A samurai-sword wielding assailant was shot dead in front of the Hollywood Scientology center. The guard who shot him said he was close enough to hurt them when he fired. Word is, he used to be a member, but not many details have been released, yet. The controversial, star-magnet church hit the media limelight again when anti-Scientology protesters demonstrated outside the preview of Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons” because Katie Holmes, wife of the religion’s most famous celebrity, Tom Cruise, has a starring role.

Kanye West gave his award to a fellow artist after he won at the American Music Awards Sunday night—among other interesting moments. Here’s the scorecard.

The first black presidency already may have sparked a rash of violence coming from white extremists. The Ku Klux Klan is making a comeback, and violent hate crimes have been on the rise in the three weeks following the election of Democrat Barack Obama, according to an L.A. Times article. Looks like to become post-racial we may yet need to iron out a few wrinkles.

Obama supporters are beginning to worry he’s not as far to the left as they hoped. Much of his future administration is shaping up to be Clinton and Bush holdovers, calling his campaign for change into question. Of course, he has chosen several close friends and associates to serve in his Cabinet or as senior advisers. And Wall Street, at least, seems to appreciate his pick for Treasury Secretary, though many of his views remain a mystery.

The Pope apparently doesn’t have much faith in interfaith conversations. In a letter to a scholar-politician, portions of which were published in an Italian newspaper, Pope Benedict XVI said “interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible,” though that hasn’t prevented the Vatican from meeting with Muslim leaders to find common positions on issues such as terrorism and religious freedom. Meanwhile, in Southern California, Jewish college students visited mosques as part of a national “twinning campaign” in which Jews and Muslims team up to fight Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

Citigroup: add one more bailout to the pile. The government has approved a deal to secure about $306 billion in loans and securities and to directly invest $20 billion in the company. It was the third time in three months the government has tried to contain the unraveling financial crisis.

Hollywood’s chewing its cheeks over the same-sex marriage ban. It’s a place that has celebrated free speech and weathered the McCarthyist witch hunts. Now Hollywood insiders who supported Prop 8 are being “outed.” Film Independent has gotten flak for defending Richard Raddon, the director of the L.A. Film Festival, who donated $1,500 to the Yes on 8 campaign. And the director of a nonprofit theater organization in Sacramento resigned after complaints of his donations to the campaign.

Will the real Sarah Palin please stand up? The Republican V.P. candidate made her first appearance on Saturday Night Live this weekend with a faux-surprise interruption of the opening sketch, in which Tina Fey, now famous for her impressions of the Alaska governor, was giving a press conference. Palin later bobbed her head to the beat and threw her hands in the air as a pregnant Amy Poehler rapped about Eskimos and shooting moose. Very funny, but at the same time, it seemed to me Palin was cringing throughout, like she was taking medicine for her sick campaign (see below).

Obama’s pushing for out-and-out socialism, McCain said over the weekend. By taxing the rich and redistributing the wealth through government programs, he is turning the IRS into a giant “welfare agency.” Obama responded quickly, telling an audience of 100,000 in St. Louis that “John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people ‘welfare.’”

Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama on Sunday. At the same time the former secretary of state and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced his support for the Democratic presidential nominee, Obama set a fundraising record with $150 million in September.

As oil prices drop, so might hopes of transitioning to alternative energy, or so reports the Washington Post. On Friday the price of oil dropped to $71.85 a barrel, lower than it was one year ago before the rapid climb that led to record-high prices at the pump this summer. The idea is that consumers may get complacent when gas is cheaper and ease some of the pressure on auto manufacturers to build electric or other alternative-fuel vehicles. What would Joe the Plumber say? [Ed note—who cares? He's a fraud].

Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan called for greater interfaith friendship on Sunday and called organized religion a failure at a dedication ceremony for a mosque in Chicago. Farrakhan has been criticized before for making anti-Semitic remarks, but apparently has tried to tone it down in past years. Thousands of people of various faiths attended the event.

The new Robinson Crusoe just might be gay escapism, writes Heather Havrilesky of Salon.com. The title character and his sidekick Friday seem to have created a paradise for social outcasts in NBC’s new drama, and the two get along almost too well. But that’s just the hook for Havrilesky’s broader critique of the show, which she says may get monotonous after a few episodes despite good writing and solid acting. She also panned the new TV show Crash for reinforcing the same stereotypes and contriving the same almost-unbelievable scenarios that she says plagued the Oscar-winning film on which it is based.

Slate released an iPhone application for political junkies on Sunday. The online magazine’s Poll Tracker ‘08 delivers the latest state-by-state polls and election data directly to the phone. Would Google get moving on its mobile operating system already? Maybe we can get a phone for less than $500 again soon…

Multiculturalism sounds magical and exciting, an example of the best part of globalization.

