Eric, Luke, Jamie and I stood on the front steps. I did not want to ring the bell again. "Cool house," Luke, 13, said, looking heavenward to where the white columns we stood between might end.

"We could leave," I said.

"Just breathe, honey," Eric said.

"Tell me again why I'm here?"

"For the children," he said, taking the jar of gefilte fish and squeezing my hand.

Eric had been here for me each odd step of the journey. He'd been at the first meeting with the rabbi more than a year ago, where I sobbed, explaining I was the primary caretaker of my baptized children, and I could not raise my children Jewish.

Sophia, my oldest daughter, just 12, answered the door, welcoming me as a guest in her other home. The divorce agreement said nothing about religion, so Larry and I tried to figure out Sophia's faith in real time. Each decision we made would mark her, and be the precedent for her sister Olivia, 10, and brother Johnny, 6. But looking at Sophia, I knew Larry and I had not damaged her permanently yet. She stood with ease in the foyer. She'd grown into a beautiful girl, her father's dark eyes, my mother's wide-lipped smile, her mane of black hair a gift from some former generation.

Now in a house where my children lived when they were not with me, images of their life with their father came into view, the backpacks on each hook, three jackets hung in the closet, a drawing with the words "I love my Daddy" in a frame on an end table.

I remembered a 5-year-old Sophia in the tub with her little sister just after the divorce. The girls played in the bath bubbles, splashing suds onto their chins Santa-style, and spun the rubber ducks on the surface of the water, like dreidels, singing in Hebrew. That was how I first found out that Larry had been taking the children to Temple on his weekends. He had never taken the children to Temple in the eight years we were married.

I had fallen in love with Larry at a Seder at his house when we were dating. I'd grown up in a cloistered Irish-Italian family, a plaid-uniformed Catholic schoolgirl. I had never been to a Seder and at that one I met a Buddhist and a Muslim. As the conversation developed into a theological discussion, my mind stretched past Sister Marianne McCarthy into the realm of rabbinical texts, the Tipitaka, and the Quran. My world cracked open over a candlelit table with plates of beef brisket and roast turnips. My husband-to-be was worldly, 15 years older than I, and seemed to believe in all religions, subscribing to none.

We walked to the main room. "I come bearing gifts," I blurted, handing Larry the gefilte fish and coconut cake. Several children raced through the house and a few other couples greeted us. I knew one woman from the gym. "It's so nice how you all get along," she said, nodding toward Larry, then Eric. "So nice how you're all here," she added, her words echoing beneath the cathedral ceiling.

All of us getting here was a long story. One that began with a two-sentence e-mail I received 18 months earlier stating Sophia was enrolled in Hebrew school and her bat mitzvah was set for June 12.

My ex-husband's e-mail, in its brevity, seemed a decision to change the course of my children's lives without discussion. It set off a series of sparks that turned into blue-flamed anger, then action; two motions filed within two weeks, followed by a trial.

In court I sat on the bench with my lawyer, waiting for our case to be called. I shuffled papers, my hands shaking, the children's baptismal certificates fluttering to the floor. Larry sat several rows in front of me, with a string of witnesses shoulder-to-shoulder.

Larry's lawyer called me to the stand. I swore to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. I considered another oath I'd made before Larry, to love you in sickness and in health all the days of our lives.

The lawyer fired off questions.

"Do you know how long the children have been attending Temple?" he asked. "Have you ever taken any legal action up until now?"

I hated him, catching me on a hook like that. No, I had not taken legal action, but I had built a case with Larry outside of the court. We'd tried to talk, but the words crisscrossed before ever being heard. The talking turned into pithy e-mail exchanges, what we each thought the other's  intent was for the religion of the children when they were born. I believed we'd agreed the children would be raised Catholic and Jewish. My problem at this juncture really boiled down to a bat mitzvah. A ceremony that would confirm my daughter in the Jewish faith, somehow separating her from me.

"Are the children presently enrolled in any other religious instruction?" the lawyer continued, tension in his voice. I thought back to my enrolling Sophia in CCD when we first moved, and how I pulled her out three weeks later. The change in homes and schools was stress enough for both of us. And I thought the allure of taking three kids to Temple would wear off for Larry.

Larry's lawyer repeated the question. "Are the children enrolled in any other religious instruction?"

I began to explain the three-week enrollment.

"Answer yes or no," the judge said.

"No," I said.

