Here are a couple of short hops to start your week out with.

Savior of Torahs seals deal with God is the story of Rabbi Menachem Youlus who for the last twenty years has traveled all over the world saving Torahs (the first five books of the Bible) that had been left neglected or damaged and restoring them.

Each Torah contains 302,000 Hebrew letters, and every one must be inked by hand with a kosher quill. Perfectly. Restoring an old Torah means matching the ink, the font and the parchment on which it was written—a tricky task when you’re repairing a centuries-old Ugandan Torah in a suburban Maryland workshop.

After months of work, Youlus and his foundation settle the Torahs in schools, synagogues and Jewish community centers around the world, often for considerably less than the minimum $18,000 each takes to restore.

Debbie Blue has another thought provoking Blogging to Sunday at Theolog. She wants to know why we always jump to “prostitute” when we think of the sinful woman who anointed Jesus’s feet in Luke 7:36-50. She thinks we need to take Luke calling her a sinner a little more seriously and fleshing out what that could mean—not only for the woman, but for us.

I think we need to take Luke seriously when he says she was a sinner. We probably wouldn’t have liked her or been at all attracted to her. And Simon may have been great and beautiful and kind. When he thinks to himself that Jesus must not know who this woman is, maybe he wasn’t being an obviously horrible judgmental prig. Maybe he knew how she beat her children or poisoned little kittens. Jesus eats with tax collectors and sinners. Tax collectors weren’t just “good” people that the world ostracized. They worked for the Roman Empire and extorted money from the poor. They did things that hurt people.

Martin Marty is wondering in his current Sightings article why people think the Democratic Party is just now “finding” religion. In Pious Parties, he shows that faith in the Democratic party goes back to the first part of the 20th century.

To review the history: After Woodrow Wilson’s overplaying of the religious hand, Republican presidents Harding (Baptist), Coolidge (Congregationalist), and Hoover (Quaker) added little to public discourse about public religion. But in World War II Roosevelt began to restore such discourse, manifesting and promoting the life of prayer, demonstrating a kind of Episcopal serenity when facing crises.

Then there was Truman, to whom I paid attention while living briefly in his Washington. “I am not a religious man,” he would say, “Mrs. Truman takes care of that.” He despised what he thought was the political use of religion, but evidenced a Baptist Sunday School-boyhood grounding in biblical knowledge and did some public praying, without advertising or fuss. During the interregnum, Eisenhower said, “I am the most religious man I know.” But back to Democrats, our subject today: LBJ, a member of the Disciples of Christ (Christian) Church was at ease with faith, while JFK (Catholic — did you notice?) found his religion a public subject, whatever his personal faith might be. Jimmy Carter? How can mass communicators think and act as if the new candidates are inventing religious language in public life? Bill Clinton—like Carter, a Baptist—was a regular worshiper, and was accused of hypocrisy when he took a Bible to church, as most Baptists do. He was at home with it. And one year we heard of Reverend Jackson; Mondale, from a ministerial family; and ex-seminarians Gore and Hart and who knows who else running.

Why the perception of non-religion among people of that pious party? 1) Maybe things have changed, and there’s been a secular take-over, causing religious amnesia in the party. 2) It could be that in reaction to Nixon-Reagan-Ford-Bush-Bush styles of public piety and the perceived “use” of religion, Democrats backed off. 3) If there were signs of verbal ungainliness in the pious sections of last Monday’s CNN show—Peter Steinfels found them in the three candidates’ words…— it may be because the planners of the program (Jim Wallis and company) wanted to stress how specific religious convictions do or should affect policy (for example, on poverty). Having to be creedal and confessional and pious does make many, including many of us who are not candidates, a bit nervous. Diffidence here is less a matter of faith than style.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and other theologians have counseled some restraint in public God-talk. Since both parties’ candidates are Bible folk, maybe some of them are responding to Sermon on the Mount text: Matthew 6:1, 5-8. You could look it up. Baptist scripture memorizers Truman and Carter and Clinton wouldn’t have to. And while the Bible is open, note how Isaiah 58 shrieks out at a “prayerful” nation.

No one policital party has the monoply on the Christian religion in the United States. Both parties are also guilty of sins the Bible condemns. Thank you Dr. Marty for showing that faith in the Democratic party has been there as long as faith in Republican party, and that candidates in both parties have respected religion and abused it.

(Hat tip to Street Prophets)

We snitched a bit of time on an quiet island nearby this week. It was a last minute plan, escaping with a minimal amount of preparation. One must have essentials that make it a relaxing time. Perhaps you have had this opportunity to escape, or maybe it’s only been a thought to get away. However, suppose you were told to pack some essentials for a trip to get away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life.

Describe your location, in general or specific terms and….

1) What book(s) will you bring?

Some of my absolute favorites: Little Women (Signet Classics), Neverwhere: A Novel, Sunshine, The Mists of Avalon, and a new favorite I just read this last month: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel.

2) What music accompanies you?

We just saw the musical Wicked, and I immediately had to get the soundtrack: Wicked (2003 Original Broadway Cast). So definitely that. I’d probably have to have some Over the Rhine, Iona, and Deborah Krall as well.

3) What essentials of everyday living must you take (as in the health and beauty aids aisle variety)?

Not much, just the basics: shampoo, conditioner, body wash, and lots of sunscreen and lotion.

4) What technological gadgets if any, will you take with you or do you leave it all behind?

I’d leave it all behind. Just a notebook and a pen in addition to the books.

5) What culinary delights will you partake in while there?

Whatever looks good. As long as it doesn’t include internal organs or bugs, I’ll try just about anything once.

As a bonus question, what makes for a perfect day on vacation for you?

Good sites, good food, and good company.

In Blogging Toward Sunday at Theolog, Debbie Blue looks at Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31. She offers a very different way of seeing God and Wisdom than we are normally used to seeing.

Over at God’s Politics Diane Butler Bass offers some insights she received while watching the Miss Universe Pageant in A Post-Colonial Pageant. Yes, I did say the Miss Universe Pageant.

There are many reasons why Keith Olbermann is one of my TV boyfriends (Jon Stewart being the other), and here is the most recent one: The entire government has failed us on Iraq.  Jesse Jackson Jr., also has a consice and articulate column in The Chicago Sun-Times: Congress has failed our troops.

Lynne Duke has an eye-opening and gut wrenching article on slavery in The Shackles in the Shadows of History (Hat tip to Duane Shank). Here’s the opening paragraph:

In 1619, 12 years after Jamestown’s settlement, two British privateers sailed into the James River with African captives for sale. The Africans had Portuguese names; they apparently knew Christianity, according to John Thornton and Linda Heywood, a husband-and-wife team of Boston University historians. Those first Africans came from the kingdom of Ndongo, now Angola, which had been penetrated by Portuguese missionaries and traders who soon stopped praying with the Africans and started selling them.

What are reading that is making you stop and think? Breaking your heart? Making you see the world in a different way?