Huffington Post columnist Leora Tannenbaum attends a pre-Shabbat lecture at the local mosque and concludes that “devout Muslims and Jews are not altogether that different, particularly in the worship department.”

Just as when I attend my own Orthodox synagogue, located a half-mile away from the mosque, I was separated from the men. After we placed our shoes in cubbyholes, we women filed up the staircase to the cramped balcony above while the men found places in the majestic sanctuary downstairs. There appeared to be nearly a thousand men and perhaps sixty women in attendance for the congregational prayer.

Imam Ali delivered his khutba (sermon). He told the worshippers that Muslims need to reach out and live harmoniously with other people because all people are servants of Allah. If someone chooses another path, he said, Muslims have a responsibility to show them the right way. However, one may not force others to follow the Islamic way. “We must show respect and dignity to all children of Adam,” he said. “Everyone is dignified by Allah.” It is human nature, he continued, that different people have different opinions, and Allah knows this. “But this difference of opinions does not make us hate each other. This diversity is seen in Islam as good,” Imam Ali declared, and all of us must “make an effort to get to know one another.”

Although I tried, I could not see the imam at all during his sermon. He spoke from a platform that was obscured from all but a few choice seats in the women’s section. So I ran my gaze across the women listening to him. Their hijabs reminded me of the tichels common in Borough Park and other Hasidic neighborhoods. I craned my head to check out the men below. The several men from JTS blended in with the crowd, the kippot on their heads closely resembling the kufis. After the sermon, it was time to pray. The bowing and prostrating was not altogether different from the shuckling (rhythmic swaying) commonly done during Jewish prayer.

Sh’ma has dedicated its latest issue to the topic of “Jews and Neoconservatives.” Among the highlights:

A discussion between Ruth Wisse and Seth Lipsky (she makes him look a teddy bear).

An essay critiquing critics of neocons by Commentary and Azure vet Benjamin Balint (who is working on a book about the former).

A liberal rebuttal from Rabbi David Teutsch.

Zev Chafets says Israel shouldn’t be counting on the United States to take care of Iran.

Daphne Merkin visits the Kabbalah Center.

Peter Steinfels takes a look at the Haggadah.

The boom in Passover food products.

The Ethicist weighs in on whether someone should rat out a fellow employee who makes up fake Jewish holidays to get off of work.

A profile of comedian Irwin Corey’s journey from the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum to the Friars Club.

Happy 75th birthday Mr. Roth.

A look at what has gone wrong with Sheldon Adleson’s plan to help the Republicans win in 2008.

The New York Post does not approve of President Carter having tea with terrorists:

It’s bad enough that Carter - a former US president and winner of the now-thoroughly discredited Nobel Peace Prize - will be putting a stamp of legitimacy on a gang of cutthroats who’ve never hesitated to include Americans in their growing body count.

The saddest thing about this get-together is that it comes as no real surprise. Indeed, it’s entirely in keeping with Carter’s recent embrace of Palestinian extremism - to the point where, in his latest published anti-Israel screed, he all but gave his blessing to attacks on Israel.

But a columnist for the Daily Star of Lebanon makes the case for why he thinks a Carter-Hamas meeting would be a good thing:

The key to achieving a peaceful win-win situation is to analyze and deal with Hamas in the total framework of its actions, and not only through the narrow lens of terror acts. This means understanding and addressing the six R’s that Hamas represents: resistance, respect, reciprocity, reconstruction, rights and refugees.

Resistance against Israeli occupation and aggression is Hamas’ main task, and the key operative verb in its Arabic language name “harakat al-muqawama al-islamiyyah” (”Islamic resistance movement”). It resists and defies Israel, and refuses to acknowledge Israel’s legitimacy - until Israel decides in return to acknowledge Palestinian national rights and integrity.

Achieving respect is an intangible but crucial part of Hamas’ battle against Israel; it has been achieved in part in Israeli agreement to two cease-fire accords with Hamas, with a third likely on the way, perhaps followed by a prisoner exchange.

Reciprocity - the application of respect in tangible political form - requires that Israelis and Palestinians deal with each other and be treated by the world according to the same rules and criteria - on the use of violence, application of the Geneva Conventions, political engagement, and implementation of United Nations resolutions. It also applies to reciprocal statehood with Israel, which Hamas now says it accepts if Israel withdraws from the territories occupied in 1967 and implements UN resolutions on refugee rights.

