The Jewish High Holidays, beginning with Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and extending through Yom Kippur, is a time of celebration, reflection, and renewal. This year those qualities are deepened through the release of Eternal Echoes - Songs and Dances for the Soul on Sony Classical.

Three living legends came together to create Eternal Echoes: the renowned classical violinist Itzhak Perlman; Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot, who keeps the ancient cantorial tradition alive from his pulpit at Manhattan's Park East Synagogue; and Hankus Netsky, a pioneer in the revival of klezmer music. Their musical common ground finds its roots in the Ashkenazi tradition, the Jewish culture of Central and Eastern Europe.

Like Yiddish, the language common amongst the Jewish populations of Eastern Europe, the musical language of the Ashkenazi is a fusion of modern European and ancient Middle Eastern styles. It expresses the full range of human emotions, from exuberant joy to deep introspection to heart-wrenching sorrow.

Those emotions come through in the music the same way they exist in life itself, occupying the same space almost simultaneously: the harmonies switch constantly from minor to major, the rhythms from straightforward to syncopated, and a tune that starts out slow and sad is likely to end fast and happy.
As Hankus Netsky, the founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band and the Contemporary Improvisation Chair at the New England Conservatory explains, "I liken it to the blues. When Jews prayed, they cried. We have a word, krehts, meaning to groan - like the blues have a moan or a wail. The Jews have a sobbing kind of feeling, even when they're happy. That's why this music is universal."

You’ll hear that on Eternal Echoes, which brings in yet another dimension: a tune that starts out with a solemn prayer frequently ends in a joyous dance. While many traditional cantorial melodies and klezmer dance tunes have common folk sources, the connection between them has never before been made this explicit.

Netsky, the album's musical director, freely admits that bringing together different strains of Jewish music is an "agenda" of his and is in line with his idea that klezmer is not just a re-creation of music from the past, but a "living tradition."

Join me for conversations with Itzhak Perlman and Hankus Netsky, along with excerpts from Eternal Echoes, all this week on Classical New England. See the schedule and listen on-demand above, and to purchase Eternal Echoes, visit ArkivMusic.
 

BOSTON —  The Catholic Church and the Obama Administration are squaring off over a rule that could force Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage for contraception.
 
"Our Catholic institutions that serve this nation well are being told: You who find these things offensive should pay for them. In fact you must pay for them," said Bishop Donald Wuehrl.
 
It’s an issue that raises questions about the limits of religious liberty – and it’s becoming a flashpoint in the presidential race, with Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich all speaking out against it.
 
Catholic doctrine condemns birth control. Critics said the new rule is a direct assault on religious liberty.
 
The Rev. J. Bryan Hehir is the Boston archdiocese's secretary for health care and social services and a former head of Catholic Charities USA. He told WGBH News that in order for religious nonprofits to work well, their core values need to be respected. 
 
"How do you cooperate with a nonprofit that has defined value commitments, defined religious commitments? And the First Amendment style of the United States has been to provide space within which institutions can function and maintain their identity," he said. "The institutions need to be able to hold on to their identity or else they're not going to be able to play a major role."
 
But White House spokesman Jay Carney insisted the rule strikes an appropriate balance between the needs of religious believers and the needs of women.
 
"Churches, houses of worship are exempted from this policy. Those institutions where women of all faiths work need to have the same kind of coverage that other American women have," he said.
 
The White House also said it wouldwork to address religious groups' concerns before the rule takes effect next year. 

BOSTON — With the question of whether the Patriots make the Super Bowl resting on the result of this weekend’s high-stakes match-up against the Baltimore Ravens, the local sports news is pretty much all football, all the time. But baseball fans know that it's just a month until pitchers and catchers report to spring training — and veteran Red Sox infielder Kevin Youkilis is thinking ahead.
 
True, he acknowledges, "It was definitely a shock with a lot of the things that transpired in September, all different kinds of things that were happening," Youkilis said on Jan. 19.
 
He could be referring to a number of “things."
 
Could it be that the team, considered in the early summer to be the best in the majors, failed to win even one-third of its games in September?
 
Or the revelations that players were drinking beer and eating fried chicken in the dugout during games?
 
No: “Youk” said that for him, the most upsetting “thing” was the end of manager Terry “Tito” Francona.

(Keith Allison/Flickr)

"Tito’s the only manager I’d ever played for in the major league, so I don’t know any new manager or how to handle it," he said.
 
Still, Youkilis said he’s optimistic about his new boss, Bobby Valentine.
 
"Managers just want you to play the game the right way," he said. "You all have your different personalities on your team and not everyone’s going to be best friends with everyone, but you have to respect each other and play the game right — and I think that’s the biggest thing going in. As long as you play hard and with control, I think it’s going to be great with myself and with Bobby."
 
