by | Oct 17, 2023 4:02 pm | Comments (2)
Paul Bass Photo
Dada Shambhushivananda at WNHH FM.
Dada Shambhushivananda looks at the wars and ecological disasters ravaging the planet, and sees a need for human beings to change our way of thinking.
by | Oct 9, 2023 6:48 pm | Comments (157)
Thomas Breen photos
Pro-Israel protester Shmully Hecht praying in the face of pro-Palestine protesters Chris Garaffa and Kevin Menescardi.
Police bring out the barricades to separate the two sides.
Lynn Rabinovici Park and Karen Rabinovici: "All we want to do is live, and live in peace;" Faisal Saleh: "I've seen a lot of bodies" in images and videos coming out of Gaza.
Half an hour into a tense and loud and flag-filled standoff between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters on the front steps of City Hall, city police brought in barricades to physically separate the two sides.
Those barriers successfully kept the peace — even as they kept apart Lynn Rabinovici Park and Karen Rabinovici, two sisters worried sick about the safety of their father’s relatives in Jerusalem, and Faisal Saleh, a Palestinian museum director worried sick about the safety of artists he works with across Gaza.
Continue reading ‘Israel-Gaza War's Grief Spills Onto Church St.’
by | Oct 6, 2023 4:13 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Rabbi James Ponet in his sukkah on the last night of the holiday.
In these fragile times, it is possible to find celebration and even the joy of a little truth lurking in the midst of the most temporary and vulnerable circumstances.
So I was reminded Thursday night when I hung out in Rabbi James Ponet’s sukkah.
Continue reading ‘Transience Meets Transcendence On Everit Street’
by | Sep 20, 2023 12:09 pm | Comments (5)
Allan Appel photo
Pastor Harold Brooks (right) and Rosie Hoke.
To hear Rosie Hoke tell it, Beulah Heights First Pentecostal Church — a century old this year — was born with a miracle.
by | Aug 15, 2023 10:02 am | Comments (0)
Maya McFadden photo
Iglesia Cristiana Estrella Resplandeciente de Jacob camp-goers practice gravity testing science project.
A Fair Haven church preached to its community youth that “when things get dark,” “when people don’t get along,” “when good things happen,” and when sad things happen,” they should always “shine Jesus’ light.”
Continue reading ‘Church Campers Travel Thru The Bible, & Into Outer Space’
by | Aug 7, 2023 1:57 pm | Comments (2)
Jerusalem Peace Builders students Malak Swidan, Tavor Hazani, Hafeed Khalaily
If you pack survival kits for the homeless, or hammer in some boards on an affordable house in-the-making, or set upright fallen tombstones in an old Jewish cemetery that needs some love, you’ll be powerfully transformed — and that act of peace-making might just change the world.
Continue reading ‘Service & "Sacred Conversations" Fill The Green’
by | Jun 27, 2023 9:37 am | Comments (2)
Thomas Breen file photo
The Edgewood yeshiva at 765 Elm St.
Eliyahu Mirlis is one step closer to gaining control of the former yeshiva building at Elm and Norton Streets — now that a state court has rejected a foreclosure-case appeal pursued by a nonprofit controlled by the man convicted of raping him, imprisoned Rabbi Daniel Greer.
Continue reading ‘Appeals Court Upholds Yeshiva Foreclosure’
by | Jun 9, 2023 9:09 am | Comments (0)
Erin Shaw
Protect Us From Ruin.
Erin Shaw’s Protect Us From Ruin shows photographs of three shadowed women confined within wooden panels like church windows. Each panel is wrapped with colorful bands that both imprison and protect the figures.
That dichotomy, between protection and captivity, represents the friction between Shaw’s identity as a member of the Chickasaw Nation and a Christian. “As long as I can remember, I’ve had one foot in two worlds,” she explains in an accompanying statement. “It’s been the work of my life to live in that tension as best I can, understand and reconcile it.”
Continue reading ‘“Altars of Reconciliation” Unites Faith and Culture’
by | Jun 1, 2023 12:14 pm | Comments (12)
Paul Bass file photo
Abdussabur with Beaver Hills neighbor Rivka Fenton in November 2020 acting in response to a string of attacks on Jews in Beaver Hills.
