2008.10.08: October 8, 2008: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Jewish Issues: Islamic Issues: Religion: Speaking Out: Election2008: Los Angeles Daily News: Jonathon Dobrer writes: While in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, I studied Islam with the Imam of Nabeul
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2008.10.08: October 8, 2008: Headlines: COS - Tunisia: Jewish Issues: Islamic Issues: Religion: Speaking Out: Election2008: Los Angeles Daily News: Jonathon Dobrer writes: While in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, I studied Islam with the Imam of Nabeul
Jonathon Dobrer writes: While in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, I studied Islam with the Imam of Nabeul
WHEN I stand trembling before God this week on Erev Yom Kippur, as I judge myself and submit to a higher judgment, what will the criteria of judgment be? What will count for me and against me? Which are more important, my sins of commission or omission? I am pretty confident that the decree will not be based primarily on the company I've kept. Yet this seems to be an important issue during this increasingly nasty presidential campaign. Republicans want to judge Sen. Barack Obama by his former minister and a former radical. Democrats want to judge Sen. John McCain on his lobbyist friends and the Keating Five.
Jonathon Dobrer writes: While in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, I studied Islam with the Imam of Nabeul
Judge us not by our friends, associates
By Jonathan Dobrer
Article Last Updated: 10/08/2008 01:10:36 PM PDT
WHEN I stand trembling before God this week on Erev Yom Kippur, as I judge myself and submit to a higher judgment, what will the criteria of judgment be? What will count for me and against me? Which are more important, my sins of commission or omission? I am pretty confident that the decree will not be based primarily on the company I've kept. Yet this seems to be an important issue during this increasingly nasty presidential campaign. Republicans want to judge Sen. Barack Obama by his former minister and a former radical. Democrats want to judge Sen. John McCain on his lobbyist friends and the Keating Five.
If I apply this standard to myself, I quake indeed.
I had lunch with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. But I also had dinner with Ehud Olmert. I was friends with Richard Perle of the Reagan administration and the Carlyle Group. Somewhere there is a picture of me with O.J. Simpson - our arms on each other's shoulders. I was president of a large fundraising organization that supports Israel, and I was buddies with Richard Dreyfus, who attended a Peace Now rally 18 years ago. A good friend from USC was indicted in Watergate.
While in the Peace Corps in Tunisia, I studied Islam with the Imam of Nabeul. I'm afraid that some of my former students may have turned into radical Islamists. In Berkeley in the 1960s, I knew people who did lots of drugs and plotted the overthrow of the government - but were mostly too stoned to do any harm.
I studied at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley with an Episcopal priest who was part of the God-is-dead movement. I hang with a rabbi who said to an atheist that he probably didn't believe in the same God the atheist didn't believe in.
In my own family, I have to live with the fact that one uncle (at least) was a card-carrying communist, my mother was married to an unsuccessful Democratic candidate for Congress and a cousin was married to a Chinese communist - a real one and not an American of Chinese origins who was a communist, but a member of Mao's government.
Another cousin is married to a Muslim. More critically, I must also confess that I have a dear cousin or two who will vote the Republican Party line.
Oh, G-d, please forgive me my sins of association and my inability to lead all to the straight path. Please look kindly upon me for not overly judging others.
Jonathan Dobrer, a professor of comparative religion at the American Jewish University in Bel-Air, blogs at insidesocal.com/friendlyfire. Write to him by e-mail at jondobrer@mac.com.
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Story Source: Los Angeles Daily News
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Tunisia; Jewish Issues; Islamic Issues; Religion; Speaking Out; Election2008
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