My husband is Burmese Buddhist. He worships idols. I’m an American Jew. I spent my childhood attending weekly Hebrew school classes and saying the Sh’ma every night: “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

I haven’t told him about the bris yet. I’m not sure how to bring it up. “Um, honey, all our family and friends are going to gather around and watch as a strange Jewish man chops off a piece of our future son’s penis.”

No, I don’t think that’ll go over well.

Read more of this week’s Pushing Off here.

I haven’t told my husband about the bris yet. I’m not sure how to bring it up. “Um, honey, all our family and friends are going to gather around and watch as a strange Jewish man chops off a piece of our future son’s penis.”

No, I don’t think that’ll go over well.

My husband, Morning, is Buddhist. I spent my childhood attending weekly Hebrew school classes and saying the Sh’ma every night: “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

My husband worships idols.

We met in Rangoon, where he grew up, while we were both working at the Myanmar Times newspaper. We lived together in Burma and again in Thailand, two predominantly Buddhist countries.

We spent vacations traveling, and in every place we went, we would visit a different pagoda or temple. We would take off our shoes at the entrance and then circle around the pagoda in the traditional clockwise fashion. We would admire the ornate Buddha statues decorated with gold and gems. In Inle Lake, Morning bought gold leaves to add to four Buddha statues and receive merit.

After circling the pagoda, we would enter it, and Morning would kneel in front of the collection of Buddha statues and pray.

I would stand in the back. I was there to admire and support, but I wasn’t about to get down and pray. I was a Jewish tourist, not a participant.

Now, we are married and living in Los Angeles. We’re no longer tourists visiting sites. We’re settled, more or less. We have a Costco membership and Los Feliz library cards. And now, we have to figure out how to bring two beautiful yet different religions together in one apartment.

Multiculturalism sounds magical and exciting, a picture-perfect example of what is wonderful about globalization.

Our wedding was just that. We had a melange of different Burmese and Jewish traditions— including a Rabbi, challah and horah, and Burmese tealeaf salad, harpist, and traditional dancer. Morning stomped on the glass while wearing a longyi, or Burmese sarong.

But after the wedding comes life, when things get a little trickier.

A Buddha statue sits on the top shelf of our bookcase. Two candles rest on either side. At nighttime we light the candles and the statue glows.

Morning says the statue has not been consecrated. Once it has gone through the consecration ceremony, you are supposed to care for it by offering water and food. So right now, technically, it is not really Buddha.

Try explaining that to my family. I can only imagine my 82-year-old grandfather— who wasn’t exactly supportive of the idea of me marrying a non-Jew in the first place— visiting his granddaughter’s home and finding a shrine.

So much for the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.

Then there is the children predicament. We plan on raising them both Jewish and Buddhist. Judaism to me is about my family and the traditions and lessons. There is no reason our children can’t grow up learning the rituals of both Burmese Buddhists and American Jews. They can eat gefilte fish on Passover and then have water fights on Thingyan, the Burmese New Year.

But I know it won’t all be that easy.

It is one thing for me to watch Morning kneel in front of Buddhas and pray. That is his religion, and I respect it. But what happens when we take our children on visits to Southeast Asia or even to temples in the States? Is Morning going to teach them how to kneel down and pray to statues? And if he does, how am I going to feel watching my children pray to idols? Or at least what I consider idols.

Just as I draw a line between being an observer and a participant in some Buddhist rituals, Morning does the same with Judaism. He does not wear a yarmalka at ceremonies. To me, a yarmalka is just a head covering and non-Jews often wear them as well to show respect. To Morning, it symbolizes being Jewish and by not wearing one, he is saying that he is different. What happens, though, if we have a son? If we make it past the bris ceremony, will our son grow up wearing a yarmalka at synagogue? At his own Bar Mitzvah? And if so, how will Morning feel?

In other ways, I think having children will make being in an inter-faith marriage easier. Morning can take the children with him to visit the monastery. And I won’t have to go to synagogue by myself because I can bring the kids. During Rosh Hashana last week, I went to the USC Hillel alone. It was filled with mostly undergraduates. And though it was interesting to talk to freshmen during the meal about sorority life, I felt very alone during the services.

Of course, sharing a religion would not make marriage easy. There are many people who within the same religion face great gaps in observance. When my grandmother married my grandfather, who was raised Orthodox, she did not know what keeping Kosher really meant. She didn’t know you couldn’t bring in Lobster Cantonese on paper plates. “Marriage at best is not easy, that’s for sure,” she told me.

No matter what, marriage is hard. Despite the lure of multiculturalism, the reality of sharing different cultures and values is complicated. In marriage, whether you are dealing with religion or other identity-shaping beliefs and practices, you have the common ground, and you have all the ways in which you are different.

Morning and I don’t know what our children will think of being Jewish and Buddhist, or of being American and Burmese. We need to learn more about each other’s culture so we can understand the ways in which they overlap, and in which they diverge.

We do know we’re willing to take on the challenge.

——
Hanna Ingber Win is a staff writer and editor. Pushing Off is a column of her dispatches from twenty-something land. Contact her at: hingber@gmail.com