Bourekas: Savory Cheese-Filled Pastries
These cheese-filled pastries are relatively easy to make — if you purchase the dough to make your feta-filled bourekas. Flaky filo dough makes the best bourekas, but you can also use puff pastry and pie [more…]
Psalms: The Heart of Prayer
The Book of Psalms is the unique book in the Bible. Whereas most books provide historical narrative, prophetic teaching, or doctrinal prose, Psalms is a collection of 150 songs and prayers and nothing [more…]
Falafel (Fried Chickpea Nuggets)
Serve spicy falafel in a sandwich, as an appetizer, or as a snack. Falafel is made of soaked dried chickpeas, not cooked or canned ones. When the falafel balls are deep fried, the chickpeas become cooked [more…]
The Torah's Take on Divorce: Fix It or Get Out!
While some religious traditions forbid divorce, Judaism does not. In the Torah, divorce is viewed as a common and acceptable occurrence (Deuteronomy 24:1–4), and although the Talmud teaches that the [more…]
Ad-dress-ing by the Jewish Calendar
Of course, when you buy clothes, you want to dress for the season. Whether you are wearing Begadim Yomiyim(beh-gah-deem yoh-mee-eem; casual clothes), Levush Chagigi [more…]
Figuring Out How to Breathe Meditatively
Traditional cultures identified the breath with the life force that animates all things. For example, the Latin word spiritus (the root of both "spirited [more…]
Keeping Silent or Telling the World: The Wiccan Dilemma
Some people cautiously hide their beliefs and never tell others about their involvement in Wicca — not their families, not their friends, and certainly not their employers. They hide their altars, keep [more…]
Practicing Spirituality for Personal Growth
Two important goals of becoming more spiritual are growth and evolution. Yet with or without any specific spiritual efforts, human beings continue to evolve and grow. This drive is programmed into the [more…]
Biblical Viewpoints on Women
The Bible is primarily a religious book about the covenant between the creator and creation, between God and humankind. But it's important to remember that the people described in the Bible and the human [more…]
Retracing Christianity as a Historical Faith
The Christian faith isn't an obscure belief system with Jesus as a mythological figure. Rather, Christianity is based entirely on real space-time history; in the words of Francis Schaeffer, its central [more…]
Realizing the Four Stages on the Path to Nirvana
As he guided his followers over the 45 years that he taught, Buddha recognized four distinct levels or stages of realization, each one marked by a deep and unmistakable experience of selflessness followed [more…]
Examining Opus Dei: Secret Societies and The Da Vinci Code
The controversial Catholic sect called Opus Dei is the only secret society mentioned in The Da Vinci Code that may well have some of the smear coming. This is not to say that Silas, the mad and murderous [more…]
Using the Qur'an in Daily Life
Many Muslim children learn to read through the study of the Qur'an. When they grow up, they hear Qur'anic recitations over radio and television. Wherever they look, they see verses from the Qur'an written [more…]
Cultivating Spiritual Virtues
Your spiritual growth becomes visible to yourself and others through how you think and act in each moment of your life. Although it is helpful to put efforts into watching and uplifting your outer actions [more…]
Jewish Pastries
Pastry appetizers are special treats for Jewish holidays and other festive occasions. These Jewish pastries can be either sweet or savory, depending on the pastry filling. Each Jewish community has developed [more…]
Cheese Blintzes
Blintz wrappers resemble crepes or very thin pancakes. Enjoy these cheese blintzes with their time-honored partners: sour cream and fruit preserves. Or top your cheese blintzes with a fresh blueberry or [more…]
Discovering What Freemasonry Is
Freemasons don't always do such a good job of defining just what they are or what they do, but that's often because the answers non-Masons are looking for are really too complicated. [more…]
Historical Controversies about Jesus
Anyone famous is bound to attract a lot of attention. Stretch that attention out for 2,000 years, and you have that much more room for doctrines to develop and controversies to get cooked up. Take a look [more…]
Sensing God in Catholicism
The five senses — sight, touch, smell, hearing, and taste — are all used in Catholic worship. Catholics believe that the internal action of divine grace entering the human soul can't be seen, felt, smelled [more…]
Garlic Roast Lamb with Potatoes
On some tables, roast lamb is the entree of choice for Passover. For this recipe, the lamb is flavored with garlic. Garlic flavors the potatoes, too. To simplify the preparation, buy a boneless roast. [more…]
Mary Magdalene: History's Holy Harlot
Christian tradition and art depict Mary Magdalene as a prostitute who repented of her evil ways and followed Jesus. That's why Christian outreach services for unwed mothers and prostitutes are often named [more…]
Religion and the Search for Answers
The world has mysteries that you confront and problems that you try to solve. However, mysteries are different from problems. The questions, "Does life have meaning? [more…]
Looking for Witches and Wiccans in History
Did Wicca and Witchcraft exist throughout history? People in many fields of study have been debating this issue for decades. No definitive answers have surfaced. Wiccans and others usually believe and [more…]
Family Rules, According to the Torah
It isn't surprising that the Torah places great value on the family unit; after all, the Jewish people as a whole are considered to be a family, as implied by the phrase [more…]
Looking at Judaism as a Daily Practice
Judaism, a religion that focuses far more on deeds than on beliefs, is a practice, too. Because Judaism is a set of practices, it's called a Way of Life. These practices, particularly when they are vehicles [more…]