"When was the last time you went to church?" the lawyer asked. "Christmas?"

Objection.

Sophia's Hebrew school teacher came to the stand next. I had never seen this woman before. She addressed me from the stand: "Did I know Sophia already knew her Torah portion?" she asked. I did not know. That was the problem. Somehow this all happened in secret, on the one day a week the children spent with their father. The lawyer finished the show with a former next-door neighbor, who confirmed that, yes, he and his wife had attended Seders in the marital home.

Court was adjourned until a date two weeks from that day. Two more weeks. It would be unbearable.

My lawyer walked me to my car. I locked myself in, tears dripping from my eyes onto the leather seat. My mind reeled back to my childhood, me in that white dress at my First Holy Communion. I had memorized the Our Father and the Hail Mary. I'd taken the Body of Christ for the first time and had gotten stomach sick. Years later I would say my Hail Marys in succession after confession with Father Amato, where I begged forgiveness for my 16-year-old sins.

Though I'd grown up with God, that confession would be my last in a formal setting. Once I went off to college and was away from parents who did not know if I went to church or not, I opted to not. By the time I met Larry after college my faith was packaged into silent prayers at night, the ongoing giving of thanks in a private setting. I married Larry within 12 months of meeting him the first time. We divorced eight years later, to the day.

Larry and I both lost so much in the divorce. But afterward, I found Eric, and I wondered now, for the first time, if Larry found religion. Perhaps Larry was not just pushing his Judaism to control me, but he'd come to believe in it. While I reestablished my roots in an expanding family, with Eric and my children and stepchildren, Larry may have found the roots of his faith. Darkness fell, and all the other parked cars had gone. I tapped out the number of years Larry had been taking the children to Temple and Hebrew school. I tapped seven times on the steering wheel. It had been seven years.

I put the key in the ignition, wondering for the first time if I should let Larry win this one. I told myself that whether or not the children were mitzvah'd, they would choose for themselves one day. Unlike in my house where Christianity had been a given, never questioned, my children would have to think things through as they grew older. Even with a bat mitzvah, Sophia would have to question the two faiths that were rolled up inside of her.

In the morning I called my lawyer. "Settle," I said.

Later that week, after my ex-husband heard of the settlement, I received an e-mail invitation to Seder at his house. "Please bring Eric and Luke and Jamie," he wrote. I thought about the invitation for more than a week and decided it would be best for the children if Larry and I at last appeared to be on the same page.

I took in the scene before me now, Sophia pulling out the Scrabble game, Olivia trying to hide the afikomen while everyone watched. I went to the kitchen to pour a glass of wine and found myself alone with Larry in the kitchen. "It's a nice party," I said.

"I'm glad you're here," he said, taking the Seder plate from the refrigerator, the boiled egg rolling off onto the tile floor.

"Need help?" I asked, picking the shank bone off the counter. 

"Remember that Seder when you tried to bake shehokal?" he said. In a minute I was back in another kitchen, separating 13 egg whites, completely baffled at how to make a dessert without flour.

"I remember," I said, the moment between us tacked to the corkboard, held still for us to observe. We were joined in a singular memory, from a time when we would have done anything for each other.

Our youngest son, Johnny, age 6, came into the kitchen, the moment broken. "Come see my room, Mom," Johnny said, taking my hand. I looked at Larry as if to ask if it was OK for me to go upstairs. He nodded, and Johnny scooted me away taking the steps up to his room two at a time. "Here's my bed," he said, a 6-year-old docent. The room was blue, a framed Derek Jeter jersey hung above the headboard. Autographed baseballs were lined up in individual display cases on the dresser. Johnny hopped on his bed, and I sat next to him.

"Can we have a sleepover tonight, Mom?" he said.

"Not tonight, Champ," I said.

After the tour, Johnny and I went back downstairs for dinner. My children, stepchildren, ex-husband and husband sat down to matzo ball soup in steamy porcelain bowls; matzo ball soup had always been a favorite of mine, the item I craved through each of my pregnancies. I had not had it in years. The smell of broth and parsley sifted through me, the lilies pushed their necks up out from the lips of the vase.

Johnny, the youngest at the table, started the Seder with the first of the four questions.

Ma nishtana ha-laila ha-zeh mi-kol ha-lelot?

"Why is this night different from all other nights?"