I applaud President Biden and Vice President Harris on making an important first step to addressing the crisis of growing antisemitism our nation is facing. As someone who has spent weekends patrolling to keep my friends and neighbors safe while they worshiped, I appreciate President Biden for saying what has been evident for years in America: this is a severe problem, and it’s getting worse.
by | May 22, 2023 11:32 am | Comments (0)
Abiba Biao photo
Albertus Magnus College President Marc Camille (right) at Sunday's commencement.
Dressed in caps and gowns and with new diplomas in hand, 440 Albertus Magnus students graduated from the Prospect Hill Catholic college on Sunday — marking the school’s 100th such ceremony.
Continue reading ‘Albertus Magnus Celebrates 100th Commencement’
by | May 19, 2023 8:39 am | Comments (0)
Contributed Photo
David Sasso, at far left, recording the new album with Jacob's Ladder.
Hunkered at home with his Martin D28 guitar one Blursday evening during the lockdown depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, David Sasso heard familiar melodies come out a new way.
Fast forward to May 2023: Sasso returned home to debut a bluegrass take on a traditional Jewish prayer service, with an album of said music about to drop.
Continue reading ‘Ghost Of Bill Monroe Welcomes The Sabbath Queen’
by | May 1, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photo
Bill O'Brien, Sister Cathy Phillips, Monsignor Gerard Schmitz at WNHH FM.
An immigration story is coming full circle in New Haven’s Catholic elementary school classrooms.
Continue reading ‘K-8 Catholic Education Evolves With Changing Times’
by | Apr 19, 2023 9:00 am | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photo
It was a workday like all others inside the York-Chapel Garage attendant’s booth for Hekmat Musa. It was. And it wasn’t.
by | Apr 17, 2023 4:17 pm | Comments (5)
Yash Roy photo
Abdussabur (right) talking with Sandra Beamon on the campaign trail.
With his mom, sister, and wife by his side, Shafiq Abdussabur knocked on Newhallville doors to bring his mayoral-challenger message directly to the neighborhood where he used to work as police district manager — even as he continued to fast for the holy month of Ramadan.
Continue reading ‘Candidate Doesn't Break Amid Ramadan Fast’
by | Apr 13, 2023 3:10 pm | Comments (4)
Allan Appel photo
Albertus students, faculty planting pillars of faith Thursday.
A day of working in a garden — weeding and putting in kale and asparagus and bounty that will all be given away to food pantries and nonprofits — doesn’t usually begin with an assembly of 120 people and a reading from Paul’s letter to the Philippians in the New Testament, followed by a prayer.
It does, however, if the green acre in question happens to be the garden at Albertus Magnus, a Catholic college in the Dominican tradition, where service and community are pillars of the faith of equal importance with the two others, study and prayer.
Continue reading ‘On Service Day, Albertus Tends Its Garden’
by | Apr 5, 2023 4:00 pm | Comments (2)
Here’s a peek of how Passover, the spring festival of letting it all go and coming back again, otherwise known as the exodus from Egypt, slipped onto green expanses of Yale University.
It’s in the words of Ari Berke, a student in Yale College’s Daily Themes course where I am doing some tutoring/teaching this semester. I couldn’t resist.
Continue reading ‘A Page, & A Poem, From the Independent's Passover Philes’
by | Apr 3, 2023 9:05 am | Comments (16)
Allan Appel photos
Rev. Barber: “God’s good news must be good news for the poor or it ain’t good news."
At Sunday's Dixwell UCC service.
There’s a real danger that Ancient Rome — with its celebration of opulence and derision of the poor — still lives, and another name for it is America.
That was one of the sobering observations offered at a Palm Sunday service in Dixwell by nationally renowned preacher and poor people’s advocate Dr. William Barber.
Continue reading ‘Poor People's Champ Delivers Social Gospel’
by | Mar 17, 2023 3:08 pm | Comments (14)
Thomas Breen photos
Neighbor Shawn Nesmith outside 949 Whalley: "Tell them to get rid of that blighted property."