Despite this player's rosy outlook, and despite the many weeks to go before Opening Day, some observers have already counted the Sox right out.
 
That didn't bother Youk at all.
 
"People are still saying we’re not good enough. And we kind of like that. We kind of like that ability to say — You know what? We’ll prove you wrong. We’re going to win."
 
In the meantime… go Pats.

Hear more from Youk, including his thoughts on his charity Youk's Kids, on "The Emily Rooney Show."

BOSTON — New Hampshire is not Iowa, and perhaps no other issue reflects their differences than the role of religion in politics. Social conservatives are credited with helping Rick Santorum surge in Iowa and they're standing by to help him again in South Carolina.

But in between is New Hampshire and the Dec. 10 primary. While Mitt Romney may get a one-week reprieve from facing a religious voting block, his Mormon faith is something he's been forced to address, as he did in this 2007 speech.
 
"When I place my hand on the Bible, and take the oath of office. That oath becomes my highest promise to God. If I’m fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States," he said.

That was then. "This time you can't get a quote out of the Romney campaign about religion. They don't want to deal with it," said professor Mark Silk, who studies the role of faith in politics.
 
During the last presidential race, Silk said, Romney met with evangelicals and "asserted that like them he accepted Jesus as his lord and savior. It didn't work." That's in part because evangelical Christians consider their religion to be very different from Mormonism. "When you claim to be like them, that gets their hackles up."
 
So it might not be a bad strategy for Romney to steer clear, Silk said — if he can keep from being forced to address the issue. 

More videos on religion in politics:

Candidate Rick Santorum, favored by evangelical Christians, rang notes of faith in his speech the night of the Iowa caucus.  

John F. Kennedy gave the grandaddy speech on faith during his presidential run in 1960:

The Boston Catholic Archdiocese continues to deal with fallout from the 2002 child abuse scandal. On Nov. 21, Cardinal Bernard Law, the former archbishop of Boston, resigned from his most recent position at the Vatican. The announcement re-ignited passions in the Boston area, especially from those who say Law and the Church avoided addressing the cause of the abuse, and didn't adequately punish wrongdoers.
 
Psychologist Carlos Cuevas, a faculty member at Northeastern University, added to that criticism on “The Callie Crossley Show” on Dec. 1. Cuevas said the few policies the Catholic Church has agreed to change haven't done anything.
 
“The motivation isn't surrounding ‘How do we help people not be victimized.’ The motivation is ‘How do we not get busted for this again.’ And I think that's part of what I take issue with,” he said.
 
Cuevas, who works with sexual offenders as well as survivors of abuse, thought that the church had a knee-jerk reaction to the scandal that won't effectively prevent future victimization.
 
Journalist Walter Robinson oversaw the Boston Globe Spotlight Team’s coverage of the abuse scandal. He agreed that the culture of the Catholic Church had driven the decisions during Law’s tenure and kept action from being taken at the necessary time.
 
An examination of the church personnel files shows that Law and his subordinates knew "pretty much everything that was going on with these priests and that their overriding concern in all of their correspondence was keeping the reputation of the church from being harmed,” Robinson said. “And that’s what allowed this to go on for so long.”
 
Robinson saw parallels to the abuse scandal at Penn State, where culture also seemed to play a role in keeping matters under cover. 
 

BOSTON — Lawyers and advocates for victims of Roman Catholic clergy sex abuse have welcomed news that former Boston archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law has resigned from his position in Rome.
 
The Vatican announced on Nov. 21 that the 80-year-old Law had resigned his post as archpriest of St. Mary Major basilica. Spanish Monsignor Santos Abril y Castello has been named as Law’s replacement.
 
Law stepped down as Boston's archbishop in 2002. Critics have said he did little to protect children from predatory priests. The archdiocese deferred comment to the Vatican. 
 
Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer for many sex abuse victims, told The Associated Press that now is the time for Law to return to Boston to apologize for his "immoral actions," but acknowledged that was "highly unlikely."

Terence McKiernan of bishopaccountability.org told WGBH News, “It’s good to see the back of Cardinal Law and I think that anyone experienced his time in Boston and has seen how he’s been honored in Rome despite what he did here is happy to see him go.”
 
McKiernan read significance into the way the Vatican announced the news.

“I think it’s also important that he was removed unceremoniously — that his replacement was announced and no great trouble was taken in announcing the fact that he was no longer going to be the archpriest,” he said. “All of that indicates to me that Pope Benedict and his people are really deciding that this is the end of the Cardinal Law era, that Cardinal Law is no longer going to be a patronage boss in the Catholic Church.”
 
Material fromThe Associated Press was used in this report.