Lindh, who is serving a 20-year sentence at the Terre Haute prison for aiding Afghanistan's now-defunct Taliban government, wrote in a legal declaration that his religion requires him to pray five times a day, preferably in a group. "This is one of the primary obligations of Islam," he wrote.

Praying in his cell is not appropriate, he said, because the Koran requires a ritually clean place for prayer and he is forced to kneel "in close proximity to my toilet."

Lindh wrote that Muslims in the unit are currently being allowed to pray together once a day during Ramadan. At other times, the group prayers had been limited to once a week, court documents said.

The suit seeks class action status. Terre Haute associate warden Harvey Church testified in a deposition given in January that 24 of the 41 CMU inmates were Muslim.

The government says in court documents that there is no evidence that Muslims were confined to the CMU because of their religion and that most Muslims don't adhere to the requirement of five daily prayers.

"Plaintiffs have shown ... only six other Muslim inmates in the CMU who identify themselves as sharing the same views on daily congregate prayer as Plaintiffs," government attorneys wrote.

Meanwhile, the government asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to dismiss a similar lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights that alleges conditions at the CMU at Terre Haute and another one in Marion, Ill., violate inmates' religious and civil rights.

In that lawsuit, five CMU prisoners and two of their wives complain that the units place draconian restrictions on inmates' contact with the outside world and even their own families without offering any reason. They also say inmates can be placed in the CMU without being told why, and have no way to earn their way out.

The government contends that conditions at the CMU-- where inmates are free to leave their cells to watch television or play basketball, but not to hug their loved ones when they come to visit -- don't violate prisoners' civil rights.

It argues in court documents filed last month that inmates don't have a constitutional right to contact visits or a certain number of phone calls.

In April, another Terre Haute inmate, Sabri Benkhala, dropped his lawsuit claiming that the Bureau of Prisons had created the CMU in secrecy without following federal rule-making procedures. The bureau published rules governing the unit earlier this year, but they have not yet been finalized, said agency spokesman Edmond Ross.

U.S. Attorney Tim Morrison said Benkahla dropped his suit after he was moved out of the CMU.

Benkahla, 34, of Virginia is serving a 10-year sentence for his 2007 convictions for obstruction of justice and lying about training with militants in Pakistan. He is expected to be released in May 2016.

Arnaout, 47, is serving a 10-year sentence for racketeering after admitting in 2003 that he defrauded donors to his Benevolence International Foundation by diverting some of the money to Islamic military groups in Bosnia and Chechnya. The Syrian-born U.S. citizen is scheduled to be released in 2011.

Here's what he said to the Salt Lake City Fox affiliate:

HATCH: Let’s be honest about it, in the First Amendment, religious freedom, religious expression, that really express matters to the Constitution. So, if the Muslims own that property, that private property, and they want to build a mosque there, they should have the right to do so. The only question is are they being insensitive to those who suffered the loss of loved ones? We know there are Muslims killed on 9/11 too and we know it’s a great religion. … But as far as their right to build that mosque, they have that right.

I just think what’s made this country great is we have religious freedom. That’s not the only thing, but it’s one of the most important things in the Constitution. [...]

There’s a question of whether it’s too close to the 9/11 area, but it’s a few blocks away, it isn’t right there. … And there’s a huge, I think, lack of support throughout the country for Islam to build that mosque there, but that should not make a difference if they decide to do it. I’d be the first to stand up for their rights.

And now he will surely lose his next election, in 2012, unless this whole controversy is just another cynical effort to gin up the base during a long, hot August, and everyone will have basically forgotten about it in two years. (Except maybe for some Muslims in America and abroad.)

Behind these events, under the rubric "Pray and A.C.T.," is Newt Gingrich's organization, Renewing American Leadership, although the frontmen for this particular initiative are former Watergate conspirator Charles Colson and evangelist Jim Garlow, who now works for Gingrich. Endorsers include top evangelical and political leaders such as Focus on the Family's Jim Daly, who took over from James Dobson; Princeton University professor Robert George; Fox News host and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee; Cindy Jacobs of the Generals of Intercession; Southern Baptist leader Richard Land, who attended the Lincoln Memorial rally at Beck's invitation; Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council; and Tim Wildmon, who is taking over the American Family Association from his father, Don. Also among the endorsers of Pray and A.C.T. or Renew America are Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., who was featured at the Beck rally, and David Barton, the pseudo-academic who argues that America was founded as a "Christian nation" and is often touted by Beck on television (and who headlined Beck's "Divine Destiny" pre-rally Friday evening at the Kennedy Center in Washington).

