Interreligious Current Events

In this op-ed (Nothing Old About It) Shlumey Boteach says that the term "Old Testament" should be retired in favor of "The Hebrew Bible."

Boteach says that "old" is a pejorative meaning "stodgy, musty and out-of-date." Since, as Boteach argues, the values of the Hebrew Bible inform American society more than the values of the New Testament/Christian Bible, the term "Old Testament" is inappropriate.

The Islamic Center of Long Island recently gave Orthodox Rabbi Marc Schneier a special award for interfaith understanding. Rabbi Schneier is head of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, a group that fosters interethnic and interreligious dialogue.

See article Major N.Y. Islamic center honors Orthodox rabbi at annual event from HaAretz.

Sarajevo, April 1942. The Nazis and their Croatian allies descend on Sarajevo and commence the destruction of that city's Jewish, Serbian, and Gypsy heritages.

Adolf Hitler and Alfred Rosenberg, Reich Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, planned a massive museum of Judaica - a "museum of an extinct race." One item that they coveted was the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, a superb illuminated manuscript from the days of Islamic Spain.

Dervis Korkut was a librarian at the Sarajevo Museum. Coming from a long line of Muslim scholars, he was fascinated by the lives of Bosnia's minorities. When the Nazis came to Sarajevo Korkut saved the precious Haggadah. He told the commanding German officer that the museum had already turned over the Haggadah to another German. Dervis then hid the Haggadah among Korans at a tiny, provincial mosque.

Dervis later saved the life of a Jewish girl.

The whole article is only available in the New Yorker's print edition, but an abstract is available here.