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'Last December in these pages, the editor and critic Paul Elie wrote a much discussed essay about the relative absence of Christian belief as a theme among today's mainstream literary novelists. (Whither the Flannery O'Connors of yesteryear? Marilynne Robinson can't do this all by herself!) But there doesn't seem to be any corresponding dry spell among contemporary Jewish fiction writers. On the contrary, a surprising number can't seem to avoid engaging with faith, even when they pickle their protagonists. If today's literary fiction can't be accurately described as "post-Jewish" the way Elie calls it "post-Christian," that may be because in Judaism, faith itself is largely built on the concept of preserving memory. And the urge to stop time - to freeze the fleeting moment and thaw out its meaning later - is what drives many writers to write.... 'Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them, by understanding the present through the lens of the past.... The belief that we are just re-enacting history persists into the modern era, even among the nonreligious. To give only one example, last fall the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, described Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then president of Iran, as "a modern-day Haman," a biblical Persian official who plotted a genocide against the Jews. ' This seeking out of patterns straddles the line between fantasy and our desire for real transcendence. It is the very stuff of literature. As Yerushalmi describes it, "What was suddenly drawn up from the past was not a series of facts to be contemplated at a distance, but a series of situations into which one could somehow be existentially drawn." '...That existential possibility makes Judaism into a religion unusually friendly to writers. Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record-­keepers, forever s

'Last December in these pages, the editor and critic Paul Elie wrote a much discussed essay about the relative absence of Christian belief as a theme among today's mainstream literary novelists. (Whither the Flannery O'Connors of yesteryear? Marilynne Robinson can't do this all by herself!) But there doesn't seem to be any corresponding dry spell among contemporary Jewish fiction writers. On the contrary, a surprising number can't seem to avoid engaging with faith, even when they pickle their protagonists. If today's literary fiction can't be accurately described as "post-Jewish" the way Elie calls it "post-Christian," that may be because in Judaism, faith itself is largely built on the concept of preserving memory. And the urge to stop time - to freeze the fleeting moment and thaw out its meaning later - is what drives many writers to write.... 'Commanded by God dozens of times in the Hebrew bible to remember their past, Jews historically obeyed not by recording events but by ritually re-enacting them, by understanding the present through the lens of the past.... The belief that we are just re-enacting history persists into the modern era, even among the nonreligious. To give only one example, last fall the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, described Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then president of Iran, as "a modern-day Haman," a biblical Persian official who plotted a genocide against the Jews. ' This seeking out of patterns straddles the line between fantasy and our desire for real transcendence. It is the very stuff of literature. As Yerushalmi describes it, "What was suddenly drawn up from the past was not a series of facts to be contemplated at a distance, but a series of situations into which one could somehow be existentially drawn." '...That existential possibility makes Judaism into a religion unusually friendly to writers. Memory as an article of faith often comes naturally to writers, who by temperament are likely to be diarists and record-­keepers, forever s

'The recent historic open letter signed by 138 leading Muslim scholars ... from around the world - "A Common Word Between Us and You" - identifies some core common ground between Christianity and Islam, as well as Judaism. 'What is common between us lies in something absolutely central to both [and Judaism]: love of God and love of neighbor. 'The future of the world depends on our ability as Christians and Muslims to live together in peace. If we fail to make every effort to make peace and come together in harmony you correctly remind us that "our eternal souls" are at stake as well. 'We are persuaded that our next step should be for our leaders at every level to meet together and begin the earnest work of determining how God would have us fulfill the requirement that we love God and one another.'

by Paul Moses - Newsday - 6/29/2001 DR. FREDERICK SMITH has the usual textbooks on ambulatory care, surgery and prescription drugs in his office. But the shelves also hold D.T.Suzuki's "Essays in Zen Buddhism," a volume of Cardinal John Henry Newman's writings, books on Confucianism and Judaism, the Quran and alarge-type, 69-year-old Bible a patient gave him, so worn that its cover has fallen off. These, too, are tools of Smith's trade. As associate chief of internal medicine at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, the gray-bearded, 56-year-old physician has found that religious faith can help his patients,and he's trying to teach that to a generation of up-and-coming doctors. His 2-year-old course, Religion and Medicine, is part of a growing move to sensitize doctors to the role faith plays in their patients' lives. It gives residents at North Shore who've completed medical school but are still receiving some training a chance to learn about their patients' religious traditions....

In the past year, a spate of Jewish authors, from the popular to the rabbinic to the scholarly, have wrestled with what Jews should think about Jesus. And overwhelmingly, they are coming up with positive answers, urging their fellow Jews to learn about Jesus, understand him and claim him as one of their own.