The tenets of Pray and A.C.T. are straightforward and traditional: opposition to gay marriage and any manifestation of tolerance for homosexuality; opposition to reproductive rights for women, especially abortion; and opposition to anything that violates "religious liberty" as defined by Christian ultras (which evidently doesn't cover the right to construct an Islamic center on Park Place in Manhattan).

According to the Pray and A.C.T. website, prayer is vital but not sufficient to becoming "authentically Biblical," which requires "voting in all elections only for candidates who affirm the sanctity of life in all stages and conditions, the integrity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and religious liberty and respect for conscience ... The foundational moral principles ... must become a guiding force in every local, state and national election -- year after year -- including this year's election."

If that isn't clear enough, the schedule for Pray and A.C.T.'s pre-election crusade starts with a sports arena prayer service, led by the radical theocrat Lou Engle, and then moves on to a countdown event at a church in Washington on Sept. 12, followed by an official launch event in Washington on Sept. 19, concluding with the Lincoln Memorial rally on Oct. 30 -- two days before Election Day.

Fred Clarkson places Pray and A.C.T. in recent historical context on Talk2Action, discusses why it marks an important moment in right-wing politics, and explains what may be different this year:

The Christian Right has often sought to stay the hand of God, angry with our failings as a nation, by 'standing in the gap' at large prayer rallies and pleading for mercy. They have made a special point of doing so in the run up to national elections since 1980, praying for godly government and righteous candidates, and this year is no exception. The beneficiaries are almost always Republicans and this year is probably no exception in that regard as well. But there is also an ominous element that mostly transcends parties and is on vivid display as we enter the fall campaign season.

On Labor Day weekend, Lou Engle, head of the fiery neo-Pentecostal group, The Call, is leading a worship service in a sports arena in Sacramento, California and a "solemn assembly" at the state Capitol the next day. These events were initially billed as a tenth anniversary of The Call's first youth rally on the national capital mall which drew a claimed 400,000 people. Since then, the Sacramento event has been repositioned as the kick-off of a major Christian Right fall political campaign initiative. Engle says it will be the "hinge of history" opening the door to "the greatest awakening" and "returning our nation to its righteous roots."

There are several important dimensions of this effort. One is that this is an effort at reaching and mobilizing evangelical young people into Republican politics, particularly in California; another, is that it represents a new stage in the long term cooperation between conservative Catholics, fundamentalists and the neo-Pentecostals. And finally, the militant rhetoric of Engle's armies of activists is escalating, and their organizational infrastructure seems to be increasing, especially in cyberspace.

... The eminence grise of this initiative appears to be former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose organization Renewing American Leadership (ReAL) is apparently the force behind a series of Christian Right events being organized under the rubric of "Pray & Act." This is politically important, but as Gingrich's role becomes more public, it may also become morally dissonant, since Gingrich is well known (and has been recently highlighted in the news) as a thrice-married serial philanderer. This certainly makes him an unlikely guide for a religious political movement whose leaders believe that the fate of America hinges on the health of heterosexual marriage. (His recent conversion to Catholicism not withstanding.)

…At this writing, details are still emerging, but the list of Religious Right leaders involved is impressive, and their intention to lead people from a state of fervent prayer to acquiring state power is unambiguous.

These events may fairly be seen in the context of the ongoing transition of the Religious Right as the founding generation of movement leaders passes from the scene. R.J. Rushdoony, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Bill Bright, and John Giminez (among others) have died. Pat Robertson, Don Wildmon, James Dobson, and Beverly LaHaye are in varying stages of passing the torch; and each of their designees are coalescing via Pray & Act, which in turn is appealing to and seeking to register young people to vote.

Clarkson's analysis of the deeper Dominionist and Christian Reconstructionist roots of this latest manifestation is troubling, not least because Lou Engle, who is kicking off the election-year festivities in Sacramento, has given tacit support to the execution of homosexuals in Uganda, among other extremist positions. The entire post is well worth reading. 

