Word: symbols
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...mountain-chalet-style store with wooden beams lining the ceiling and natural-grain wooden tables on the floor. France is one of the few bright spots in McDonald's flagging European business, and maybe that's a sign of hope. If a burger chain demonized by activists as the symbol of American imperialism and poor taste can win over the French, maybe it can rebuild its business at home. --With reporting by Matt Baron/Chicago, Leslie Berestein/Los Angeles, Desa Philadelphia/New York, Mark Schultz/Atlanta and Adam Smith/Paris
...than at first he seems. His history constitutes akind of multifaith scandal, a case study for monotheism's darker side, the desire of people to define themselves by excluding or demonizing others. The fate of interfaith stalwarts seeking to undo that heritage and locate in the patriarch a true symbol of accord should be meaningful to all of us suddenly interested in the apparent chasm between Islam and the West. Says Abraham author Feiler: "I believe he's a flawed vessel for reconciliation, but he's the best figure...
Feiler began Abraham after the Sept. 11 attacks, seeking a unifying symbol in a time of strife. Instead, the book records his growth from a dewy-eyed Abrahamic novice to a more realistic observer. As he remarks, "When I set out on this journey, I believed ... the Great Abrahamic Hope was an oasis in the deepest deserts of antiquity, and all we had to do was track him down and his descendants would live in perpetual harmony, dancing Kumbaya around the campfire. That oasis, I realized, is just a mirage." The sober understanding Feiler ends up with, however...
...enough to make a grown man cry, which Feiler nearly does. "They took a biblical figure open to all," he writes, "tossed out what they wanted to ignore, ginned up what they wanted to stress and ended up with a symbol of their own uniqueness that looked far more like a mirror image of their fantasies than a reflection of the original story." To his horror, he realized that Abraham "is as much a model for fanaticism as he is for moderation...
...path does not make it passable. Part of the problem, says Jon Levenson, a Harvard Jewish-studies professor who has examined affinities and conflicts in the Abrahamic traditions, is that even before they went to work on him, his story featured a theme of exclusivity. "If you want a symbol for universal humanity, go to Adam," he says. "Don't go to Abraham, because his whole story is about the singling out of one guy to found a new family, a distinct family marked off from the rest of humanity. He was always a particularist." Another stumbling block between Jews...