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We thank all those who shared their ideas on how to make Orthodox synagogues more meaningful. We've chosen SEVEN winners. Their suggestions can help our synagogues and communities be stronger, more creative, more engaging. The winning essays are from Pam Ehrenkranz (Stamford, Connecticut); Yael Kassorla (Atlanta, Georgia); Dr. Alan Krinsky (Providence, Rhode Island); Rabbi Arnold Samlan (West Hempstead, New York); Barbara Mendes (Los Angeles, California); Leonard Stein (Beer Sheva, Israel); and Hinda Bramnick (Boca Raton, Florida).
We hope that you discuss these suggestions among friends and congregants.
Let us work together for an intellectually vibrant, compassionate and inclusive Orthodox Judaism.
Dr. Howard Wettstein is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Riverside. His most recent book is The Significance of Religious Experience, Oxford University Press, 2012. This article appears in issue 16 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
Poet Robert Bly speaks of two periods of “opening” in human life, roughly between 18 and 23 years of age, and then again sometime in one’s mid-40s. The first of these coincides with our college years, a time of notable openness to new ideas, new ways. It was as a freshman at Yeshiva College that I was introduced to serious religion, and I became an enthusiastic participant. My engagement lasted only five years. I was very much in love with the Orthodox life, the practices, and the learning. But for better or worse I had a philosophical conscience.
Rabbi Yitz Greenberg is a prominent theologian, teacher and writer. This article originally appeared in the Jewish Week of New York, May 17, 2013.
Now that Natan Sharansky is going public with his proposal to resolve the Kotel conflict, it is time for the leadership of Modern Orthodoxy to speak out. The message should not be only support for Sharansky’s Solomonic proposal but to dissociate from the policies and tactics practiced by the haredi Western Wall Heritage Foundation.
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo heads the David Cardozo Academy in Jerusalem. A prolific author and lecturer, he is one of the most thoughtful and creative thinkers in the contemporary Jewish world. To receive his weekly “Thoughts to Ponder”, please visit www.cardozoacademy.org. This article appears in Issue 16 of Conversations, the journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
Judaism, to me, is not about laws but about music and musical notes. In all of its laws, I hear powerful sonatas that transform my soul: Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 35, with its heights of intensity; Johann Sebastian Bach’s Piano Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, with his iron fist, uncompromising dedication to detail, and strict adherence to rigid rules of composition, resulting in a phenomenal outburst of emotion. When I listen to these masterpieces, I encounter the thunder and lightning experienced by the children of Israel when God revealed His Torah at Mount Sinai. It feels like being hit with an uppercut under the chin and remaining unconscious for the rest of the day.
Dr. Israel Drazin is the author of twenty-two books, including a series of five volumes on the Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible, which he co-authored with Dr. Stanley M. Wagner, and a series of four books on the twelfth century philosopher Moses Maimonides, the latest being Maimonides: Reason Above All, published by Gefen Publishing House, which he wrote alone. His website is www.booksnthoughts.com.
Marriage and Divorce in the Jewish State:
Israel’s Civil War
By Susan M. Weiss & Netty C. Gross-Horowitz
Brandeis University Press, 2013, 218 pages
Reviewed by Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin
Dov S. Zakheim is Chairman of the American Jewish Committee’s Commission on Contemporary Jewish Life. He earned his doctorate from the University of Oxford and smikha (rabbinic ordination) from Hagaon Rav Shmuel Walkin. This paper was presented to an American Jewish Committee colloquium on The Public Role of the Chief Rabbinate as a Factor in Israel-Diaspora Relations, New York, November 27, 2012.
Our Rabbis taught: A certain Heathen once came before Shammai and asked him, “How many Toroth have you?” “Two,” he replied: “the Written Torah and the Oral Torah.” “I believe you with respect to the Written, but not with respect to the Oral Torah; make me a proselyte on condition that you teach me the Written Torah [only].” He scolded and repulsed him in anger. When he went before Hillel, he accepted him as a proselyte. On the first day he taught him, Alef, beth, gimmel, daleth; the following day he reversed [them] to him. “But yesterday you did not teach me thus,” he protested. “Must you then not rely upon me? Then rely upon me with respect to the Oral Torah too.”
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo heads the David Cardozo Institute in Jerusalem, www.cardozoschool.org. He is a prolific author and world renowned lecturer, and a frequent contributor to the website and journal of the Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals.
As we are in the season of Yom Hashoa, I think of Rembrandt’s superb Large Self-Portrait, which is exhibited at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It cast a spell on me when I first saw it. But on Yom Hashoa it invites thoughts that penetrate deeper and deeper into my very being. When trying to do the impossible—imagining what happened to members of my family and to millions of other Jews who perished in the Holocaust—Rembrandt’s self portrait awakens me from my slumber.
Rabbi Alan Yuter served for many years in congregations in the United States. Last year, he and his wife made Aliyah, where he continues to study, teach and write. He works with the Center for Jewish-Christian Understanding, affiliated with Ohr Torah Stone, Efrat, Israel.
Why in Megillat Esther is the name of God not mentioned even once, considering that it was the hand of God that altered a near catastrophe for the Jewish people living in Persia?
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