What do you do with your parents’ possessions? What do you do with their cherished collections of a lifetime?
Articles
A City Where Justice Dwells
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Place matters. Even in this globalized, Internet era, I believe in making long-term commitments to specific places, and especially to the places where we live. Our communal social justice efforts should begin by choosing the places where we will make an impact.
2013
The Magic of Organizing?
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In Harry Potter, the wizarding world and the world of Muggles—the ordinary, boring, unmagical people—are at first kept separate, barely impacting one another. In Moriarty’s book, there aren’t two worlds, only one. Magic isn’t a counterculture. It is everyone’s folk culture.
Articles
Torah Stories for Young Children
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Alison Greengard and Carol Racklin-Siegel’s series of Bible stories is a thoughtfully laid-out reading experience, but one that also comes with limitations. In contrast, The Bedtime Sh’ma: A Good Night Book and Modeh Ani: A Good Morning Book, both adapted by Sarah Gershman with illustrations by Kristina Swarner and also published by EKS, are lyrical and engaging books for both the youngest listeners and early readers.
2012
Black Liberation Theology and the Lynching of Jesus
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It took James H. Cone four weeks to write his first book, Black Theology and Black Power, a work surging with revolutionary expectation. It took him six years to write his latest work, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a book of haunting sorrow and beauty.
2012
In Death’s Dominion
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I am writing this by the bedside of my ninety-eight-year old mother, watching the life forces slowly ebb. It is a strange privilege, the fear of the inevitable and the sorrow of anticipated loss mingled with gratitude for so many years of presence and a minimum of pain in this twilight time. On the table beside the hospital bed on which Mom lies, rests Eitan Fishbane’s Shadows in Winter: a Memoir of Love and Loss. Eitan is my nephew and Mom’s grandson. In 2007, his wife, Leah, was two months pregnant when she died suddenly at the age of thirty-two of an undetected brain tumor, leaving her husband and a four-year-old daughter.
Articles
Jewish Values in the Face of Ecological and Humanitarian Crisis
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Who Stole My Religion is an inspirational and prophetic book that explores the deep issues that are facing us today: how to heal the ecological world and save the soul of humanity.
Articles
Mapping a Jewish Activist Future: A Review of Nepon’s Justice, Justice Shall You Pursue
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How can we create space for friction and dissent from within Jewish institutions, such as the Jewish Federation or Hillel?
Articles
Our Progressive Traditions
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The source waters of the American religious imagination are larger than Christian orthodoxy—just as Jesus was an Orthodox Jew only more so, and St. Francis, a cosmic Christian whose love for his brethren included birds, donkeys, and the sun. Whatever the source of our common faith, it contains multitudes.
Articles
Comics and Jews
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A most unusual book by a most unusual author in the comics world, this small-sized, thick, square volume follows in many ways upon Fredrik Strömberg’s Black Images in the Comics (2001). It also departs in so many other ways that the contrast is vastly illuminating.
Articles
Bridging the Abrahamic Traditions
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In a world where violence seems to prevail, it can be hard to believe in a God of love. Starr’s beautifully crafted book offers and enter into a space where divine love is illuminated as a central teaching and core ethic within the heart of these three monotheistic traditions.
2012
Much More Than a Historical Novel
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It is probably impossible to imagine ourselves in the place of the Jewish survivors of World War II and the Holocaust immediately after the war, but this is exactly the task that Yehiel Grenimann, the son of survivors, set for himself. Yanosh and Eva, his central characters, were hidden on the Aryan side of Warsaw, thanks to their connection with the Polish nationalist underground. Yosef Borowski, known as Bora, the third major protagonist, was a partisan leader during the war. The novel begins with the entry of the Soviet army into Warsaw and ends with Yanosh and Eva’s imminent arrival in Australia.
2012
When American Jews Were Divided and Weak
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It’s extraordinary to see how different the contemporary American political climate is for Jews than it was seventy years ago. Today, the “Israel lobby” is widely regarded as all-powerful, and all but one of the 2012 Republican Presidential contenders—along with the Democratic incumbent—have eagerly sought Jewish support. In the 1930s and early ’40s, Jewish lives were barely worth a mention for most Americans. The authors of Millions of Jews to Rescue and Irgun Zvai Leumi address this subject from opposite vantage points on the political spectrum.