Still fenced off. Still tax-exempt.
A former Westville department store remains fenced off, empty and rundown — 20 years after the Church of Scientology bought the property, five years after the church last won permission to convert the site into a religious hub, and one year after a city board found that the long-vacant building should stay off the tax rolls.
Continue reading ‘20 Years On, Scientology Site Still Stalled’
by | Feb 27, 2023 10:45 am | Comments (0)
Paul Zalonski and Jayne Ryzewski on Sunday.
Even if the war in Ukraine ends tomorrow, which it will not, there will remain an urgent need to rebuild the Eastern European country’s Russian-destroyed economy and infrastructure and to repatriate its citizens.
Continue reading ‘Local Ukrainian Americans Eye New Humanitarian Aid Nonprofit’
by | Feb 22, 2023 4:25 pm | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photo
Mayra Soto had time to pray and hear the gospel when she went to receive her forehead ashes Wednesday.
Continue reading ‘Word On The Street: Ashes Mark New Life Chapter’
by | Feb 17, 2023 1:46 pm | Comments (13)
The 6 Black Catholics under consideration for sainthood.
Featured speaker and guide Shingai Chigwedere.
There are 11 white Americans — and 0 African Americans — among the 10,000 saints recognized by the Roman Catholic Church.
“Zero Black American saints. Zero Americans-of-African-descent saints,” Shingai Chigwedere told a 20-person audience at Albertus Magnus College. “However you want to word it, there are zero.”
That number may soon change, as the local Catholic university shined a light on the six Black Catholics currently being considered for sainthood.
Continue reading ‘Albertus Charts Path To Black Catholic Sainthood’
by | Feb 10, 2023 4:33 pm | Comments (1)
Hulya Elevli: “I’m not changing my clothes because I’m thinking, 'They can’t change theirs over there.'”
Some of the donations ready to be boxed and shipped to Turkey.
Hulya Elevli has spent every day this week sorting through donations at the Diyanet Mosque in Quinnipiac Meadows while coordinating with earthquake refugees to help them find shelter in a house she owns in northern Turkey.
On Friday morning, the end of a restless week and the mere beginning of a coordinated response to the magnitude 7.8 earthquake that ravaged parts of Turkey and Syria and that has caused at least 23,000 fatalities, Elevli joined members of the mosque at 531 Middletown Ave. and U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal to speak up about the need that exists abroad and offer guidance to locals about how to help.
Continue reading ‘Donations, Prayers Pour Into Turkish Mosque’
by | Jan 30, 2023 12:34 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel photo
Mark Oppenheimer with his high school teacher and dean Alice Baxter on Sunday.
How about a written application — as opposed to an old boys’ nod from the rowing coach — and in-person interviews to detect your excessively Lower East Side manners?
How about a questionnaire requiring you to indicate, for example, what business your family is in? And written recommendations and aptitude tests?
Continue reading ‘Podcaster Gatecrashes Ivy League Anti-Semitism’
by | Jan 27, 2023 2:28 pm | Comments (5)
At Thursday's First Calvary Baptist Church-hosted conversation. Clockwise from top left: Shepard St. resident Addie Kimbrough, top state's attorney Pat Griffin, youth anti-violence organizer Remidy Shareef, Rev. John Lewis.
Before December, “I had never seen anyone die,” Addie Kimbrough told a room full of police, prosecutors, clergy, and politicians. Until, on the block where she founded a community garden, she witnessed a young man lying on the ground.
He was the same age as her grandson: 24. “I saw them trying to revive him,” Kimbrough said later. That moment “touched me.”
She found herself taking the mic at a community meeting calling for change and volunteering to help. “I don’t want this to happen to any of our kids.”
Continue reading ‘City, State, Clergy Gather Against Gun Violence’
by | Jan 16, 2023 6:30 pm | Comments (12)
Nora Grace-Flood photo
Rev. Eldren Morrison: “The church has lost its activist spirit."
A former New Haven-based faith leader returned to Dixwell Avenue Monday to lift up Martin Luther King Jr.‘s legacy of church-led progressive political action.
Continue reading ‘Rev. Morrison Returns To Preach "Good Trouble"’