated out of love to extend the life of others after his own death?

Finally, Mr. Slepukhof paints transplant surgeons and candidates with a dark brush. In language all too reminiscent of Dr. Frankenstein, he describes transplant surgeons as drunk on the smell of their own technological success, promising to hold death at bay indefinitely. He accuses them of using the human body as a ''spare-parts bin'' and seeing the body as ''disposable tissue.''

Not surprisingly, Mr. Slepukhof also views transplant candidates and recipients as Frankensteinian monsters of a sort.
(...)

But I see both living and cadaveric organ donations as gifts of love, fully consistent with the deepest mystery and meaning of the Christian faith, which is centered in One who suffered and even died that others might live. What more tangible way to bring life out of death than to become an organ donor upon your own death!

Dr. Lonnie D. Kliever is professor of religious studies at Southern Methodist University.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Noted

31. Mexican exorcists busy in land of witchcraft, pagan rituals
CNN/AP, Nov. 26, 2000
http://www.cnn.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) -- The Rev. Alberto Juarez has seen a young woman erupt in an angry man's voice and growl like a dog. Father Enrique Maldonado tells of houses where locked doors flew open and objects moved about.

In these days of high technology and lunch-hour therapy sessions, many people think of exorcism as a relic of the Middle Ages. But the ritual to drive away the forces of evil is alive and well around the globe, perhaps no more so than in Mexico.

In Mexico City, a metropolis of 20 million people, a steady procession of anguished souls pass through the doors of Catholic parishes to seek out the eight priests appointed by the archbishop to do battle with Satan.

Others who believe they are possessed consult Protestant ministers or the country's wide assortment of faith healers, who employ an elaborate blend of religious and pagan customs to cast out evil spirits.
(...)

Mexico is full of people who believe they are possessed. Although it is an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation, Christianity here is interwoven with centuries of pre-Hispanic rites of witchcraft, black magic and faith healing.

''Fortunetelling, consulting the dead, the spirits, astrology _ all of these are the terrain of evil,'' Juarez said. ''Magic is a breeding ground for the work of Satan.''

Exorcists say the number of people seeking help has doubled and even tripled recently and point to a series of factors:

The release of a new version of the 1973 movie ''The Exorcist.''

Reports that Pope John Paul II himself tried to exorcise the devil from a young woman in Rome in September.

A highly publicized case of a botched, unauthorized exorcism in nearby Puebla state, in which several women were seriously injured.

The exorcist's job is to distinguish between those obsessed with the belief that dark forces are attacking them and what the church considers ''true'' possessions.

They also have to discount mental illness. Juarez is studying psychology, and Maldonado already has a degree.
(...)

To drive away evil, exorcists use the crucifix, prayers and blessings. Maldonado and Juarez said they take the person to a sacred, private place -- usually their own church or chapel -- and with the aid of other faithful, recite a series of prayers prescribed by the church.

The prayers denounce evil, order the devil to leave, and ask for liberation in the name of Jesus Christ. The process has no defined duration, but can last up to an hour, Juarez said.

''You must always have the crucifix in hand as well as the scriptures in order to use the precise words of Christ,'' he said.
(...)

New exorcism guidelines issued by the Vatican last year urge exorcists not to mistake psychiatric illness for satanic possession. But the guidelines also stress the power of evil.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


32. Survey: Most Americans Believe Bible Is Relevant Today
The Huntsville Times/Religion News Service, Nov. 18, 2000
http://www.al.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
[...Trends...]
Eighty-six percent of Americans believe the Bible is relevant today, but two-thirds of them think their local newspaper is easier to read than the holy book, a survey has found.

The survey, commissioned by Zondervan Publishing House, found that 80 percent of respondents believe the Bible can address most or all of today's problems. More than half of the adults surveyed said the Bible is likely to be more accurate than a history book or a local newspaper.
(...)

However, a recent Gallup poll found that about six in 10 Americans read the Bible at least occasionally, down from 73 percent in the 1980s. Gallup found that 65 percent believe the holy book ''answers all or most of the basic questions of life.''

Although both polls showed a majority of respondents believe in the relevance of the Bible, the Zondervan survey found that many have trouble understanding the holy book.
(...)

The Zondervan study also asked people what they would talk to God about in a face-to-face discussion. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed said they would discuss ''the reasons that good people have to suffer''; 15 percent said they would find out ''whether they are going to heaven or hell''; and another 15 percent said they would ask ''when the world will come to an end.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


=== Books

33. Quirky new novel delves into the mysteries of kabbalah
Dallas Morning News, Nov. 25, 2000
http://www.dallasnews.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
The novel Bee Season begins as both a touching and slyly satiric tale of a suburban Jewish family. The unremarkable 9-year-old daughter, Eliza, discovers that she has a remarkable talent to envision words and wins a citywide spelling bee with no sweat.

Yet this ordinary event triggers a family meltdown. Eliza's older brother, Aaron, feeling overlooked, begins to seek solace with the Hare Krishnas. Their mother, a successful lawyer, steps up the risks involved in her own secret life - kleptomania.

But most important, Eliza's father, Saul, their synagogue's cantor, sees a religious sign in Eliza's spelling genius. He begins tutoring her in the mysterious incantations of the kabbalah. What had been an amusing - and then disturbing - story of a family in crisis enters another dimension entirely.

Myla Goldberg's debut novel, Bee Season (Doubleday, $22.95), has been received rapturously by reviewers - called ''winningly eccentric'' by Time, ''marvelous'' by Newsweek. Ms. Goldberg is currently on a 28-city tour - a rare event for a first-timer - and appeared in Dallas recently at the Jewish Community Center.