At a protest in Rome, Bill Gately, center, of Boston, holds a photo of himself at the age he says he was when he was abused by a member of the clergy. The preist he accused may be on a list of 159 names released by the Boston Archdiocese on Thursday. (AP)

Each of the 159 names published Thursday has been made public previously, though not necessarily by the archdiocese. They include still-active priests who were cleared of abuse after being publicly accused.
 
O'Malley acknowledged that some people may have wanted him to "go further" and release more names. But he cited concerns about due process and the damage to the reputations of priests - alive and dead - when accused of decades-old crimes that are difficult to verify.
 
"In the present environment, a priest who is accused of sexually abusing a minor may never be able to fully restore his reputation, even if cleared after civil or canonical proceedings," O'Malley said. "Reputational concerns also become acute in cases concerning deceased priests, who are often accused years after their death with no opportunity to address the accusations against them."
 
O'Malley said the archdiocese's effort to compile a single list of accused clerics was another step toward taking responsibility for clergy sex abuse and preventing a repeat of a scandal that broke in 2002 in Boston and spread across the country. The scandal revealed church leaders had shifted pedophile priests between parishes while hiding their crimes.
 
"I carry with me every day the pain of the church's failures," O'Malley said.
 
Several other dioceses have released similar lists, and Boston has been pressured to publish its own since O'Malley said in a 2009 letter that the archdiocese was considering improving its policy on releasing information about accused clergy.
 
In recent months, prominent victims' attorney Mitchell Garabedian, and the watchdog group BishopAccountability.org have independently released new names of accused priests, while expressing doubts the archdiocese ever intended to be truly forthcoming. BishopAccountability.org has estimated at least 350 religious workers in Boston have a substantive abuse accusations against them, based on the percentages from other dioceses that have disclosed their number of accused.
 
Advocates for abuse victims say such public lists ensure that credibly accused priests don't remain in active ministry. They also say that publicly releasing the names is validation, consolation and a crucial step toward healing for victims. They accused O'Malley of inflicting more suffering on victims as months passed with no list.
 
The Rev. Richard Erikson, outgoing vicar general at the Boston Archdiocese, said the time it took to release the list reflect exhaustive efforts to ensure it was complete, fair and accurate.
 
"These are very sensitive, emotional, painful realities and the cardinal has done a great job of listening to the various perspectives," he said. "The amount of man hours and woman hours that have gone into the project have been extraordinary."
 
In his letter, O'Malley said of the 91 names he didn't release, 62 were deceased clergy. Twenty-two were priests - nine of them now in active ministry - who faced an abuse accusation that was never substantiated or made public. Four were priests or ex-priests under preliminary investigation. Three were defrocked or dismissed by the time they faced accusations that haven't been made public.
 
O'Malley said the decision to withhold certain deceased priests' names doesn't mean the claims against them aren't credible. He said in many cases, the accusers were compensated or provided with counseling.
 
He said he didn't release names of accused religious order priests or priests from other dioceses "because the Boston Archdiocese does not determine the outcome in such cases; that is the responsibility of the priest's order or diocese."
 
But BishopAccountability has said religious orders are secretive, and called it a matter of "common decency" for O'Malley to release the names, since no one else will.
 
In his letter, O'Malley also gave statistics he said showed the church was making progress protecting children through steps such as immediately reporting any allegation to law enforcement and training children and staff to spot abusers. He said of the 198 clergy sex abuse allegations reported to the archdiocese in the last six years, 4 percent involve incidents that allegedly happened since 1990. The percentage is consistent with prior analysis that showed the most of the abuse occurred between 1965 and 1982, he said.
 
O'Malley said he wasn't trying to downplay the "heinous" abuse or the church's mistakes, but rather "give the faithful some confidence that the policies adopted by the church to protect its children starting in the early 1990s have been effective."

The decorated exterior of the Islamic Society of Boston. (jooleeah_stahkey via Flickr)

The report found that ten years after the 9/11 terror attacks, the vast majority of Muslim Americans are loyal to the United States and are more optimistic than other major faith group about their future.
 
Ali Asani, a professor of Islamic Religion and Culture at Harvard University, said while the results are heartening, there is still a larger construct of Muslim Americans as “the other” that needs to be broken down.
 
"People are afraid of what they don't know. When somebody sees a woman in a hijab, and they assume she's fundamentalist, but if they had a conversation with her, they get a very different impression," Asani said.

"We need to be thinking about what it means to be American in a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-racial society. We can all be different, but we can also be united in our differences, in our loyalty to the country”

The poll included interviews from about 2,500 people, a fifth of whom identified themselves as Muslim. 

The Reverend Peter Gomes died Monday at the age of 68, after a more-than 40-year ministry at Harvard University.

