I was reading the fantastic blog Velveteen Rabbi and she had a link to a Radical Torah piece by Rabbi David Seidenberg on Passover and social responsibility. Since I did a text study on this theme a few years back, focusing on three midrashim from Shmot Rabba, I thought I’d share them below… 1) And…Moses…went out to his brothers and looked upon their burdens… What did he see? He would look upon their burdens and cry and say, “I feel…
While I couldn’t go to Seville for the 2nd Imams and Rabbis for Peace Conference (I was in Florida at the RRA Conference) it is great to see that the event is continuing, and generating some good press. On Engaging America, the piece that I wrote on the first congress is being featured along with some other press.
Last night I saw Lisa Kron’s play “Well” – a play on Broadway about a Jewish girl growing up in Lansing, Michigain whose mother believes in two things: Allergies and racial integration. The piece was deeply funny – especially the part of her mother, played on stage by a woman seated on a Lazy-boy recliner. But more important than the inventive staging of what is basically a one woman memoir based show was the central idea — the “through line”…
I just returned from the Embassy Suites Hotel in Deerfield Beach, Florida, a resort which recently was overrun by ninety-seven sandal wearing reconstructionist rabbis. It was the annual convention of the rabbinic body I am a member of – the RRA – Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association- and I had the honor of co-chairing the show with Rabbi Vivie Mayer, a colleague from Connecticut. The highlight of the conference for me was watching the 87 year old Rabbi Jack Cohen (pictured here-…
Tommorow I’ll be speaking to documentary film makers at a forum with Robert West, the executive director of Working Films – a documentary film collective that works on issues of social activism.
I spoke to the rabbinical school of the Jewish Theological Seminary this morning – an informal event entitled ‘community time’ in the Beit Midrash. I joined my colleague Katharine Henderson in a presentaiton on inter-religious work. It was great to meet Rabbi Eddie Feld – whose work I have long admired, as well as Rabbi Shapiro – a student of the Lubliner who is the resident Beit Midrash guide. He is in his eighties, at least, and speaks with a…
New Jersey’s finest Klezmer outfit, The Klez Dispeners , rocked our purim bash last night at the String of Pearls. They had everyone, especially the kinder, up on their feet, dancing like extras in Fiddler.
My piece on Pharmacogenics is up on THE NEXT BIG THINK site this week! (thanks Andy) I imagine that very few people outside of the medical research community have heard the word pharmacogenomics — and I would have been one of those people if it hadn’t been for a man with a gnome-like beard named Bob Pollack. Pollack, a research biologist at Columbia University, recently taught a course titled “Evolution, DNA, and the Soul” at Auburn Theological Seminary — an…
Thanks to the blog “Life-of-Rubin” I came aross this brilliant little film – A perfect treat for the month of Adar.
The Role of Religious Minorities in Pluralistic Societies:A Conference Celebrating the Centennial of the American Waldensian Society23-26 March 2006 — Rutgers Presbyterian Church236 West 73rd Street, New York, NY 10023Three days of presentations, workshops and events led by religious scholars and church leaders on the gifts and challenges of religious pluralism in Western societies.The Conference will offer Waldensian perspectives from Latin America and Europe alongside North American voices and experiences. The purpose of such juxtaposition is to foster reciprocal learning…