From “Q&A: Christopher Hitchens” in the July/August issue of The Walrus Magazine: a variation on the old saying that Jews may not attend shul, but they want the shul they don’t attend to be Orthodox:
[I]n America, religion is a voluntary association and it can’t have state financing. If you want a church, you have to build it yourself, and the schools that go along with it. . . . Everybody knows it’s true about the Jews, who are the most secular people in America. But they don’t neglect the idea of the synagogue, even if it’s only a reform one. They may not even go, but they keep it going.
Here are some things to read or watch after you get home from shul tomorrow: Rob Eshman in The Jewish Journal on the missing Palestinian speech; a four-minute video from The Forward of the 60th Anniversary Memorial Service at the West Point Jewish Chapel, commemorating Col. David “Mickey” Marcus and the North American volunteers who gave their lives in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948; David Wolpe in "The Jewish Week" on “Catching Wisdom.”
Shabbat Shalom.