Gomes' longtime friend, writer and columnist Mike Barnicle, met Gomes because the two would regularly spend early mornings at the same restaurant. "He was an education to sit with, next to, to listen to, a sheer education. Not just in terms of his moral values but his view on the world,” Barnicle told WGBH's Emily Rooney on Tuesday.

A black, openly gay minister, Gomes was a decided rarity. He came out about his sexuality in 1991. 

He was also politically conservative for most of his career, although he changed his political affiliation to Democrat to vote for Gov. Deval Patrick in 2006.

Barnicle said Gomes learned from his own experience being different, and set out to help others with theirs. 

"He was was an expert at honing in on the demonization of people," Barnicle said. "He could see people and institutions being demonized well before it would become apparent tthat they were being demonized."

That, Barnicle said, gave Gomes a sense of fairness that underguarded his political and religious beliefs.

“It’s not fair to go after people because of who they are, or because of their sexual orientation, or because of their color, or because of their income, or because of their zip code. That’s who he was, he was an expert in what’s fair,” Barnicle said.

Gomes was known for his soaring, intricate speaking style. "I like playing with words and structure," he said once, "Marching up to an idea, saluting, backing off, making a feint and then turning around."

"His sermons were actually high theater in my mind," Barnicle remembered.

Gomes did not leave behind a memoir; He said he'd start work on it when he retired, at 70. It's a shame, Barnicle said. "We need more of him than just a memoir, we need people like him every day."

Gomes reflected on his life's work — and his death — on Charlie Rose's talk show in 2007. 

I even have the tombstone the verse on my stone is to be from 2 Timothy. “Study to show thyself approved unto God a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.” That’s what I try to do, that’s what I want people to thnk of me after I’m gone. When I was young, we all had to memorize vast quantities of scripture and I remember that passage from Timothy I thought, 'Hey that’s not a bad life’s work.' And in a way I’ve tried to live into it. So my epitaph is not going to be new to me, it’s the path I have followed in my ministry and my life.

Prof. Daniel Dennett at a conference in Gemany in 2008. (Wikimedia Commons)

“They’re good people who good stuck in this awful trap,” Dennett said. “We found some that were really suffering.”
 
Dennett anonymously interviewed five active pastors who said they no longer believed the tenets of their church, but he thinks there are many more pastors like them. Now, he’s gearing up for a second, larger study on the issue.
 
For the most part, Dennett found, the non-believing ministers he knew simply didn’t learn early enough that something didn’t feel right about their work. “They’re basically very good people. They went into the clergy because, given their background, how they were raised, they wanted to do good in this world and this is the best path they could see,” Dennett told WGBH’s Emily Rooney. “Their first mistake is they should have gotten out in seminary, when the getting was good. Their second mistake was staying around and thinking, well, I’ll live with this, I can deal with this.”
 
Those priests, he said, are forced into moral, social and professional isolation. “They have to teach the doctrines of the church, and if you no longer believe them, you’ve got a moral problem.”
 
One minister still hasn’t told his very devout wife because he worries she would be devastated by the news. “These people lead very lonely lives, in some cases,” Dennett said.
 
Dennett wants to learn more about how these priests handle their situation. He knows some work out their own private understanding with a God. “They say, ‘I am not an atheist, I believe in God, but I believe in the God that I believe in.’ That’s very much a private God because they can’t talk about that God from the pulpit.”
 
He also wants to learn more about the scale of the issue. “We know there’s Catholics, we know there’s Mormons, we know there’s Jewish rabbis,” Dennett said, “but we have no idea yet how big this phenomenon is.”
 
But an aspect of his first study suggests it’s not uncommon. “Nobody says well, it’s a tiny tiny fraction,” Dennett said. ““Nobody denies that this phenomenon exists, not a single one of our critics has suggested that we are making this up.”
 
 Likewise, he said, no one criticized Dennett and his team for looking into the issue.  They were critical of people admitting it. “It was like magicians getting angry with magicians for telling how a trick is done,” Dennett said.
]]> Fri, 10 Dec 2010 14:49 PM +0000 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/The-Mosque-Next-Door-1244 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/The-Mosque-Next-Door-1244
BOSTON — Nine years after the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington, hostility toward Islam seems to be actually growing in the U.S. The government reports hate crimes against Muslims are up and a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that two-thirds of Americans oppose building an Islamic center near ground zero in lower Manhattan. On the eve of the ninth anniversary of Sept. 11, WGBH reporter Phillip Martin reports on a similar controversy over the building of a mosque in Boston. ]]> Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:01 PM +0000 http://www.wgbh.org//articles/A-Misuse-Of-Freedom-466 Last week, three iconic American freedoms — freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press — collided in a nightmare scenario that could well still lead to the loss of American lives.