Wednesday’s RNS report includes a news story by Daniel Burke about Episcopal bishops rejecting a plan for foreign oversight: Episcopal Bishops late Tuesday (March 20) flatly rejected a plan to give foreign Anglicans a place in governing the Episcopal Church, saying it would be “injurious” to the church. Meeting at their annual spring retreat in Navasota, Texas, the Episcopal House of Bishops staunchly defended their turf, fending off overseas conservatives’ plan to gain a toehold in the U.S. Though each of the 38 regional churches in the Anglican Communion are autonomous, foreign primates have stepped into the Episcopal Church, the communion’s U.S. branch, to help fellow conservatives in recent years. The Episcopal bishops’ rejection may lead to greater fissures among the world’s 77 million Anglicans, who are fracturing over homosexuality and the Bible.
Omar Sacirbey spent 10 Minutes With … Mustafa Ceric: Omar Sacirbey talks with Mustafa Ceric, the grand mufti of Bosnia and Herzegovina, about his struggle to promote moderate Islam and how he engineered reconciliation in his war-torn country.
We’re also running a Passover package of three stories today. In the first, by Nicole Neroulias, Jews mull modern menu options for Passover: Every time her birthday falls during Passover, Melissa Hantman of Rochester, N.Y., stifles a sigh and looks for a palatable but permissible dessert to offer party guests. Her spiritual stomachaches have given way to philosophical headaches lately, as the 27-year-old Reform Jew ponders whether the growing range of kosher-for-Passover delights somehow defeats the purpose of the weeklong holiday. Jews traditionally observe Passover, which begins April 2 this year, by adhering to strict dietary laws. For thousands of years, the holiday’s dietary staple, matzo, was a simple cracker created by baking a flour-and-water mixture for 18 minutes. But with kosher food producers now offering flavored varieties and seeking mainstream markets, consumers like Hantman are beginning to wonder: What happens when the biblical “bread of affliction” becomes a tasty treat?
A synagogue gets a lesson in wandering toward a permanent home, writes G. Jeffrey MacDonald: For the past 26 years, members of the tiny Temple Shalom synagogue in Fayetteville, Ark., have celebrated the Lord’s Passover without a building to call their own. But that’s about to change, thanks to an uncommon act of charity that stands to infuse their holiday with new significance and, members hope, be a catalyst for conflict resolution far beyond Arkansas. Temple Shalom has accepted a pledge from a local developer to donate his time and erect a 6,600-square-foot facility without taking any profit. What makes the pledge even more unusual is that it comes from a Muslim Palestinian who grew up seeing Jews as the people who divided his family, bombed his West Bank village and forced him to flee into nearby mountains for safety.
Deborah Pardo-Kaplan reports on a revival of the Sanhedrin High Court for Passover: In a donated apartment concealed among the narrow streets of the Nahlaot suburb of Jerusalem, 13 Orthodox Jewish men meet every Tuesday to discuss and decide on matters of Jewish law. They are the management team of a larger developing Sanhedrin, or religious court, in Israel. With their most recent plan to sacrifice sheep on the Temple Mount on the day before or one month after Passover, they hope to thrust their ideals forward. The Passover sacrifice is the latest of more than 40 legal decisions made by this modern Sanhedrin. In antiquity, the Sanhedrin determined Jewish practice. It now rules on political and religious issues and ultimately sees itself as the alternative to the secular Supreme Court of Israel.