I have done this before, handed my newborn over to a strange man who makes his business removing foreskins. Three years ago, when my older son was born, I'd had exactly the same feelings. Back then, they were surprising. I hadn't known this would be such a big deal. After all, I grew up in an Orthodox community. Every boy and man I had known had had this done; almost every mother I'd known had handed her child over in a similar fashion. I've been to many of these brises (ritual circumcisions), and there is a formula. The men cringe when they hear the cry. The women crowd around the mother, who is emotional. We shout "Mazel tov!" We eat bagels. But it all seemed like a play. Now I am the mother, and I am seized with desperation: Every morsel of my being, every maternal instinct I've earned in the last three years, says to run. How do women do this? I wonder.

Looking down at my son, not even big enough to open his eyes and object, I am struck by the unfairness of it all. He has not chosen this; he is about to enter a covenant that he does not consent to. The reason we do goes like this: All those years ago, the founding Jew Abraham and his first son, Ishmael, took it upon themselves to do this to themselves. And so now, to commemorate their brises, their covenant with God, we submit our sons to a ritual circumcision. And each time you do it, each time you call the mohel to let him know where to be and when, it is a choice you're making. It is a choice I have made.

Now, before you get excited and skip to the comments section so that you can berate me for my choice to circumcise my son, don't miss the nuance here: To assume that this essay is about whether or not I should circumcise my son is to miss the chance to criticize me for the even uglier dilemma that this essay is actually about. See, there's no doubt I'm going to do this. I'm just trying to figure out why. This essay isn't about the bris; it's about why a woman -- who, like some of you, believes this is mutilation -- would choose to do something so brutal to her newborn son. It's about the fact that as I stand here, I'm still not sure why.

My relationship with religion is complicated. I was raised in a religious family and sent to a yeshiva, where I learned to confuse my hatred for school for a hatred for religion. I swore when I got out of there, there would be no more skirts, no more morning prayers, no more scripture learning, no more blessings before and after food, no more nonsensical rules governing how and when to talk to boys.

I wanted out, and so I got out. As I unpacked in my college dorm, I made a pledge to never get roped into a Shabbat dinner or Yom Kippur fast again. I did whatever I wanted to do on Friday nights, even though the sun was setting and my religious compadres over in Flatbush were lighting candles and settling in for the evening. I did not date one Jewish boy — couldn't risk it. I didn't eat pastrami once. That's the shame of a religious education, isn't it? We get so caught up in the method and persona of who is delivering the message that we forget that it is not they who control the information. It is just they who have first crack in your life at disseminating it. They are not messengers of God. They are merely messengers of your parents' tuition dollar.

But religion can always find you. For some of us, maybe some like me who lack imagination, the fact of religion, the fact of God, is so ingrained in us that by the time we are old enough to question the word of God or even the existence of God, it is too late. Some of us -- not all, surely, but some -- are no longer able to picture a world in which God is not the creator, the author, the determiner. Some of us can't even fathom a world in which God doesn't exist.

Perhaps this is why, no matter what, it was important to me to marry someone Jewish. Though I didn't celebrate my religion, I wasn't ready to sever my ties to it with so much finality as to marry out of it. And so, when I met the man I would eventually marry — a man whose disdain for the hypocrisies of the Catholic Church outshone my mere annoyance with Judaism — I told him I couldn't marry him because he wasn't Jewish. He began thinking about Judaism, and he began learning about it. Eventually, he fell in love with it, maybe even more than he fell in love with me, and became committed to converting. I don't remember the turning point when his conversion went from doing something he was doing for us to something he needed to do for himself, but I do remember a point where he told me that he was going to get a full circumcision (he had never been circumcised).

One Thanksgiving morning, inexplicably in special-occasion wear, we arrived at a mohel's house. I was instructed to sit outside the mohel's study, which doubled as a surgical room for just these occasions. The mohel left a radio on for me, presumably so I wouldn't hear my husband if he cried out in pain. His wife made small talk with me. For the next three weeks, I nursed my husband through an incredible amount of pain. Pain, but never once regret. The regret, and the guilt, they were mine alone. After all, here I was, forcing the first of three men in my life (so far) to undergo a ritual for a religion I was only partially partial to.

Of course, as irony would have it, my husband's love for Judaism only grew stronger after his conversion was complete. Our home is kosher; we attend synagogue. We are even Sabbath observant. My husband wears his yarmulke everywhere. With effort, I have allowed my current experience of Judaism — a rabbi I like, a community that sustains us — to rewrite the bad parts left over from high school, and I find that I'm somewhat relieved that this is how it ended up for me. In fact, I would even say that at some point, not very dramatically, but over a cumulative number of experiences, I chose Judaism right back. But why? To what extent is the acceptance of religion into my life at this point a way to reconcile the fear I face as I give birth to and raise children? To what extent is this acceptance an attempt to cling to something that can help me be brave when I am overwhelmed by the randomness of luck, the accident-proneness of the universe?

