By Abraham Cooper and Harold Brackman
Simon Wiesenthal Center

In his recent acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio said this before the Swedish Academy: "Who knows, if the Internet had existed at the time, perhaps Hitler's criminal plot would not have succeeded-ridicule might have prevented it from ever seeing the light of day." So do the dramatic protests in Iran, dubbed by some "The Twitter Revolution," make Le Clezio a prophet in his own time?

There's no doubt that cyberfreedom's promise is limitless, its palpable impact truly global. Evidence: Blogger Xeni Jardin, who visited a remote Guatemalan village with no television or even telephone landlines but with a few inexpensive cellphones, and a nearby Internet café. Village elder Don Victoriano absorbed news of Barak Obama's victory over his Hotmail account: "If a black man can enter the Casa Blanca, maybe a Mayan person one day can become president of Guatemala."

By Ilene Rosenblum

On Monday at 2 p.m. I will be flying to Israel on a plane chartered by Nefesh B' Nefesh, an organization that helps people like me make aliyah (in Hebrew this literally means "go up" because the Land of Israel is considered holy). Every person on the plane will be doing the same thing -- leaving the comforts of the United States to fulfill the dream of living in the Jewish homeland as a full-fledged Israeli citizen. I will be joining hundreds of thousands of olim (people who have made aliyah) from all over the world, following in the footsteps of Abraham, who was commanded: "Go for yourself from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you" (Genesis 12:1).

I am in part a religious pilgrim. I believe that every Jew who is willing and able, belongs in Israel. It is nothing short of a miracle that a people displaced for more than 2000 years were able to survive and can return to their land, and it cannot be ignored. It is also a place where a Jew can perform the most mitzvot (biblical commandments), and in fact, according to some Jewish authorities, the only place where they can be performed with merit.

By Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck

Here's what Bono, Oprah, and the guru speakers on PBS won't tell you: Jesus believed in organized religion and he founded an institution. Of course, Jesus had no patience for religious hacks and self-righteous wannabes, but he was still Jewish. And as Jew, he read the Holy Book, worshiped in the synagogue, and kept Torah. He did not start a movement of latte-drinking disciples who excelled in spiritual conversations. He founded the church (Matt. 16:18) and commissioned the apostles to proclaim the good news that Israel's Messiah had come and the sins of the world could be forgiven through his death on the cross (Matt. 28:18-20; Acts 2:14-36).

For almost two millennia, it was axiomatic that Christians, like, actually went to church (or at least told other Christians they did). From Cyprian to Calvin it was believed that for those to whom God "is Father the church may also be Mother." But increasingly Christians are trying to get more spiritual by getting less church.

By Victoria Barnett
Director, Church Relations,
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Those of us who work at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum continue to grieve for Stephen T. Johns, the Museum security officer who was murdered on June 10. When I heard that he had opened the door for his alleged killer I had to sit down and catch my breath - for this was so typical of his friendliness and kindness. I can't tell you how many times he had opened those doors for me. To lose a colleague to a hate crime brings the human cost of hatred painfully and personally home.

His funeral brought together two groups with a shared history of the human cost of hatred, groups whose families throughout history have been scarred again and again by hateful violence: African Americans and the Jewish community, particularly its Holocaust survivors. As distinct and different as their histories are, these two communities have lost countless individuals to hate and as a result have a deep and painful knowledge about the human capacity for depravity and brutality. Many of them also have remarkable resilience and tremendous commitment to justice, freedom, and education.

By Deepak Chopra and Salman Ahmad

Suspicions over a cooked election in Iran have brought a glimmer of hope for real reform. It takes glimmers in the long, fractious fights that hold societies in thrall. Can we find one in the toxic fight that has plagued India-Pakistan relations for six decades?

We've already had a Camp David moment. When the two heads of state met to shake hands in mid-June, Manmohan Singh of India and Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan obeyed some new forces.

One was the force of economics, which has cut both ways. Economics promises to make India a prosperous player on the world scene. With money has come the expectation of rational behavior, and India can see rationally that a stable, nonaggressive Pakistan is the kind of neighbor it wants to have.

By Aloysious Mowe

The juxtaposition of the views of President Obama and President Sarkozy on the wearing of the veil by Muslim women can tempt us into easy condemnation of one position and praise of the other. Through one prism, their positions could be characterized as respect for religious freedom on the one hand, and unwarranted interference in religious matters on the other. Through another prism, those same positions could be seen as naïve multicultural liberalism versus a pragmatic understanding of the perils facing the secular French state.

