World Religions News

NEW YORK (RNS) — Manirag Reddy Gaddam, a 30-year-old data analyst from Hoboken, New Jersey, said he had never anticipated his sudden turn to the Hindu faith in his 20s. Equally unexpected, he said, was pulling an all-nighter last year as he celebrated Mahashivratri, the daylong Hindu holiday dedicated to principle deity Lord Shiva. 

“I was planning to exit at 2 a.m.,” said Reddy Gaddam, “but the air was so electric that I just stayed. By the time I went home, it was 8 a.m. It was crazy.”

This year’s celebration of the holiday, which fell on Sunday (Feb. 15) and ended early Monday, was no less of an exertion. “Today, I’m fasting as well, like I haven’t eaten anything today, I didn’t drink anything,” said Reddy Gaddam. “I don’t know how I’m surviving, but I have a lot of energy.”

From a rented event space in New York with nearly 300 others, Reddy Gaddam watched a Mahashivratri celebration livestreamed by the Isha Yoga Center in southern India. The celebration, hosted by the renowned guru and yoga teacher Sadhguru, drew an estimated 140 million followers around the world, who chanted, meditated and danced in remote locations for 12 hours. 

Mahashivratri, which means “the Great Night of Shiva” in Sanskrit, takes place as Lord Shiva’s cosmic energies are said to be at their highest. Falling as the new moon of the lunar month of Phalguna is dark in the sky, the festival is traditionally marked by staying awake for 12 or 24 hours, as devotees deepen connection with themselves and Lord Shiva. Sometimes the 12 hours are spent in meditation, or in “marathons” of devotional singing to the deity of destruction and transformation.

“When you sit with your spine straight, there’s an upsurge of energy,” said Reddy Gaddam. “When we’re doing this whole meditation together, it is magnetic, like you can feel that energy. I was just feeling ecstatic. We kept dancing the whole night, we sat down for 30 minutes, and then we just kept dancing up until morning. We felt the presence of Adiyogi,” he said, using an alternative name for Shiva that refers to the god as the first ascetic yogi, from which all yogic wisdom arose.

Mahashivratri also marks the divine marriage of Shiva and the goddess Parvati, the embodiment of feminine energy, which is called Shakti. Devotees of Shiva, called Shaivites, worship both the masculine Shiva and feminine Shakti together as Paramashiva.

In Los Angeles, Tripurasundari, an initiate of a Shaivite Hindu community, Kailasa USA, has been preparing for Mahashivratri for months. On the biggest night of the year for the “Hindu micro-nation,” as the group calls itself, almost 100 devotees offered milk, ghee, flowers and fruits to the Shiva Lingam — the stone obelisk that represents Shiva in his transcendent form.

Swami Nithyananda, himself considered an incarnation of Paramashiva, the union of feminine and masculine Shakti, oversees Kailasa’s temple, which is home to the largest Shiva Lingam in North America. 

“It’s really easy to stay up all night,” said Tripurasundari, a California native. “You have so much bhakti because there’s so much energy,” she said, using the Sanskrit word for love of the divine. “And of course, a lot of us wake up and we do puja (ritual worship) and we do yoga, and we meditate, and our kundalinis (primal energies) are awakened. There’s so many aspects of that energy staying alive within us.”

According to many Shaivites, the ultimate goal of enlightenment in “Paramashiva’s economy” can come from connection with Shiva — the primordial energy which is not only a god, but a representation of all metaphysical existence. “So much healing can happen when we just realize that we are consciousness, that we are Shiva, and this is how we’re empowered, and how Swamiji empowers us,” she said. 

But like interpretations of Lord Shiva, Mahashivratri celebrations are diverse. Rishik Dhar, the head of the online educational community Shaivite.org, practices Kashmir Shaivism, a largely philosophical approach to Hindu life that overlaps with science and astronomy. These Kashmiri Pandits, as these devotees are called, celebrate the day of Shiva and Parvati by indulging in a feast, a “tantric” way of marking the holiday that, Dhar said, “scandalized” the many Hindus who either fast or refrain from eating meat on the day.

Despite the “surface level” differences, he said, “the philosophical idea or ideology is more similar than different. Paramashiva is that absolute consciousness of which everything else emerges, and what we are praying for is that oneness with that absolute consciousness.”

