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There’s the Tower of Babel (“it was no Trump Tower”) and the day of Creation when God decides not to pay His lighting contractor. Joseph’s coat, Jacob’s dream, the wedding at Cana and more await, too.
Meanwhile, professor of scripture and historian of ancient Christianity Paula Fredriksen is concerned with a more serious revisionism: the casting of Jesus as a Palestinian.
The rebranding began, Fredriksen observes, around Christmas, when activists started framing 1st-century Jews such as King Herod as an occupying power and “Palestinians” as victims — “never mind,” she writes, “that Jesus was born and died a Jew in Judaea.”
Fredriksen’s history lesson shows that no political entity known as “Palestine” existed in Jesus’ lifetime, and therefore calling him Palestinian (or a Palestinian Jew) is a modern political ploy. More than a ploy — a polemic even; Fredriksen condemns this gambit as another unsavory attempt to use Jesus against Jews.
Rana Ayyub has been heartbroken over the interreligious conflict in Gaza as well as in her own India, where the Hindu-nationalist government is increasingly oppressing Muslims. So she sought, in her words, “some semblance of hope, some spiritual solace, some feeling of community”: She decided to make a pilgrimage to Mecca.
Her essay is a moving account of, first, the bumpy journey to the holy site and, then, the worldwide warmth she finds there — a community of pilgrims, many coming from places where they are individually persecuted, caring for fellow strangers in Mecca all the same.
“Maundy,” by the way, comes from the Latin “mandatum,” for order. Today honors one of Jesus’ last ones to the world: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.”
From Karen Tumulty’s column on the reason — or billion reasons — RFK Jr. selected the 38-year-old political newcomer to join him on the ticket. (Kennedy claimed he needed someone “with a spiritual dimension and compassion and idealism.” Okay, fine, one billion and three reasons.)
Keep in mind, Karen writes, that Kennedy’s campaign has only about $5 million cash on hand, and collecting enough signatures to get on state ballots is expensive. Shanahan’s infusion will get the ticket much farther.
Not to the White House, of course. “There’s no conceivable scenario in which Kennedy might actually win the election,” Karen writes. But each windfall takes Kennedy closer to spoiling the vote.
More politics
The House of Representatives is debating a bill questioning the United States’ ties with South Africa. With big differences over Ukraine, Gaza and other issues, is it time to reassess the relationship?
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says, really, what’s an accusation or two brought to the International Court of Justice among friends?
Ramaphosa argues that his country’s foreign policy decisions are in fact consistent with its longtime philosophy of nonalignment. More importantly, the United States and South Africa are simply too good of pals — economically, democratically, strategically — to let their bonds deteriorate over “principled disagreements.”
Chaser: Perry Bacon writes that the Squad and their fellow House progressives were right on Gaza policy — and now it could cost them their seats.
Smartest, fastest
- Trump benefits from an unequal system, Jen Rubin writes. Still, he can’t outrun justice.
- A quartet of female Republican senators identify what the National Mall has long been missing: a monument to women’s fight for the vote.
- Former cryptocurrency poster boy Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced today to 25 years in prison. The fraudster was never the “effective altruist” he claimed to be, writes Zach Robinson, chief executive of … *checks notes* … the Centre for Effective Altruism.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
New beatitude:
Blessed are the truth-tellers
Theirs is the future
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Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