And so here I am, holding this child, wondering for the second time if my belief in God is a good enough reason to do this. Now in the sanctuary, I look out into the crowd. My family has flown in from New York. My friends are all here. They have woken up early, delayed an on-time arrival at work or camp, gotten their children here in time to celebrate with us, to meet our son, to learn what we have named him (in Orthodox tradition, a boy's name is not announced until his bris). I should feel warmly toward them. Yet all I can think of is how they seem like the bloodthirsty audience at a gladiator tournament in ancient Rome. First they will watch my son get mutilated, then they will cheer, then they will eat bagels. Though I have invited them here, though I have provided the bagels, I hate each of them for it.

I think of what brought me here. You light some candles on Friday night; eventually you go to synagogue. For your wedding, you find that you've registered for two sets of dishes, one for meat and one for dairy, according to kosher law. All of a sudden, you're standing at your son's bris, not so sure if this is what you meant when you lit those first candles. No, it's not so much the momentum or velocity of religious practice that brought me here. It's more like the inertia of it: My practice of Judaism has tended to stay in motion since no force has slowed it down.

I am surprised to learn, though, that it's not all inertia. Had my husband never converted, had I been destined to live a life with some other man — say, some born Jew as uninterested in religion as I had been — my sons would still have their brises. Why?

Becoming a parent is hard. When you glimpse how every piece of you is invested in your children, it is shocking and overwhelming. When I gave birth to my first son, I was struck by the fact that I had spent nine months worried about how he would come out — whether he'd be healthy, whether he'd survive the trip. As I held him in my arms, I realized that though he was born healthy, there were no guarantees. In fact, now that he was outside my body, he was less safe than before. I realized, suddenly and in a cold sweat, that I wouldn't know if this experiment — parenthood, child-rearing, child loving — would work out till I was on my deathbed and I could be assured my children were outliving me. Sure, there are other things that quantify success as a parent, and I hope to meet those goals, too. But I can't help but think that making sure they live long after I've passed is at the top of that list.

While I do know that I am not in control of certain things in my sons' future — peer pressure, meningitis, drunken drivers, Justin Bieber's effect on tweens, school shootings, cancer — I do know that I am sometimes overwhelmed, nearly driven mad, when I realize how much is out of my control, how much of their safety is not determined by my actions.

In those times, when I am seized with that kind of desperation, I realize why I submit my sons to this ritual. When I do it, I am asking God to share the responsibility with me. To help me parent my children, for no parent would allow something awful to befall his children if he could help it, right? I am so out of control that I resort to a kind of superstition, a kind of magical thinking. I will give you this, God. I will hurt my sons for you, and you, in exchange, will keep us safe. Please give me peace. Give me my sons. Let them live. Let them be healthy. Let their lives be easy. Let me merit the chance to see my children outlive me.

When we begin to have children, we cling to those beliefs; we cling to the hope that the universe is not random so that we can function. For how can we function if we really knew that today could be the last day? Each new child, each new love, is a test of our luck, of the universe's love for us. Each child is like a dare. We are not guaranteed anything.

And so I do it. I hand my son over. After many excruciating minutes, say, five, it is done. The congregation has the gall to call out "Mazel tov!" I feel ugly. I feel relieved. I spend the rest of the day searching my son — Haskel is his name — for signs of forgiveness. He trusted me after this week we'd gotten to know each other, him falling asleep in my arms with the guileless, open face of one who'd never been startled awake by fear. I don't know if his mind is yet sophisticated enough to feel betrayal, but I know I'm testing it. People slap me on the shoulder and tell me that it doesn't hurt the way I imagine it does. Few of them have a relatively recently circumcised husband to dispute that.

Ultimately, though, I am comforted by the feeling that I've secured something. I will do this excruciating and unthinkable thing, and God will, hopefully, protect my children. I'm not even stupid enough to think that I have any kind of guarantee that Haskel's life will be blessed because of this. I don't pretend I am wise enough or enlightened enough to know the ways of God. I even leave room for the idea that religion is a made-up superstition whose goal is to function in exactly the way I'm using it. But I have to do what I can. Whatever our magic is, whatever spells we can cast, whatever wishes we need to make, whatever deals we can broker, we need to do what can. Sometimes, being a parent is just too much to handle without at least some wishing, without just a little magic.

