With their focus on the fragility of walls, the High Holy Days create space for us to dismantle psychological barriers that no longer serve us.
29.3 Summer
The Shadow Side of Freedom: Building the Religious Counterculture
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When did liberal religion start valuing personal autonomy over collective values of love and justice? We need to prioritize a new kind of freedom.
2014
The Empty Throne: Reimagining God as Creative Energy
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God is not an old man who sits on a throne in the sky—God is the creative energy within earth, air, water, plants, animals, and humans!
Articles
Rabbi Zalman and the Making of Seeking the 36
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In 2007 the two of us—novelist Stephen Billias and filmmaker Dennis Lanson—completed our collaboration on a screenplay entitled The 36 about the Lamed Vov, the Thirty-Six Just Men of Jewish folklore. While trying to sell the screenplay, we decided to make a separate documentary film called Seeking the 36 in which we would look for the Lamed Vov living in the world today.
Articles
Shavuot’s Revelation of Self
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Shavuot provides an opportunity to peer deeply into the open self, a process embodied in the receiving of Torah at Sinai. The question is: will you choose to go up?
2014
Loving-Kindness to the Thousandth Generation
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Violence can take on a life of its own, rippling in unexpected directions. But our religious traditions teach us that love proliferates exponentially more.
2014
The Tikkun Passover Supplement
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The Jewish liberation holiday, Passover, has messages for anyone seeking to heal the world. This supplement expands on the Haggadah (Seder guide).
29.2 Spring
The Tikkun Passover Supplement (Spring 2014 Print Version)
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The Jewish liberation holiday, Passover, has messages for anyone seeking to heal the world. This supplement expands on the Haggadah (Seder guide).
Articles
The Tao of Torah
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More than a decade ago I was invited to join a monthly Torah study group in the San Francisco Bay Area that met at the homes of the group members. All of the members were currently or had once been affiliated with Jewish Renewal, a spiritual movement born in the 1960s that integrates Kabbalistic mysticism with modern, progressive values. In the group were therapists, teachers, lawyers, a nurse, a computer programmer, and a business consultant. Several members had at one time been involved with Eastern religions. I felt honored and delighted to join this circle of committed lovers of Torah.
Articles
Jacob, Joseph, and His Brothers: A Story of Child Abuse?
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Almost no one wants to talk about the abuse of children, so it is understandable that almost no one wants to address Jacob’s abuse of Joseph–yet the text itself supports this reading.
2014
Secular Buddhism and the Quest for a Lived Ethics
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Secular Buddhism offers a path that is encompassing, humanistic, and pragmatic, without being sectarian.
2014
When Liturgy Goes Wild, Worship Happens
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Worship should astonish us. That’s why Judson Memorial Church invited a performance artist to play the part of Jesus on Easter Sunday—in the nude.
2014
The Late Great Mosque of Córdoba: When Islam and the West Were One
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Muslim prayer may be forbidden at Córdoba’s Great Mosque, but the guards there can’t keep visitors from spiritual revelations about Spain’s Muslim past.
2014
A Cosmic Prayer: Realizing Our Interconnection
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There is so much beauty in interconnection! A simple prayer turns a morning walk into an experience of sublime wholeness with the universe around us.
2014
Light Hidden in the Darkness: Kabbalah and Jungian Psychology
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Can evil be the source of good? The Kabbalah asserts as much, and Carl Jung concurs, arguing that “where there is no shadow, there is no light.”