BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Deprived of its usual tourist influx by the pandemic, Bethlehem will celebrate a quiet Christmas this year that is less about commerce and more about religion, says its parish priest.

In a normal year, hundreds of thousands of visitors flood the Palestinian city in the West Bank, located less than 10 kilometers (six miles) from Jerusalem.

Those seeking a quiet moment of contemplation in the Church of the Nativity — the site of Christ’s birth, according to tradition — generally have to use their elbows to maneuver through the crowds.

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While the lack of visitors has been devastating for business owners, it has also offered a rare opportunity for solemn worship, said Father Rami Asakrieh, Bethlehem’s parish priest.

“Sometimes there are more than half [a] million people who arrive in this period to visit the Nativity Church,” he said.

But with coronavirus restrictions making travel to Bethlehem all but impossible for foreign worshippers, the Church of the Nativity has been eerily calm in the days before Christmas.

Under the Grotto of the Nativity, the recitation of Armenian prayers by four monks echoed clearly through the basilica deserted of its typical throngs of visitors.

The Christmas Eve mass on Thursday, regarded as the most important annual event at the church, will be closed to the public.

‘Heartache and pain’

Not even representatives of the Palestinian Authority will come to Bethlehem on December 24, Asakrieh said.

“It has never happened before,” he explained, citing only past restrictions imposed during the First and Second Intifadas.

“I think that this Christmas is different because people are not busy with the external manifestations of the feast,” the priest said, referring to the gift-buying that has, for many, become synonymous with Christmas.

“Now [people] have the time, and they are obligated, to concentrate on the essential… the theological spirit of Christmas,” he said. “Less business, but more religion.”

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    Police wearing face masks stand guard as the faithful take part in Sunday mass in the Church of the Nativity, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, on December 20, 2020 after it was re-opened for prayers following strict COVID-19 restrictions. (HAZEM BADER / AFP)
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In the lead-up to Christmas, the small Chapel of Saint Catherine, adjacent to the Church of the Nativity, was opened to the local Palestinian population.

Many turned out in their Sunday best, including Nicolas al-Zoghbi who said that this year the joyfulness of Christmas had been replaced by “depression.”

He recounted the “heartache and pain” felt by those like his son who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

“We hope the Lord will destroy corona, just get rid of it so we can return to our previous life,” said Zoghbi, who is in his 70s.

Bethlehem’s economy is driven partly by an annual Christmas rush that benefits small shops selling postcards, rosaries carved from olive tree wood and other Nativity-related souvenirs.

No Gazan visitors

Sitting outside his Bethlehem store on a plastic chair, Georges Baaboul said he “hadn’t sold anything for nine months.”

“In the last few days I sold about 170 shekels ($52)” worth of goods, he said.

Sixty-year-old trader Saif said he had never seen things this bad through his 60 years in business, including during the intifadas.

This year, West Bank tradesmen cannot even count on Christian customers from Gaza, the coastal Palestinian enclave controlled by the Hamas terrorist group, that is under Israeli and Egyptian blockade to prevent the import of weaponry.

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    Children walk in front of shuttered shops in a street decorated ahead of Christmas, in the West Bank city of Bethlehem, on December 19, 2020. (HAZEM BADER / AFP)
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Gazan Christians generally receive special permission to cross to Bethlehem for Christmas, but this year those permits have not been issued, said Father Youssef Asaad of the Latin monastery in Gaza.

Hamas has imposed strict measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus in the strip, including the closure of mosques and the Latin Church, but masses are being broadcast online.

Christian Gaza resident Issa Abou George said he could not buy gifts for his children this year, but will participate in services online.

“My family and I will pray to God for the pandemic to end as well as for peace, in the Holy Land and the world,” he told AFP.

WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, UNITED STATES, December 23, 2020 /EINPresswire.com/ — Criminal Legal System – The Justice Roundtable coalition has submitted a blueprint for criminal legal system reforms to the Biden transition team in a document titled Transformative Justice Recommendations for the New Administration and the 117th Congress. The report details comprehensive and broad reform recommendations for the federal system providing a vision of transformative justice for the incoming President and the 117th Congress.