Taffy Brodesser-Akner is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.

Here's the lede:

Here's a thought: The 70% of Americans who oppose what amounts to an Islamic Niketown two blocks from ground zero are the real victims of a climate of hate, and anti-Muslim backlash is mostly a myth.

First: "an Islamic Niketown"? What ... what does that mean? Will there be shoes for sale? Are Americans objecting to the commercialization of the sacred ground near but not adjacent or particularly related to the former site of the World Trade Center, where a complex of commercial office building are currently being constructed? Couldn't Goldberg, who is Jewish and from New York, have come up with an analogy that actually helped explain to his readers what he is talking about?

The data backing up Goldberg's thesis? FBI hate crime statistics. That's it. There were only 481 hate crimes against Muslims in 2001, "the year a bunch of Muslim terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam on Sept. 11," Jonah helpfully reminds us. ("Now, that was a hate crime," he adds, because he is a truly execrable columnist.)

Goldberg certainly doesn't like hate crimes, but he finds that to be an acceptable number of them. Although, the ADL presented the FBI's numbers with the disclaimer that "anti-Islamic" bias crimes are hard to classify, because people were going around stabbing Sikhs and blowing up Hindu temples in the weeks after 9/11. One group, using contemporary media accounts, found 645 incidents of bias in the first week after 9/11.

And as Conor Friedersdorf pointed out when Goldberg first tried this line, even outside of outright crime or incidents of harassment or threats, the entire national media conversation became, at times, incredibly anti-Islamic. Goldberg claims, hopefully (but probably not) in jest, that occasionally "heated" anti-Muslim rhetoric is dwarfed by "open bigotry toward evangelical Christians" on the Op-Ed page of the New York Times. If anyone can point to anything published in the Times that is as hysterically anti-Christian as, say, any random week's worth of Andy McCarthy's contributions to the National Review, please let me know.

Then there is the fact that this miserable summer has, from sea to shining sea, featured  enraged white people staging marches in the street attacking all Muslims as terrorist sympathizers, for the crime of wanting to build a house of worship in their communities. And the entire conservative political elite, along with a huge portion of the supposed other wing, refuse to even bother to condemn it. (Indeed, they indulge it! The Muslims in New York are all told to be more "sensitive" to the angry white people!)

So you can maybe see why some people are concerned about an atmosphere of intolerance toward American Muslims, and the possible effects of such an atmosphere. It is about more than just FBI-identified bias crimes.

The "news peg" of that Time cover on Islamophobia that Jonah is so mad about is not some sort of lofty essay about stupid middle-American pigs being bigots; it is based on an actual poll, of the Americans themselves. Some fun findings:

Twenty-eight percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Nearly one-third of the country thinks adherents of Islam should be barred from running for President -- a slightly higher percentage than the 24% who mistakenly believe the current occupant of the Oval Office is himself a Muslim.

Forty-four percent of Americans have a favorable view of Muslims. Even Mormons top 50 percent.

I'm just saying that before we go around congratulating ourselves, as a nation, for not spending even more time vandalizing the property of people we suspect to be Muslim and physically attacking anyone in a turban, we should maybe ask ourselves if we are setting the bar a bit low.

But Goldberg apparently thinks that it's bigoted against real Americans to be at all concerned about bias against American Muslims, because Goldberg, who does not give a shit about American Muslims, does not think the coordinated nationwide campaign to make people uneasy about them has led to that much violence.

This, actually, is the funniest line from Goldberg's piece:

Meanwhile, to listen to Obama -- say in his famous Cairo address -- you'd think America has been at war with Islam for 30 years and only now, thanks to him, can we heal the rift. It's an odd argument given that Americans have shed a lot of blood for Muslims over the last three decades: to end the slaughter of Muslims in the Balkans, to feed Somalis and to liberate Kuwaitis, Iraqis and Afghans.

Well, if that is how you interpreted that speech, I can understand why you'd find it "an odd arguments." Lots of arguments probably seem odd when you don't understand rhetoric or logic. But, yes, Jonah Goldberg still thinks America is owed a great big fucking thank you from all the people we've been "liberating" in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Barack Obama should spend less time apologizing to people who hate us for our freedom and more time apologizing to people who hate him because they think he's a Muslim.