Widely seen by many - Jew and non-Jew alike - as a form of medieval superstition, the kabbalah (pronounced KA-balah) is actually a tradition of Jewish mysticism. Probably best known for its treatment of words and letters as sacred ciphers (another name for the kabbalah is Hokhmah Nistarah or ''secret science''), the kabbalah has re-emerged in recent years. ''New age'' Judaism, with its blend of Eastern and Judaic practices, has a strong kabbalah component, for example.

''I took a class in kabbalah [at Oberlin College] in 1991,'' Ms. Goldberg says. ''And it was so powerful, so bizarre, it impressed itself on my back brain.''

Yet when she began writing Bee Season, Ms. Goldberg says, she had no thought of the kabbalah. A friend told her of how her family ''had gotten too far into spelling bees - and that piqued my interest. It was this strange little universe I never knew existed.'' She came to see the spelling bee as a microcosm of childhood - ''it's a bunch of rules you have to learn to follow. Much like Judaism. Much like a family.''

But then, in the middle of writing Bee Season, ''I woke up one morning, and the spelling bees were fused with the mysticism,'' she says. ''It was a central moment for me.''

Although its beginnings lie in ancient Palestine, the kabbalah really first took form in 12th- and 13th-century France and Spain with the creation of the book, Zohar (''Splendor''), a commentary on the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The term kabbalah literally means ''tradition,'' yet the kabbalah itself is not a single line. In fact, earlier this century, German-born scholar Gershom Scholem estimated that there were between 3,000 and 4,000 kabbalah texts.

''The kabbalah is a huge football field,'' Ms. Goldberg says. ''And numerology is only one dark corner of it. In some ways [in the early kabbalist works], it's like a Nintendo video game - with secret passwords and codes and palaces guarded by angels.''
(...)

Despite their variety and often esoteric nature, the kabbalists' basic beliefs can be codified, says Yechiel Goldberg, a visiting instructor in Jewish studies at the University of Rochester, who is writing his dissertation on the kabbalah. (He is no relation to Ms. Goldberg.)

''The fundamental notion of the kabbalah,'' he says, ''is that human beings are partners with God in maintaining and perfecting this world, and in maintaining and perfecting the unity of God.'' Conventional Jews believe ''in declaring that God is one,'' he says, ''while kabbalists believe that you make God one. God Himself has been divided, and the properly led Jewish life actually seeks to correct those flaws. It's a form of redemption.''

Even with such differences, Mr. Goldberg says, the kabbalah is ''most definitely and specifically a Jewish form of mysticism,'' notably in its emphasis on close reading and the meaning of words. The study of these - ''the path of the kabbalah,'' as it were - is a ''way of imaging the divine form in the human mind and therefore even a way of approaching the divine'' through the layers and guises hidden in texts.
(...)

Regardless of its associations with secrets and magic - with what Mr. Goldberg calls ''manipulating divine powers'' - the kabbalah developed a shady name over the years. In the 17th century, the Turkish mystic and cult leader, Shabbetai Zeviknown as the ''false messiah'' - derived many of his ideas from the kabbalah. It didn't help much that he also converted to Islam.

But it was the 19th century's rationalism, Mr. Goldberg says, that led to the kabbalah's widespread disrepute. Hoping for Judaism to be accepted as a reasonable, mainstream, Western religion, German Jewish scholars treated the kabbalah as so much charlatanism. It wasn't until the 20th century, with such scholars as Gershom Scholem, that the kabbalah was studied seriously.

Nowadays, Ms. Goldberg says, the kaballah is becoming ''just another escape. Americans are always looking for an exotic answer, and like everything else Americans glom on to, they're just taking what they want and forgetting the rest. It's McKabbalah.''

''I agree completely,'' Mr. Goldberg says. ''You get kabbalah quacks; you definitely get people looking for the fast-food spiritual experience.''

Since the '60s, he says, many Jews have turned to Eastern practices of meditation - and have tried to combine them with Judaism via the kabbalah.

''Unfortunately,'' Mr. Goldberg says, ''the kabbalah is not some extension of transcendental meditation.'' What he finds, he says, ''are people who don't want to do the heavy intellectual work the kabbalah requires.''

With its precocious but troubled Jewish kids exploring mysticism, Bee Season has echoes of J. D. Salinger's Franny and Zooey, an influence Ms. Goldberg happily acknowledges. But unlike Mr. Salinger's novel, Bee Season climaxes with a scene of Stephen King-like intensity - but also a highly ambivalent one, mixing Ms. Goldberg's fascination and skepticism. In the end, the novel could easily be taken as a warning against the kabbalah - or a portrait of its spiritual potential.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


34. Pilgrim beats Harry Potter
BBC, Nov. 25, 2000
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_1039000/1039234.stm
[Story no longer online? Read this]
A re-telling of the classic tale A Pilgrim's Progress has beaten Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire to win the first Blue Peter Book Awards.

The winner was chosen by a panel of child judges, selected by the children's programme from across the UK.
(...)

The shortlist of three books for the Blue Peter Book of the Year award also included JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and The Illustrated Mum by Jacqueline Wilson.
(...)

JK Rowling missed out on a Whitbread Book Award nomination for her latest novel recently, after winning it last year with Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban.

But despite the lack of critical acclaim from adult and child judging panels, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire is still breaking publishing records.
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