We too easily conflate the notion of the separation of Church and State in France and the U.S.A., when in fact the different histories of these two nations have given rise to subtle and important differences in how that separation is understood.

By Melody Moezzi
author and attorney

Not long ago, I got a call from a reporter asking for my thoughts on the Islamic New Year. I immediately broke out laughing. "I'm Iranian," I told her, "We don't celebrate the Islamic New Year much. Our real new year is the first day of spring. So if you call back in March, I'll have something much more intelligent to say."

The Iranian New Year, Nowrooz, is just one of many old Zoroastrian traditions that Iranians have kept, often adding their own twist of Shi'a Islam. In most Iranian homes, the standard Nowrooz place setting (sofreh) includes a Qur'an. Our celebration of Nowrooz is just one of many examples of mixing Islamic, Zoroastrian and culturally Persian traditions.

Thus, while the Iranian brand of Islam is a very Shi'a one, it is also a very Zoroastrian and Persian one. This unique strain of Islam is perhaps one of the greatest assets that the current Iranian opposition holds in its battle against an increasingly brutal Iranian regime. Thus, this opposition is not purely an Islamic one. Iranians of other faiths are also invested in its success. This includes Zoroastrians, Jews, Christians, and Baha'is. All of us will benefit from the fall of the Islamic republic, but perhaps none more than Iranian Muslims.

"I'm Starting With The Man In The Mirror/ I'm Asking Him To Change His Ways/
And No Message Could Have Been Any Clearer/ If You Wanna Make The World
A Better Place/ Take A Look At Yourself, And Then Make A Change."
-- Michael Jackson, "Man in the Mirror"

By Tammy Bundy
author, EWTN commentator

Michael Jackson's "Man in the Mirror" had a great idea behind it. It had a good heart. Unfortunately, as we found out yesterday, Michael Jackson's heart was not as good as it needed to be. His heart attack and death at age 50 sent a shock wave through the world that will lead to one of those future, "Where were you when you heard about it?" moments.

Oh, Michael, what happened?

By Rabbi Tamara Miller
Director of Spiritual Care, George Washington University Hospital

There are no good protocols for the unexpected and the unfamiliar.

Early Wednesday afternoon on June 10, my on-call chaplain stood inside my office doorway. The trauma pager beeped. The phone rang .Something big was going on
in the emergency room. Something terrible had happened at the U.S. Holocaust Museum.

Immediately, the word "holocaust" sent a series of visceral reactions through my body. I am a first-generation American Jew whose parents and grandparents left Europe before the war that destroyed six million from my historical and biological family tree. My aunt Paula saved my Uncle Hyman. Uncle Joe escaped but lost his entire family. Two family members survived the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Hannah and Saul had a series of numbers tattooed on their arms, but they were not the only ones who suffered by the hands of the Nazis. During my childhood years, there would be other couples with the numbered tattoos, and they would sit around my parents' kitchen table counting and recounting their losses.

Valerie Elverton Dixon
founder, JustPeaceTheory.com

The god of our fathers is not always God our Father. The god of our fathers, the god of our biblical ancestors often showed himself in immoral ways. He was a god of destruction, destroying most of the world with a flood. He commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac, then stayed the father's hand and provided a ram in the bush instead. This was no moral benefit to the ram. This god hardened the Egyptian pharaoh's heart against allowing the Hebrew slaves to go free and then punishes the Egyptian people for pharaoh's stubbornness. He sent plagues. The plagues included the monstrous killing of the Egyptian first born.

By Michael Bruner
religion professor, Azusa Pacific University

The improbable journey on the road to redemption for Michael Vick, from NFL star quarterback to ruthless dog fighting promoter to contrite dog advocate, leaves a lot of us shaking our heads in incredulity. Is this guy for real? Is the Humane Society being duped? Are they using each other for mutual gain?

Wayne Pacelle of the Humane Society acknowledges the latter: that the Humane Society is using Michael Vick to help stop dog fighting. One may reasonably question whether the ends should justify the means, but from a religious perspective, that's a side issue. The more fundamental questions are these: Is redemption even possible? Can anyone be redeemed? And how do we know that redemption has actually taken place?