As Long as the Candle Burns

“Then ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain from Egypt.” — Genesis 42:3

This Torah portion for this week, Mikeitz, is from Genesis 41:1–44:17 and 1 Kings 3:1–4:1.

By the time Jacob’s sons go down to Egypt because of the famine in Canaan, Joseph has been gone for 22 years. So the Sages find it strange that in the Scriptures, the ten brothers are referred to as “Joseph’s brothers.” They haven’t had anything to do with Joseph for over two decades and they certainly hadn’t acted much like brothers the last time they saw Joseph! Wouldn’t "Jacob’s sons" have been a more appropriate term?

The Sages explain that they are called “Joseph’s brothers” in order to teach us that when they came down to Egypt, they were indeed behaving like family. They had long regretted their act of selling Joseph and were desperate to find him. But that leads to another question: Why would they even imagine that Joseph would still be alive? The life expectancy for slaves in Egypt wasn’t very long!

Jamie Foxx Blasphemes, Calls Obama Lord and Savior

11/27/2012 RAY RISER

 

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Jamie Foxx (Facebook)

Respect for Barack Obama as the president of the United States is one thing. Worshipping him as a deity is quite another.

Comedian Jamie Foxx is beginning to draw fire for his idolizing comments about the commander-in-chief during the recent Soul Train Music Awards in Las Vegas. During the broadcast, aired last Sunday on BET, Foxx urged the audience to “give an honor to God—and our Lord and savior, Barack Obama.”

The statement received a rousing ovation from the audience, and another when Foxx repeated Obama’s name.

Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who has been an outspoken critic of the president’s liberalism, said in a statement Monday that Foxx’s “epiphany is startling.

Survey finds record 19 percent of religiously unaffiliated Americans

Posted on 21 July 2012

(RNS) Unbelief is on the uptick. People who check “None” for their religious affiliation are now nearly one in five Americans (19 percent), the highest ever documented, according to the Pew Center for the People and the Press.

The rapid rise of Nones — including atheists, agnostics and those who say they believe “nothing in particular” — defies the usually glacial rate of change in spiritual identity.

Barry Kosmin, co-author of three American Religious Identification Surveys, theorizes why None has become the “default category.” He says, ”Young people are resistant to the authority of institutional religion, older people are turned off by the politicization of religion, and people are simply less into theology than ever before.”

Kosmin’s surveys were the first to brand the Nones in 1990 when they were 6 percent of U.S. adults. By the 2008 survey, Nones were up to 15 percent. By 2010, another survey, the biannual General Social Survey, bumped the number to 18 percent.

Poll: Nearly 80 percent of Americans are Christian

As Christmas nears, more than three-quarters of Americans identify themselves as Christian, Gallup reports.

Pollsters found that 78 percent of Americans identify with Christianity.

Overall, more than 82 percent of Americans have a religious identity, with this breakdown:

— Protestant/other Christian: 52.5 percent

— Catholic: 23.6 percent

— Mormon: 1.9 percent

— Jewish: 1.6 percent

— Muslim: 0.5 percent

— Other non-Christian religion: 2.4 percent

— None/atheist/agnostic: 15 percent

— No response: 2.5 percent

The findings fit the trend of an increasing percentage of Americans who do not embrace a formal religious identity. In 1951, 1 percent of Americans did not have a religious identity, compared to 24 percent identifying as Catholic and 68 percent claiming a non-Catholic Christian faith.