The Justice Roundtable is the nation’s oldest and largest bipartisan coalition advocating for federal criminal legal system reform. With over 100 participating organizations, the Justice Roundtable advocates for reforms across a broad range of issues including sentencing reform, reentry, commutations and pardons, human rights, youth justice, and law enforcement.

Following George Floyd’s murder and an increased awareness in the public about police abuses, the document includes recommendations for reforms covering many aspects of the criminal justice system.

The Transformative Justice Recommendations report argues that full system transformation begins with law enforcement accountability – the subject of unprecedented protests – and continues by correcting the harms of pretrial detention, the punitiveness of drug policy, the excesses of sentencing, the barriers to reentry, and the under-use of clemency.

The U.S. incarceration system has functioned as a barrier to justice and equity for too long. The upheaval caused by overly aggressive policing on top of an unprecedented health pandemic has intensified the need for meaningful changes to transform the criminal legal system into one that truly serves the interests of justice and human rights.

The Justice Roundtable recommendations say: “In their totality, the recommendations in this report are designed to help the President and Congress steer the nation into a new decade of healing and hope… With the right intention and tools, the country can heal its divides.”

Among the many groups supporting the report’s recommendations are the National Council of Churches, the Church of Scientology National Affairs Office, Families Against Mandatory Minimum, Human Rights Watch, Jewish Council for Public Affairs, Friends Committee on National Legislation, Vera Institute of Justice, The Sentencing Project, NAACP, and ACLU.

The Church of Scientology has a history of working for a fair and just criminal system, one that emphasizes rehabilitation over punishment. A long-time participant in the Justice Roundtable, the Church’s National Affairs Office joined with other prominent national organizations to endorse the Justice Roundtable Transformative Justice document.

John Stanard, the Church’s Social Betterment Policy Director, commented, “In our religious tradition people are considered basically good and capable of rehabilitation and real change. We have always supported reforms designed to bring about a more just and less punitive criminal legal system. For example, we supported federal legislative initiatives including the First Step Act of 2018 and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020.

“The start of a new administration and Congress provides an opportunity to bring about meaningful reforms to many aspects of the system as outlined in the Justice Roundtable Transformative Justice recommendations. We look forward to working with our allies and partners to help bring about these reforms.”

The Church of Scientology National Affairs Office has hosted many meetings and events to promote criminal legal system reforms, including awarding Cynthia Roseberry, currently deputy director of justice policy at the ACLU, a humanitarian award for her earlier work on clemency petitions. The United States leads the world in the number of incarcerated persons per capita; a disproportionate number of whom are black and brown men and women. Many of these were jailed for non-violent drug-related offenses. The Church has consistently held events and briefings to promote a more equitable criminal legal system.

John Stanard
Church of Scientology National Affairs Office
+1 202-667-6404

2020 has been an odd and unsettling year — perhaps the oddest and most unsettling in our lifetimes.

I am not one to find silver linings in clouds, but here is one that I definitely succeeded in finding: my increased solitude gave me more time and mental space for reading.

Here, then, is my list of my favorite books of 2020, arranged alphabetically according to author. These are the books that kept me sane, inspired me, challenged me, and pushed me beyond an already damaged comfort zone. I believe that they should be on everyone’s reading list.

Europe Against the Jews: 1880-1945, by Gotz Aly. “Of making books, there is no end,” said the author of Ecclesiastes. That is certainly true about books about the Shoah. Aly does a wonderful job of presenting “a pre-history of the genocide — understanding how, why, and in what forms anti-Semitism increased in post-1880 Europe.” In particular, pay attention to his assessment of the rise of European nationalisms. Chilling.

I Want You To Know We’re Still Here: A Post-Holocaust Memoir, by Esther Safran Foer. A gripping memoir, by the communal activist and mother of very smart sons (e.g., Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated), about how she made a pilgrimage back to her family’s disappeared shtetl to find the family that hid hers during World War Two.

The Wondering Jew: Israel and the Search for Jewish Identity, by Micah Goodman, trans. Eylon Levy. One of Israel’s top public intellectuals digs down deeply to uncover the various nuances of Israeli religiosity and secularism. They are not all created equal, he discovers — which not only defines the richness of Israeli Jewish life, but has overwhelming potential for our North American religious lives as well.