On Mahashivratri, Hindus celebrate the cosmic coming together of Shiva and Shakti, said Dhar. What’s important across many paths of devotion, is that “we worship and ask for that same realization to occur in us as well. It is the same idea that we all want to realize that we are just an extension of Shiva, basically.”

Yogiraj Utkarsh, CEO of the World Yoga Federation, which certifies yoga instructors and was founded by the modern Indian Swami Vidyanand, held his first-ever 24-hour kirtan, or devotional sing, on Sunday. A broad range of yoga teachers, Hindu and non-Hindu, celebrated at a yoga studio near Los Angeles with 30 musical artists, among them the Grammy-nominated kirtan singer and producer Dave Stringer.

Utkarsh said some people he invited had wondered if anyone would be willing to come sing and dance for 24 hours straight. 

“But I said, the Divine will come,” he said. “That is enough for me. The real kirtan, you don’t do for an audience, you do for the Divine. And if you do with that intention, there is no force on the earth that can prevent the Divine from coming.”

(RNS) — A federal judge issued an order on Friday (Feb. 13) barring federal immigration enforcement agents from raiding certain churches except in a “true emergency,” handing a preliminary win to a growing number of faith groups that have sued President Donald Trump’s administration over its decision to end restrictions on raids at houses of worship.

Judge F. Dennis Saylor of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts issued a preliminary injunction, siding mostly with the religious plaintiffs. The case, filed last July, centers on faith groups who argued their religious freedom — particularly rights guaranteed by the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — had been violated by the president’s decision to rescind a 2011 internal government policy that discouraged immigration raids at “sensitive locations” such as hospitals, schools and churches. 

Although the judge decided that three of the plaintiffs — a trio of regional Quaker groups — lacked standing, the injunction will apply to all the other plaintiffs, which include five regional synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America as well as churches affiliated with American Baptist Churches USA, Alliance of Baptists and Metropolitan Community Churches. It does not apply to houses of worship that were not involved in the lawsuit. 

“In substance, the preliminary injunction will prohibit warrantless enforcement actions — absent exigent circumstances — inside a church, at the entrance to a church, at a religious education facility (such as a Sunday school), at a religious social-service facility (such as a day-care center), or on adjacent church property (such as a parking lot),” the ruling read.

The judge also barred immigration enforcement “within 100 feet of the entrance to a church, absent exigent circumstances or supervisory approval,” and disallowed agents from “knowingly setting up checkpoints to interrogate persons on their way to or from a church.”

Saylor permitted the federal government to take action at a church “in emergency situations,” describing a potential scenario where “an armed and dangerous individual attempted to take refuge in a church.” But the judge suggested such a situation would be rare and noted that raids on churches would not be allowed only because agents have “supervisory approval.”

“The Court can conceive of no circumstance, outside of a true emergency, in which a law-enforcement operation to enforce the immigration laws inside a church would be justifiable under the First Amendment and RFRA,” the ruling read.

The reference to supervisors appears to be a rebuke of the government’s current policy. When Religion News Service asked Department of Homeland Security officials last year about incidents of apparent immigration enforcement in or around churches since Trump assumed office, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said officers need “secondary supervisor approval before any action can be taken in locations such as a church or a school.”

In a statement Monday, McLaughlin said the court order “is based on a false narrative,” adding, “Let me be clear: (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) does NOT raid churches.” McLaughlin argued the ruling is an attempt to “demonize our brave ICE law enforcement,” who she said were facing an increase in assaults and death threats, and referenced a recent protest at a church in Minnesota by demonstrators who claimed a pastor there worked for ICE. (Several of the demonstrators and two journalists who covered the protest have since been arrested.)

However, an RNS analysis last August found at least 10 reports of apparent federal agents conducting immigration enforcement actions on or in the immediate vicinity of church property. At least one in June included video evidence: A pastor in California filmed apparent federal agents as they detained a man in her church parking lot, as the pastor insisted they leave the property. The following month, San Bernardino Bishop Alberto Rojas lifted the obligation for Catholics in his diocese to attend Mass if are concerned aboutICE raids, citing what he said were recent instances of federal agents detaining parishioners at two churches in the region.

And earlier this month, agents were filmed arresting a man on the grounds of North Hills United Methodist Church in the Los Angeles area, which local faith leaders criticized.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Democracy Forward, one of the legal groups representing the plaintiffs, said a judge issued a similar ruling last year in another case brought by a group of Quaker organizations, the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship denomination and a Sikh temple in Sacramento, California.

