“I’m not casting a vote for godlessness at large or in my own spiritual life, which is muddled with unanswered and unanswerable questions. I’m advocating unfettered discussion, ample room for doubt and a respect for science commensurate with the fealty to any supposedly divine word.”
An extensive and important reflection on the need for Jews – specifically Religious Zionist Jews – to consider reading the Bible critically in order to avoid catastrophic political conclusions
http://thetorah.com/why-bnei-akiva-needs-biblical-criticism/
Your heart breaks if you think about it.
If you move beyond the numbers of people dead, of innocents dead, of children dead; if you move beyond the rhetoric thousands of miles away, that dominates the airwaves and the newsfeeds, that seems almost as tragic for the health of our community; if you move beyond the endless demonization of the Other, of their lives, hopes and fears, of their religion and their narratives, of Our religion and our narratives — you are just left with pain.
And the thing is, I don’t feel like I have any answers any more. I used to think I did. When I read the op-eds, when I talk with friends and family, I know which rhetoric speaks to me and which repels me. Now I think I know why.
It is because, deep down, I am the kind of person that would rather be killed than kill.
That is why I am drawn to seek peace, to attempt to see everyone’s humanity, and to suspect power. But I know now, after interminable weeks of suffering, personally and vicariously, that this does not mean that I have any answers. All I know is that I would not want to be making any decisions on the ground. I know the solution that I, as one individual, yearn for and would see realized במהרה בימינו. But I do not know anything about how to get there, about the right way to get there, if there is one.
Your heart breaks if you think about it.
Because we’re all tired of the endless commentary of despair in the Middle East
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/a-poem-because-theres-too-much-prose/
An extremely important viewpoint to keep in mind as we are all bombarded with ever-more-depressing headlines from the Middle East
While it is easy to assume that political dialogue about Israel/Palestine in the Jewish community is only strained because of the current violence erupting in the region, we must remember that this is arguably the biggest problem facing the organized Jewish community.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionnow/2014/07/quashing-jewish-dissent-on-israel/
Thought-provoking analysis of the current Torah portions being read in synagogues around the world – so relevant you would swear they were written for our own ears.
It is crucial to remember that religion implores us to much more than stand on principle on sexual matters.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/07/13/discrimination-is-un-christian-too/
Many fitting and thoughtful tributes have been written since Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (Reb Zalman) passed away on July 3rd, by his students and others who knew him well. As I was not fortunate enough to count myself in that group, I offer instead some thoughts on his book Integral Halachah, which I finished reading days before his passing.
There is a widespread myth in Judaism that we would benefit from freeing ourself of. It is the myth that halakha is the single code of Jewish law that of most commonly practiced today by Orthodox Jews. This widespread myth contends that, just as the Talmud is the dominant surviving interpretation of the Torah, so too are the chain of legal codes, beginning with the Shulchan Aruch, the dominant (or only) interpretation of the Talmud’s legislative content for our time.
This myth has left many in the non-Orthodox world with what is ultimately a false choice: either we can follow (Orthodox) halakha, or we can live a Jewish life that in some respects might align with (Orthodox) halakha, but to a large extent is not governed by any system of Jewish law and ethics, in any codified sense.
This is a false choice, and a false myth, because halakha is not a unified, univocal system. Halakha ought to be the ethical/spiritual/legal framework by which we organize our lives as Jews. If this is ever to become reality, it is clear that the Jews alive today need more than one organizing system of halakha. In other words, what is important here is not that there be one, and only one, system of halakha, but rather that a greater emphasis be placed in all Jewish communities on following a set of legal and moral precedents that each given community can abide by. These legal and moral precedents should be derived from both Jewish canonical texts and modern experiences, living up to the highest ethical standards that we can realistically set for ourselves.
While this might sound nice, there are many reasons why the myth described above remains intact, and why most non-Orthodox Jews do not view themselves as being bound by any system of Jewish law (bound in the sense of being obligated, as we are obligated to follow local secular law). There has been precious little work done in re-conceptualizing what halakha might look like outside of an Orthodox framework. This is one of many reasons why I am grateful to Reb Zalman and Rabbi Daniel Siegel for writing Integral Halachah.
In the book, Reb Zalman speaks of halakha as a comprehensive way of drawing on the wisdom of our forebears while taking into account dimensions of our lives that are new, that represent the paradigm changes that have occurred since the major works of halakha were written.
I see there being two major obstacles to bridging the gap between the myth of univocal halakha and the vision that Reb Zalman is advocating. First, halakha appears to most non-Orthodox Jews as being overly concerned with minutiae that do nothing (or next-to-nothing) to uplift us spiritually or lead us to leading more ethical lives (including the life of the planet that we so carelessly abuse). Second, Orthodox halakha is a product of a time in which women were treated differently than men (not to mention LGBT Jews, or non-Jews), in a way that is anathema to many in the non-Orthodox Jewish community today.
These obstacles, in turn, leads to few Jews actually opting in to a halakhic framework, which leads to so many of us losing out on the tremendously positive affects such a system could have. Reb Zalman talks about the ethical benefits of business practice and food consumption, to name just two examples, that would clearly do more to improve the lives of those we interact with if more of us bought into a system that we viewed as morally positive.
I think that one of the most powerful ways that we can live out Reb Zalman’s legacy in the area of halakha is to continue to experiment with new ways to live Jewish lives bound by halakhic systems that speak to us. Reb Zalman repeatedly states in Integral Halachah that his own life, personally and as a Jewish leader, was marked by a never-ending process of experimentation with Jewish practice. To make halakha a vibrant part of all Jewish lives, we owe it to Reb Zalman’s legacy, and to ourselves, to continue to experiment with creating alternative halakhic systems.
A raw, human account of what it is to speak about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the next generation: “I also don’t want to tell my 6 year old that these boys were murdered because they were Jews. I’m not ready to pass on the psychic trauma of victimhood, to shape his Jewish self-understanding in that way.”
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-will-i-tell-my-children/
A tribute to Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of Renewal Judaism and a major influence on how so many of us conceive of our Judaism.
http://forward.com/articles/201398/reb-zalman-the-prophet-of-both-and/
A needed call for a clearing out of some ghosts from our collective closets
http://jewschool.com/2014/05/28/32261/engagement-not-apologetics-on-ta-nehisi-coates-and-the-nakbah/
Where efforts at ‘inclusion’ in the Jewish community need to go next
http://m.forward.com/articles/199517/include-me-out-of-this-jewish-community/
A must-read on the problems with how we portray map nerd culture in light of the Elliot Roger massacre
An interesting look into how painful it is today to leave Islam
The need for multi-level inter-religious dialogue
While there is more to be said here, Prof. Kitcher does provide a much more nuanced picture of religion than I am used to hearing from professional philosophers.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/the-case-for-soft-atheism/
WhatIBelieveIn 