Judaism

Torah Commentary: Why Keeping Kosher Never Goes Out of Style

By |

The excrement from a monogastric (singly-stomached) animal, ours included, is a biological hazard unlike the finely processed, grassy product of a multiply-stomached animal. Therefore, when a society eats meat, there is going to be a lot of whatever livestock they are eating, and thereby a lot of poop! It is then in everyone’s best interest, and obviously so, if this poop can safely be used as manure, as opposed to having to deal with a more hazardous waste product.

art

Another Anne Frank and a Jewish Oskar Schindler

By |

I’m wondering if — 68 years on — “Holocaust fatigue” is setting in, perhaps reinforced by a certain weariness regarding “Jewish dramas” in general, because of the seemingly endless succession of world crises directly or indirectly related to Israel.

Christianity

When Liberals Feared Equality (And Conservatives Merely Hated It)

By |

That struggle for racial justice is often held up as an example of how change is possible. And its stories have helped teach many movements of nonviolent resistance, in countries ranging from the Philippines to Poland to South Africa. But how was change possible at that time? These days the lack of progress in our politics is a given, and it is usually chalked up to fierce polarization, chiefly between Democrats and Republicans. As today, the national politics of 1963 (certainly on the domestic front) was deeply fractured along ideological lines between liberals and conservatives if not strictly between Democrats and Republicans. Still, change happened – and on the most flammable question, race.

Healing Israel/Palestine

Exodus (the movie) A Passover Maundy Thursday Reflection

By |

When Holy Week and Passover are the same week, the simultaneity reminds us that Jesus was not a Christian. He was a radical Jewish rabbi who called himself the Son of Man, teaching his followers to understand their tradition at its basic purpose – love for God and for all of God’s creation. The Last Supper, the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist began as a Passover meal, the purpose of which is to remember Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt. Jesus instructed his disciples to use the table meal to remember him, and he gave a new commandment: Love one another.

Christianity

Are Passover and Easter Just Celebrations of Violence?

By |

Surrounded by the usual code words for these holidays – “freedom from slavery” for the first, “resurrection and new life” for the second – this question may seem at the least silly and at worst an exercise of blasphemous anti-religiosity.
Yet it is actually a serious question. Consider that while freeing the Jews all, yes all, the Egyptians’ first born – from that of the Pharaoh to the Pharaoh’s servants to the Pharaoh’s pet cat – had to die. And consider that Christianity seems to require the suffering and death of an innocent.

Health

The Next Time You See The Red Sea Part…

By |

Without safe water and sanitation, we cannot curtail malnutrition, a multitude of diseases, or poverty.We cannot support sustainable farming and food security, promote girls’ education or gender equality.Not even peace can be achieved when some have and others don’t have something as basic to life as water.

Environment

Eco-Judaism: The Torah Mandala and the Mystical System of Sustainability

By |

In Torah, holiness/sustainability is a living system of systems just as we humans are living systems of systems. Each component of the system—humans, the Earth, nature, time intervals, and the Godfield—are all in recursive relationship with every other part of the system. We humans are energy movers, drawing down from and sending up to the Divine source, and sending out to and receiving from other people, other life forms and the living Earth. The holiness system is in constant flux, needing to be balanced and corrected by human action.

Healing Israel/Palestine

A Poem on the Impossibility of Passover

By |

I’d always been on the liberal end of the Zionist spectrum but the more I read about the history of this 100 year conflict between Zionists and the indigenous Arab population, the more I had come to realize that we had become the ‘oppressors’, we were now the Pharaoh for another people. Once my enlightenment on the Palestinian narrative was ‘out of the box’ it was impossible to put it back in. And how could we celebrate Passover without making any mention of this?
These days I use my own Haggadah, one that both acknowledges Jewish tradition and recognizes that it is possible for the victim to become the victimizer. The poem below is an attempt to express the moral question that now surrounds and profoundly challenges our annual commemoration of the Exodus:

Environment

Exploring the Shared Values of Vegans and Jews at Passover

By |

We see the liberation of animals as another social justice movement for which the Jewish community should naturally feel sympathetic. Jews and vegans share common values such as justice, fairness, equality and compassion.
While my friends and I celebrate the Jewish people’s freedom from slavery at our veder in the traditional way, we also honor the work that we are doing to move towards a day when animals are considered moral beings.