Judaism

Finding Fresh Water

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Rabbi Dr. Haviva Ner-David’s Shmaya Mikveh is Israel’s only pluralistic mikveh. It offers an inclusive spiritual environment to a wide variety of visitors who are often excluded from the state’s public mikvehs.

Culture

Obama's Vacation, and the End of Downtime

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At a time when too many people are out of work and too many others are holding down two or three jobs just to survive, it might seem a bit frivolous to lament the lost art of leisure. But leisure – restorative time – is a basic human need. And fewer people are getting the benefit of it, apparently even when they’re on paid vacations. A new Harris survey finds that more than half of all U.S. employees planned to work during their summer vacations this year – up six percent from the previous year. (Email is a prime suspect in this crime against leisure.) Soon enough, all of us will be taking presidential-style vacations like the one starting tomorrow.

Judaism

Trayvon Martin and Tisha B’av: A Jewish Response

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The acquittal by jury of George Zimmerman who shot and murdered the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin was emblematic of the consistent racism and double standard used in the treatment of minority groups or those deemed “Other” in the U.S. and around the world. What can Judaism teach us about our response? What would a Love Rebellion look like in the face of this racialized violence?

Christianity

An Easy Essay on Community

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Beloved community is that fellowship in which we know ourselves as we are known in mutual dependence. It is the membership in which we learn to take responsibility for our future in mutual accountability. It is the circle of trust in which we know our flourishing depends upon mutual welcome. Beloved community is not an ideal we achieve but a gift we receive. It is the medium which is the message of God’s love in our world.

Judaism

From Vacation to Transformation: How Spiritual Retreats Are Changing Judaism

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People and communities are transformed by retreats. We come to realize that our spirituality, our culture, our identity—Jewish and beyond—isn’t just tied to our local day-to-day world, our family traditions, our personal habits. Our identities are fluid and can evolve, inspired by exposure to a world more expansive that we could imagine. This shift is crucial to address the challenges we all face today.

Non-Violent Communication (NVC)

Remembering the Sixties: The Free Speech Movement

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Today, we hear a great deal of talk about the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, and very little about the First. Yet, it is that amendment, defending as it does the rights of free speech and assembly, which is absolutely essential to the life of a democracy. We were idealists, who wanted our country to live up to its purported ideals. To that charge, I am still happy to plead no contest. If that made us criminals, so be it. We were loyal Americans, exercising our right to criticize the nation of which we were citizens, and which we loved.

Judaism

My Jewish Atheism

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As with Emile Durkheim, for me, divinity is manifested in community and we are a holy community, as all good communities are. I am religious because I belong to a religious community, which I love, not because I believe in supernatural beings. There is only one God, as our tradition suggests, and we atheists don’t believe in it (how strange that people typically genderize God as male, as if God could also have a race or nationality). Even without God, I am a proud, practicing, affiliated, and active Jew and congregational member, having had a bar mitzvah and a Jewish wedding, regularly attending services and serving on committees, as well as engaging in Torah and Talmud study, and my son having had a bar mitzvah and hopefully, sometime in the future, a Jewish wedding.