Hate Monger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, by Jean Guerrero. How the __________ did a kid, raised and educated in Reform synagogues in California, turn into a man who was the architect of the current administration’s malign agenda? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that he broke off childhood friendships when he discovered that those friends were Latinos. Or, is it because he would throw his tray on the floor of his college dining hall, because there were “people there paid to clean it up.” I will so not miss Stephen Miller.

Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures, by Moshe Koppel. An elegant description of the religious mindset, as contrasted to the dominant secular mindset of our age. Koppel oversimplifies in some cases, and over-romanticizes in others. But, by and large, this defense of tradition has something to teach us.

The New Jewish Canon: Ideas and Debates 1980-2015, by Yehuda Kurtzer and Claire E. Sufrin. What defines a canon — of books and ideas? What writings are essential to the Jewish consciousness in modernity? The authors (Yehuda is the president of Shalom Hartman Institute in North America, and a cherished teacher) do an excellent job of navigating through the words that shaped the way Jews think in modernity. An essential book.

The Virus in the Age of Madness, by Bernard-Henri Levy. I never fail to find something interesting in Levy’s writings, and this book does not disappoint. The French thinker takes us on a historical, literary and philosophical journey through the human experience of plague, and now, pandemic. Check out his assessment of his countryman, Levinas, and how the experience of masking ourselves contradicts some of the most basic aspects of human need.

God for Grownups: A Jewish Perspective, by Simeon J. Maslin. Full disclosure: Shim is one of my heroes — a mentor who has been a close personal friend for more than four decades. One of America’s most distinguished rabbis, his mind is ever fertile at the age of 89, as he brings us into a conversation about how rational people can believe in God, and can access God-talk. There is much to learn and cherish in his words, especially two recent sermons given at Boudoin College. Rabbi Maslin is devoted to truth — an idea that dare not become passe.

Dangerous Religious Ideas: The Deep Roots of Self-Critical Faith in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam by Rachel S. Mikva. Rabbi Mikva, a skilled spiritual leader and perceptive academic (and a good friend) realizes that there are certain aspects of the monotheistic traditions that are, frankly, dangerous. Like fire, religion can warm, or destroy. She calls on faith traditions to name their own “design flaws,” and has some ideas on how religionists can heal them.

This Precious Life: Encountering the Divine with Poetry and Prayer, by Alden Solovy. Alden has become one of Reform Judaism’s master poet-liturgists, and his most recent volume, published by the Central Conference of American Rabbis, shows why. There are not many contemporary liturgical poets who will have an audience two centuries from now. I am betting, however, on Alden’s shelf life. A beautiful collection from a beautiful soul.

Thinking About God: Jewish Views, by Rabbi Kari S. Tuling. A talented Reform rabbi has produced a comprehensive outline of contemporary theology — complete with illustrative texts. Just this week, I recommended it to two people who told me that they could not agree with Judaism’s “idea” of God. “Make that ideas,” I said — and read her book.”

Caste: The Lies that Divide Us, by Isabel Wilkerson. Forget the fact that, by sheer dint of alphabetical order, this book appears last on the list. It should be first on the list.

This book is for everyone who demurs when they hear Black Lives Matter: “Don’t all lives matter?” Well, yes — but as Wilkerson shows, for the vast majority of American history, those lives simply didn’t matter.

The vast majority of African-Americans who lived in this land in the first 246 years of what is now the United States lived under the terror of people who had absolute power over their bodies and their very breath, subject to people who faced no sanction for any atrocity they could conjure….

Looking beneath the history of one’s country is like learning that alcoholism or depression runs in one’s family. You don’t ball up in a corner with guilt or shame at these discoveries. In fact, you do the opposite. You educate yourself. Then you take precautions to protect yourself and succeeding generations and work to ensure that these things, whatever they are, don’t happen again.

There you have it — a sufficient number of volumes to fill up your night stand, or coffee table, or stack in the middle of the floor, or on your Kindle.

And, to all my Christian readers, as I am fond of saying to my two dear friends who are Episcopal priests:

“May Christ be born for you this year.”

Which is to say: May hope rise up from the dust.

Stay healthy — and thanks, profoundly, for being my readers.