“This is the second federal court to confirm what we have long known: the Trump-Vance administration’s attempt to turn sacred houses of worship into houses of fear for immigrant communities is unlawful,” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward, said in a statement.

The impact of the new ruling may be larger, however, as the plaintiffs appear to represent a much higher number of churches.

At least four separate lawsuits involving dozens of religious denominations and groups have been filed over the president’s decision to rescind the sensitive locations policy, all claiming the move violates their religious freedom. 

Despite Friday’s ruling, some worry that tensions between the federal government and faith groups are primed to escalate further this year. According to Wired, ICE is planning to build new offices in multiple locations that sit near houses of worship.

(RNS) — Amid a massive immigration crackdown in Minneapolis these past two months, hundreds of clergy joined crowds of demonstrators to protest the violent arrests and detentions of thousands of the city’s immigrants as well as the killing of two U.S. citizens.

But apart from the demonstrations — often met with smoke grenades, tear gas and bullets lobbed by federal immigration agents in military gear — a Reform rabbi and a Lutheran pastor of a mostly Latino church found another way to resist federal immigration officers — by deepening their partnership, building relationships and extending solidarity.

Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg and Pastor Hierald Osorto were out on the streets demonstrating too. But in the wake of the deployment of as many 3,000 immigration enforcement agents in their city, they moved beyond public declarations. Over the past few weeks, they’ve held two joint prayer services — one at her synagogue, the other at his church. They are writing a play together.

Last week, the two congregations announced they are jointly raising $1 million by Sunday (Feb. 22) to aid people in Minneapolis who have been unable to pay rent or meet other needs as a result of the two-month siege.

“What has emerged, and that now exists between our communities, is a deepening commitment to each other’s survival through this time,” said Lekach-Rosenberg, 42, the lead rabbi of Shir Tikvah, a congregation of 600 families.

Osorto called the coming together of the two communities by the Yiddish and Hebrew term “chutzpah,” meaning audacity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“We need more chutzpah, creativity, trust and connection,” said Osorto, 41, the pastor of San Pablo/St. Paul Lutheran Church. “I think our collective work has been powerful and grounding for our communities to hear, because they could then imagine what it might be.”

Border czar Tom Homan announced Thursday that the Minneapolis immigration operation was ending and that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security would begin drawing down paramilitary-style agents that have terrorized locals. But residents of the city have yet to relax.

The weight of the siege of Minneapolis has fallen heavily on members of San Pablo. The congregation, founded by Swedish immigrants, is now majority Latino, made up of immigrants from Mexico and Ecuador, as well as U.S.-born Spanish speakers. Services are a mix of Spanish and English.

RELATED: ‘Jews against ICE’: Rabbis lead hundreds in mass Jewish protest outside ICE headquarters

Ever since immigration agents swooped down on Minneapolis for Operation Metro Surge late last year, many immigrant families, no matter their legal status, have stayed away from church, work and school. They’ve been reluctant to leave their homes. One man related to a San Pablo church member was arrested, sent to an out-of-state detention facility and has since been released. Though initially focused on Minneapolis’ large Somali immigrant community amid a federal fraud probe, the operation soon expanded into what was widely viewed as an immigration enforcement indiscriminately targeting brown-skinned Latinos. Overall, an estimated 4,000 residents were arrested.

Amid the dragnet, community members have pitched in to help, picking up prescriptions and driving fearful residents to doctor’s appointments. Osorto said he never thought his pastoral duties would include buying blackout curtains for members of his congregation, but that’s what he did recently to help a family whose windows were too exposed to a back alley.

For Shir Tikvah members, fear of targeting by government agents in balaclavas is something many Jews, children or grandchildren of immigrants who escaped Europe to the U.S. for safety instinctively understand. Lekach-Rosenberg was one of the organizers of a recent two-day multifaith gathering that brought hundreds of clergy to Minneapolis to learn how to organize against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

A fluent Spanish speaker, having spent time with an Indigenous rights organization in Honduras earlier in her life, Lekach-Rosenberg began a friendship with Osorto soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration last year. Both had been interviewed by a local reporter about Trump’s executive action to void a decades-old policy exempting houses of worship from ICE actions. They started meeting for coffee at May Day, a worker-owned cafe in the city.