Al Jazeera English’s respected Jewish American anchor tells the Columbia Journalism Review why he quit the network:

It’s been a gradual process, and defining it all, is that with corporate encouragement, over the first two years of the channel’s existence, I have made myself effectively the American face of the channel and vouched for its credibility and value. And over the last seventeen months there have been several changes at the channel which put things on the air that, frankly, I could not vouch for. If I had just been another employee I might have just dropped my head and let it all wash over, because it is the nature of our business that every place you workoccasionally does things that embarrass you. But I felt an extra measure of responsibility.

Now, as anchor, I was in position to vouch for at least half of the material that went on air because I got to speak it and I could edit it on the fly if I felt that there were any inaccuracies or imbalances in it. But when the proposal was made that I leave the anchor chair [he was informed of this in December and his last day as anchor was March 13] and become a sort of heavy correspondent, I knew that I would never be able to have the kind of editorial input or control that would put me in a position to honestly vouch for anything. Furthermore, when I was taken off that meant that there were zero American accents in any of the presenter roles at Al Jazeera. And it occurred to me that this was just one part of a series of decisions that diminished editorial input from the United States. It got to the point where I feel that in a globe where Al Jazeera sets a very, very high reporting standard, and a very, very high standard for both numerical and qualitative and authentic staffing, that the United States was becoming a serious exception to their role, and a place where the journalism did not measure up to the standards that were set almost everywhere else by Al Jazeera English’s very fine reporting.

First the Jerusalem Post published an article about two weeks ago questioning whether Walid Shoebat, the self-described terrorist-turned-Israel supporter, was ever really a terrorist. Today he fires back with his own Post article, saying yes he was:

Despite all the evidence I provided the Post about my ties and that of my family to terror, the paper preferred to absolve me from my terrorist past and to believe my relatives, whose own links to terrorism seems irrelevant and who are glad to deny my terror links and my own confession.

The L.A. Jewish Journal’s VideoJew, Jay Firestone, submits himself to a Matzah taste test.

Last week the Forward published an editorial calling for Israel to implement a settlement freeze:

Whatever the status of Jerusalem, outlying West Bank communities such as Ariel and Betar Illit are settlements by anybody’s lights, including Israel’s. The new construction announced there last month is a direct slap at the Road Map and its author, as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made clear in her angry remarks in Jordan just after the new construction was announced.

It’s important to acknowledge that the question of new Israeli construction in the West Bank is not a matter of intrinsic right and wrong, of moral vs. immoral behavior. Violating the Road Map agreement by building new apartment blocks can hardly be compared with violating it by bombarding Israeli towns and deliberately killing and maiming civilians. Israelis are not wrong to question the international outcry that greets every new West Bank housing start.

At this moment in history, however, new construction in the settlements, whatever its moral valence, is foolish and self-destructive. Israel’s political and defense leaders see their country’s survival as dependent on separating from the Palestinians by withdrawing from the West Bank. …
Jerusalem maintains that the Palestinians must honor their Road Map commitment to stop incitement and break up terrorist gangs before Israel needs to begin acting on its commitments. The way things look now, though, that may be backward. Israel needs to help Abbas win back control by first honoring its own commitments.

This week, in an article at FrontPageMagazine.com, P. David Hornik fires back, listing what he describes as inaccuracies and rejecting the Forward’s overall premise:

The Forward warns darkly of “a spurt of new construction . . . under way in Israeli settlements in the West Bank”—actually bids for about 2,000 apartments about half of which will be in Jerusalem—and says this “development should be alarming to anyone who cares about Israel’s welfare.” What should really be alarming to anyone who cares about Israel’s welfare is that there are still Jews who think Israel can win peace by making Judea, Samaria, and part of Jerusalem off limits to Jews. …

[I]t all gets down to that root of all evils — those “settlements” — and Israel doesn’t even have a right to demand an end to incitement and terrorism without first stopping its own diabolical “natural growth” in places like Ariel, Betar Illit, and Jerusalem. The Forward stays faithful to all the self-negating axioms of the Left that, in the form of the Oslo process, got Israel surrounded by terrorist gangs in the first place. It can’t give up the idea that Israel brings terrorism upon itself and could still appease its way into its enemies’ hearts.

