UPI plus Reb Blog = American Rabbi
UPI will be now publishing some of my essays and other musings in the Religion and Spirituality section each week.For more, check out: AMERICAN RABBI
Six Characters in Search of a Plot
Last night I was down at Baruch College, checking out my friend Billy Yalowitz’s new theater show (written by Muhammed Ahmed Zaher.) The title, Six Characters in search of a Plot, was apt. There was little plot – the show is more a series of impressions on the process of creating political theater b/w Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs when you can’t even have a conversation about politics. My friend Hanin Tarabiya from Face to Face was in the show…
Lemkin’s House
Last night we had a fantastic multifaith panel after the show Lemkin’s House by Catherine Filloux. Her play places Raphael Lemkin, the Polish lawyer who coined the term genocide, into an afterlife in a house hanuted by some of the genocides that occured after the Shoah. Particularly in Rwanda and Bosnia – and spilling over into the current turmoil in Darfur. On the panel, I was joined by Rev. Chole Breyer, an Episcopal priest and writer for Salon and Imam…
Poems for the Days of Awe 5767
Old shul in Asbury Park Old shul in Asbury ParkBlood of Christ Evangelical ChurchThe mikvah,Now baptizingRosario MendesFourteen years oldNinth graderGood in mathBad skinThe congregation was dyingNot figurativelyTwenty seven funerals in one yearRabbi Furst again in the Skylark, again with the black suit, Again with his wife “the funeral shoes, not the good ones.”Yes, the soundtrack has changed, but the ruach hakodesh has not left the building.The choir still sings Halleluyah,(now to the thump of an electric bass,praise music they call…
Montreal
After the 9/11 ceremonies I met with Dr. Mohammed Essawi and the faculty of Al-Qasemi Academy from Baaka El Garbia, Israel. It was a wonderful hour with an inspiring group of Muslims from Israel who are working on coexistence education. (thanks to Trinity’s Rev. Hoke and the AJC’s Ari Gordon for making this meeting happen.) From there, my 9/11 themed week continued with a trip to Montreal to participate in the ‘World’s Religions after 9/11’ conference sponsored by McGill. (I’ll…
The Bell of Hope
Tommorow morning, the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks I’ll be with a group of New York City religious leaders: Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, and Jews, who are joining together to ringa bell at Trinity Wall Street, a few short blocks from Ground Zero. Apparently ABC Good Morning America will be airing the 8:35 ceremony. It is hard to believe that it has been five years. It was all so surreal. I remember looking down from 28th Street watching the first bellows of smoke rise up, thinking that maybe a commuter plane had hit the building, and that a few people might have died. By the time I got to work, one of the towers had fallen. Then I watched as every Emergency vehicle in the city headed downtown. When the second tower fell,I left work and began to walk. Some people were laughing, saying how…
Tikve Frymer-Kensky Zichrona L’vracha
I just read the news that one of my most beloved teachers, Tikve Frymer-Kensky passed on to the next world. Tikve, who we once dubbed the red-hot Mesopotamian Momma, was a wondorous teacher. She gathered us on the back porch of her suburban Philly home and told us the Gilgamesh Epic, translating Sumerian terms in a sing-song. Her most notorious moment came when she asked us to draw the outline of an uncurcumsized penis on the chalkboard so that she…
Spiritual Audacity
Hezbollah, Heschel, and HopeRabbi Daniel BrennerAugust 27, 2006Presbyterian ChurchRensellearville, New York Last summer, Lisa and I and our three children were in Israel, visiting a kibbutz on the border of Lebanon to see my cousins’ new home. It was Friday night, and we were seated around a table on the porch watching the sun set over the green hills. There were three generations gathered at the table and we all sang the Sabbath hymn to the messengers of peace. We…
back from Mount Pisgah
What is summer without a strenuous mountain hike that leads to a chilly waterfall? Here is one of the many views we took in as we traversed the Blue Ridge Parkway on our recent trip to my homestate – North Carolina. Other highlights included chanting the Book of Lamentations with my parents’ chavurah, enjoying the waterpark at Carowinds, seeing my kindergarten and sixth grade teachers at Temple Israel (Ruth Goldberg and Raph Panitz) and eating at Gliberman’s Deli! Now I’m…
In the words of one Israeli teenager…
Below is an email that we just got from one of the Israeli participants in our Face to Face/Faith to Faith program. A ray of hope at a difficult time. July 27th — Hey everybody…. When I lived in a settlement in the West Bank, Fakir, I had very nice neighbors—the Yaakobi family. They had a son, Nathaniel, who was the best friend of my brother Tamir. The mother was Hannah, a very nice woman who worked in my school….