Many of the Cape Verdean families of New England have a hidden Jewish past.
[Gershom] Barros didn't know his father had Jewish roots until after he died.
"My mother told me she used to call my grandmother a crazy lady for lighting candles in the closet," he said, suggesting that she practiced secret Jewish customs passed down for generations, as has been noted among other descendants of Portuguese and Spanish Jews who were forced to hide their identities. [Link]
Is it important to find out the religious affiliation of your ancestors? It is if you live in Egypt.
An Egyptian court has sentenced a woman to three years in prison because her father converted to Islam briefly 45 years ago. Under Egyptian law, religion is passed to children from the father.
Shadia Nagui Ibrahim, 47, a Christian, was charged with fraud for putting Christianity as her religion on her marriage certificate, even though she was unaware that her father's conversion in 1962 had made her officially Muslim. [Link]
A Sikh group in Canada is upset over a policy that requires immigrants with the surname Singh or Kaur to change their names.
Karen Shadd-Evelyn, a spokeswoman with Citizenship and Immigration Canada, said the reason for the policy is that it helps officials with the paperwork and allows them to identify people's files quickly, efficiently and accurately.During the Sikh naming ceremony, the holy book—Guru Granth Sahib—is opened to a random page. The given name of the child is left to the parents, but must start with the first letter of the first word on that page.
"You can imagine you wouldn't want your file to be confused with someone else's," she said.
Singh and Kaur are common names in the Sikh community. In a tradition that began more than 300 years ago, the name Singh is given to every baptized male and Kaur to every baptized female Sikh. There are millions of Singhs and Kaurs around the world. [Link]
In older days parents were not very fussy about choosing the name. We often hear such names [as] Vir Singh, Jodh Singh, Lal Singh, Kala Singh, Teja Singh and Ganda Singh. Literally translated some of these would mean red, black, sharp and onion. [Link]
Professor George Bush was the first cousin of the president's great-great-great-grandfather, and the author of a book critical of Islam’s founder.
“The Life of Mohammed” went out of print a century ago, and there it was expected to remain, in perpetuity. But in the early 21st century, it was reissued by a tiny publisher simply because of the historical rhyme that a man with the same name occupied the White House. The first George Bush never witnessed the Second Coming, but now his book was enjoying an unexpected afterlife.
Predictably, it enraged some readers in the Middle East, where rage is an abundant commodity. In 2004, Egyptian censors at Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic Research Academy denounced the book by President Bush’s “grandfather” as a slander on the prophet, and the State Department was forced to issue a document clarifying the family relationship. [Link]
Dennis Callahan claims to be a "fourth generation hereditary witch."
His great-aunt Marion was born with a veil, what is referred to in medical terms as a “caul.” It’s a hood of porous skin that covers the head of a newborn. It’s extremely rare to be born with a caul, which, for many, indicates a “third eye” or heightened psychic ability.Marion's niece—Callahan's mother—married a man whose sister was a witch.
For the past 400 years, his ancestors have been witches who read tarot. But Callahan’s pagan ancestry stretches even further back to the Druids, who practiced a type of paganism unknown today because they didn’t write. [Link]I will not criticize the claims made in this article for fear of waking tomorrow morning as a toad.
The Mormon practice of baptizing the dead by proxy is again in the news, with perennial critic Helen Radkey reprising her role as self-appointed watchdog. Apparently some overeager church members have given certain celebrated celibates imaginary wives.
Pope Pius XII was baptized three times and also "sealed" in eternal marriage to a fictional Mrs Eugenio Pacelli. Saint Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit order of priests, was also "sealed" to a bogus wife. Catholic clergy do not marry. [Link]
From the Seattle (Wash.) Post-Intelligencer of Oct. 4, 2005:
Wiccan veterans want parity
They say Pentagon denies equal treatment
By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
Hindus and Sufis and Buddhists got the OK. So did Mormons, Muslims and Christians. Even atheist veterans have their symbol engraved free on military headstones.
Why, wonders Scott Stearns, can't he?
"I would hope when I pass away that both my status as a vet and my religious belief would be on my marker," said Stearns, who medically retired from the Navy after a diagnosis of leukemia in 1996.
The quiet father of two, who lives in Kent and works at the Seattle office of the Department of Veterans Affairs, is Wiccan, a pagan form of worship that celebrates nature and the elements.