Laura Rozen of Mother Jones reports that some conservative activists are disappointed with the organization launched by casino mogul Sheldon Adelson to generate support for President Bush’s Iraq policy:

In Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, foreign-policy hawks thought they had found the conservative answer to liberal philanthropist George Soros: a deep-pocketed benefactor eager to dole out generous sums to right-leaning advocacy groups and grassroots campaigns. Adelson’s largesse, they believed, would underwrite the further advancement of conservative causes—particularly those regarding national security—and allow conservatives to do well-financed battle with ideological adversaries such as MoveOn.org. …

So last year, when Adelson helped to establish Freedom’s Watch, a group that late last summer launched a $15 million media campaign in support of the U.S. troop surge in Iraq, hopes were high—both for Adelson and for Freedom’s Watch. As former White House press secretary and Freedom’s Watch official Ari Fleischer put it in August, “The cavalry is coming.”

Almost eight months later, some Freedom’s Watch watchers are wondering whether some of the cavalry got lost. Even as the group has mounted a new campaign to coincide with General David Petraeus’ testimony on Iraq to Congress this week, there has been conservative grumbling about Freedom’s Watch—and Adelson. And several Freedom’s Watch staffers, including its first president, Bradley Blakeman, have left the group. Now Washington conservatives are worrying that Adelson may not be the white knight they had wished for.

In not-for-attribution interviews, a few conservative think tank hands and activists expressed frustration that Freedom’s Watch has yet to develop a comprehensive strategy, and they gripe that it has been slow to set up a MoveOn-style infrastructure. Freedom’s Watch hasn’t realized its full potential, they say, in part because Adelson overly involves himself in the group’s decision-making and won’t heed the good advice of…well, people like them.

The Associated Press reports on the challenge facing Jonah Pesner, a Reform rabbi: This year’s Boston Marathon is on the second day of Passover, which means running on a full stomach of Matzah (to say nothing of yontif) …

Jonah Pesner is looking ahead to his crucial carb-loading, fuel-up meal on the night before running his first Boston Marathon. On the menu: matzoh.

It’s not the usual choice for marathoners loading up on carbohydrates to drive their run, but Pesner, a rabbi, has limited options.

Passover begins just two days before the April 21 marathon, and the holiday’s strict dietary rules mean Jewish runners can’t eat bread and pasta, the normal staples in the days before the big race.

Besides matzoh, which is unleavened bread, Pesner plans to pound down foods such as potatoes during a rare “carb-load seder” the night before the race.

Pesner never considered breaking the dietary rules for the sake of the race, which he is running with his wife for an autism charity.

“For me, running the marathon is a very spiritual quest,” he said.

The marathon is always held on Patriots Day, a state holiday that falls the third Monday in April, and often comes within the weeklong Passover holiday.

At around the 15th mile, his stomach will probably be grumbling: If only you had gone to JTS or Y.U., we could be in shul right now.

But, really, we shouldn’t joke. Especially since the rabbi finds religious meaning in his running on Matzah:

Pesner never considered breaking the dietary rules for the sake of the race, which he is running with his wife for an autism charity.

“For me, running the marathon is a very spiritual quest,” he said.

The story also looks at the challenges facing a Conservative couple:

Sandy Karpen, a real estate agent from Scottsdale, Ariz., said he and his wife, Sharon, are changing their tradition of attending seders the first two nights of Passover to accommodate their training. The second seder is the day before the race, and Karpen and his wife wanted to rest, rather than attend a seder on what is typically a long night.

Their rabbi from the Conservative Jewish tradition advised them that Jews may fulfill their obligation by observing only the first day, and said they could do the same.

The 17-time marathoner admits to some guilt about straying from his lifelong tradition, but has no regrets.

“I guess sometimes you’re looking for justification for what you’re doing,” he said. “My rabbi said it was acceptable to do, and that was good enough for us.”

Maybe I was too hard on Pesner (after all, the Reform generally don’t believe in second-day yontif) … It’s the Karpens’ Conservative rabbi who’s got some explaining to do.

UPDATE: Judging from the first comment, I should make it clear … I was just teasing.