The two were together on the streets nearby when an ICE agent shot and killed Renee Good on Jan. 7. Afterward, they decided to plan a series of joint rituals as a way of bringing people together and showing solidarity. They envisioned a choir performance of “Todo Cambia” (Everything Changes), a famous song performed by Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa that speaks to the immigrant experience.

Nils Dybvig, a member of San Pablo who is fluent in Spanish, volunteered in the choir but soon realized one additional way he might contribute to the joint services would be to drive some members of his church to rehearsals, knowing that ICE was scanning license plate numbers and stopping those cars with plates owned by people with Latino-sounding names. “I don’t feel like I have to worry about getting pulled over,” said Dybvig, who is of Norwegian heritage. 

Dybvig said he wanted to live into what has become his church’s mantra over the past few months: “I am brave, because we are brave” — “soy valiante, porque somos vallientes.”

At a Friday night “Shabbat Shira” or “Shabbat of Song” service on Jan. 30, Lekach-Rosenberg and Osorto sat next to each other, facing the combined congregation.

“Here’s the rule about Shir Tikvah,” said Lekach-Rosenberg as she translated into Spanish. “We sing loudly before we know the song.”

The Torah portion for that weekend read in synagogues across the world included Miriam’s song, celebrating the Israelites’ safe passage through the Red Sea on their way to the Promised Land.

Osorto took a moment to reflect on its parallels to the people of Minneapolis.

“We also need Miriam to teach us how to dance, how to claim joy in the midst of danger, how to imagine a different world,” he said.

Two days later on Sunday, members of Shir Tikvah joined San Pablo for Candelaria, a Christian feast day marking Mary’s presentation of baby Jesus at the Temple. 

The service opened with a queer Aztec dance group and a reading from the Gospel of Luke. Because Candelaria coincided this year with Tu B’Shvat, the Jewish birthday for the trees, the joint service incorporated a Tu B’Shvat seder (with a tasting of various fruits and nuts). It ended with a feast of tamales and a piñata for the children.

Neither Lekach-Rosenberg nor Osorto favors interfaith services that dilute tradition. Both opened the service acknowledging their hesitation but later said they realized the service offered their congregations a way to imagine a future beyond the crisis.

“I think our collective work was powerful and grounding for our communities to hear and imagine what might be, versus focusing on whether or not the ritual that we’re doing was our traditional way of doing it,” said Lekach-Rosenberg.

The success of the two services has led the two clergy to consider what’s next. Although immigration forces will soon be leaving Minneapolis, the needs arising from the nearly two-month siege are immense.

A few months ago, Shir Tikvah launched a mutual aid fund called Yesod, from the Hebrew word meaning “foundation,” to help residents who needed cash for rent, utilities or other necessities. Last week, when the synagogue announced it was giving out a third allocation of $50,000, it took only seven minutes to disperse all of the funding.

That’s when Lekach-Rosenberg approached Osorto about thinking big. What if the two congregations could raise $1 million in mutual aid for the people of Minneapolis? They gave themselves a Feb. 22 deadline. So far, they have raised $250,000.  (Shir Tikvah distributed $200,000 before the two joint fundraiser.) The two congregations are not equal. San Pablo is only a third the size of Shir Tikvah. But it, too, is committed to doing all it can to raise the money.

As Osorto said in a fundraising video the two clergy taped: “We don’t have to let others define what is possible, even as we face the impact of the federal invasion of our community. We are creating an ecosystem of dignity and care here in Minnesota.”

RELATED: As ICE operations rattle Minneapolis, Catholic women step forward

(RNS) — The past few weeks, I’ve received many digital reminders of the arrival of the most blessed of months in the Islamic calendar, asking: “Are you ready for Ramadan?” From my Instagram feed to WhatsApp group messages to unopened emails, with each reminder I receive, I can tangibly feel my cortisol levels rising ever so slightly as the days creep up to Tuesday (Feb. 17), the first evening of Ramadan.

Wait, am I ready? What do I need to do to prepare? What is everyone else doing? Enter comparison mode.

Aicha Sebaa, a California-based Eastern medicine practitioner, notes in one post: “Ramadan … is a prolonged physiological fast, and what the body does in that space, given enough time and momentum, is autophagy, the cellular housecleaning that only begins when you stop feeding what no longer needs to be fed.”

Autophagy refers to a quality control mechanism meant to rid our bodies of waste. But why does it feel like the more we prepare ourselves to temporarily deprive our bodies of food and water during this blessed month, as a way of drawing nearer to our essence, our Creator, and to physically healthier lives, the more we counterintuitively resort to feeding our nafs, or souls, with all of the countless other things it craves?