[snip]
The VA, which has been paying for inscriptions on gravestones since 1997, will add the word "W-I-C-C-A-N" or "P-E-N-T-A-C-L-E" to a headstone on request, but not the symbol, not until it is approved, said Anissa Alford, director of communications for the VA's National Cemetery Administration.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From The Boston (Mass.) Globe:
State Supreme Court says adoptee has no right to know parentsGod forbid that those damn Lutherans start asking questions. . .
September 22, 2005
PROVIDENCE, R.I. --The Rhode Island Supreme Court has rejected a Pennsylvania man's claim that his belief in Mormonism entitles him to have his adoption records opened.
Philip Sabatino, 34, of Erie, Pa., claimed in court records that according to his faith he "may be saved and exalted after death" if he meets certain requirements, including tracing his ancestry and fulfilling certain obligations to his blood relatives.
But the justices said confidentiality is important to the adoption process and the man did not show a need to know his parents' names.
The official court opinion did not say whether religious belief could be used as a justification in other cases. But the justices said in a footnote that they thought they could not open records for Mormons without doing it for others as well.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
From Telegraph.co.uk:
The Bible for slow readers
By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent
(Filed: 22/09/2005)
In the beginning was the Word. But the Word went on a bit, so a new version of the Bible has been produced for readers with short attention spans.
The 100-minute Bible, aimed at the "hurried and harried" generation, was launched at Canterbury Cathedral yesterday by its author, the Rev Michael Hinton.
While the original takes about a week of solid reading to finish, the abbreviated version can be read from cover to cover in under two hours, said Mr Hinton.
While all the familiar Old Testament stories are there, from Genesis to Exodus, out have gone the genealogy and the law books. Also missing is the Song of Songs, and only two psalms have survived.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
Seen in Records of the Town of Plymouth (1636-1783)
[1:35]
It was ordered by the towne that all graves especially for elder psons shalbee diged five foot deep and that all such as have any occation to Imploy any in diging of graves shall see that they are diged soe deep
[1:119]
Ordered by the Towne That whatsoever whale or pte of a whale or other great ffish that will make oyle shall by the Providence of God be Cast up or Come on shore within the bounds of this Township . . . two ptes of three therof to belonge and appertaine to the Towne . . . and the third pte to such of the Towne as shall find and Cutt them up and try the Oyle . . .
[1:309]
. . . liberty is Granted to Major John Bradford to milk the pine Trees upon the Towns Comons . . . & [he] hath liberty to Imploy straingers lately Com from the westward upon sd Comons . . . upon Condition the sd Bradford doth . . . Instruct Aney of said Inhabitants in what scill sd strainger[s] hath in Milking the pines soe far as they are Capable of Instructing any in that Art
[3:10]
At said Meeting the Town voted that every male head of a Family be obliged to procure Ten grown Rats heads or Ten Grown black birds heads and bring them to ye Town Treasurer. . .
[3:239]A footnote to this last entry remarks that "The Province Charter provided 'that there shall be liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God to all Christians (except Papists).'"
Then voted & Directed the Selectmen at a proper time to Advertise in this town the law of the Province Respecting Preventing Carrying about the Image of the pope &c in night time. . .
From The (Calcutta, India) Telegraph:
Bush 'ancestor' bookA book released last year
Cairo, June 23 (Reuters): Censors at al-Azhar, Cairo’s centre of Islamic learning, today passed a 19th century biography of Prophet Mohammad by a scholar portrayed in the Arabic media as an ancestor of President George W. Bush.
The Academy for Islamic Studies, which censors religious books, had recommended last year that the government ban The Life of Mohammad by American scholar George Bush, first published in 1830 and reissued in the US in 2002.
[snip]
The censors did not give a reason for retracting the ban.
Last year, newspaper articles had criticised the book’s account of early Islamic history and quoted Bush as saying Muslims spread Islam by force and persecuted Christians, for example. At least one of the newspaper articles came with large photographs of George W. Bush and his father, former President George Bush, and references to the Bush family.
The genealogical link between the author of the book and the President could not be confirmed by the book’s US publishers or the Bush family. Family trees of the Bush family on the Internet do not include the author, who was a prominent biblical scholar and preacher.
[snip]
[Read the whole story]
argued that both George W. Bush and John Kerry are descendants of the Prophet Mohammed. Small world.