From Ramadan markets to iftar dinner parties and pre-dawn suhoor gatherings, from religious competitions to sports nights, from nutritional cooking classes to communal prayer and reflection nights, so much buildup and pressure come with the arrival of this month. The Ramadan calendar is eaten up (pun intended) before the month even begins, and before we know it, we find ourselves seamlessly (frantically) flowing into the pre-Eid frenzy.

And while all these specialized events curated for this month have a well-intentioned place and value, it seems that year after year, they are only amplifying. With this urgency to occupy as many spaces as we can, there seems to be a persisting fear of being left out or deprived of holy merriment.

But wasn’t this month meant to serve as a divine mercy for us all — a momentary breather, not an added burden?

As we prepare earlier and work harder at maximizing the benefits to reap in Ramadan, there’s something critical that seems to be missing: the ability to create emptiness. The void that’s left in our stomachs while fasting from food and water is perhaps meant to serve as a physical parallel to the mental and spiritual space that we are meant to create in our lives. That space may be to sit in idleness with our own selves, an act that is particularly important in a world so inundated with noise.

In an era long before digital, informational and social noise occupied so much of our minds (and fingers), Prophet Muhammad took to sitting by himself in the Cave of Hira to meditate and contemplate. It was a different era with different challenges, but the same core need.

As we approach Ramadan, I’ve been thinking a lot about the many addictions that hinder me in various aspects of my life. Dr. Gabor Maté, a Canadian physician and author, speaks and writes about addiction as a coping mechanism for underlying emotional issues, a way to mask what lies beneath. He notes that an addiction can be anything that gives us temporary relief or pleasure but can cause long-term negative consequences. The more I take the time to notice, the more I realize how many addictions we all have. Some are subtle and have become more socially acceptable in society today than, say, a drug or gambling addiction, but perhaps equally damaging.

How addicted are we to performance and activity? To our phones? To shopping? To work and the notion of success? To the perceptions of others? How much do we value being productive and accomplishing micro-milestones as a means to feel worthy or relevant — to others, or to God? How much of these addictive traits are our children passively absorbing? And most importantly, how can I use this Ramadan to break these addictions?

In one hadith, or tradition, attributed to Prophet Muhammad, it is said to beware of those sins that we think are small or minor because they, in fact, become major. The small habits are the ones that become really problematic because they stick and become ingrained. That’s the nature of an addiction.

In all the excitement in anticipating this month, while we are constantly performing to achieve the “feel” of Ramadan, in our homes and mosques and calendars, and dare I say in our social media feeds, have we taken a moment to realize that we’re indulging in addictive behavior that distracts our souls? Perhaps we are so addicted to satisfying our egos — in the name of worship, in this case — that we have not quite grasped the wisdom of embracing the emptiness and slowness that the month is inherently all about.

I once enjoyed — and to some extent still do — attending Ramadan markets and witnessing all the beautifully curated faith-based products for our homes, children and loved ones, planning gifts for loved ones, attending social and spiritual events, and taking opportunities to absorb all the Ramadan feels. I have young children and am always contemplating ways to make this month feel that much more special and memorable.

But year after year, as my kids grow, and as I grow, I have come to realize that what I want — and what my nervous system needs — is not more activity to keep us engaged, not more intentionally crafted products and possibly not even more social outings. I know these are all readily available on my screens, at my mosques and in my circles, and I am thankful for those. But what I think I truly want is more returning to the essence — more simplicity, more bang for my buck, or if you will, more barakah (blessing) for my bismillah.

This year, the term that has been buzzing is integration. It’s time for us to integrate all the things we already know and have experienced, and to create small but significant change by putting them into practice. That change can only occur if we give ourselves enough space to sit with ourselves and perform an internal audit. We must really evaluate where we are and where we want to be. And by embracing that emptiness — of our stomachs, of our calendars and of our commitments — we are taking part in an autophagy of the waste that we’ve unknowingly allowed to attach onto our very busy, overwhelmed lives.

I guess I’m not quite ready for Ramadan in the traditional ways. But maybe precisely that will help to make this Ramadan the one that I need, at least for this year. And what a blessing it is to be able to witness the evolution of the experience of this month in my home and heart. 

(Zehra Kamani is a Toronto-based freelance writer with a background in research. Her website is zehrakamani.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)