Holmes, NY – I’m writing tonight from the summer intensive program of Face to Face/Faith to Faith, the program for college and high school students Auburn runs each summer. The youth are from Belfast, Capetown, Jerusalem and various places across the U.S. Each year that I come (this is my fourth) the program gets better – mainly because we see kids go from being participants to leaders- in -training to counselors. Over time, you see how much impact a program…
Levine’s Judaica recently featured the book I co-authored – EMBRACING LIFE AND FACING DEATH in their catalog – thanks to everyone at Levine’s! You can check it out here. They have one of the largest catalog’s of Judaica I know of – a full line of inflatable matzoh balls.
The event I worked on with Auburn Media – starring MC Cokie Roberts is now online. Here’s the video link Cokie talked about her mother (the former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and a resident of Bourbon Street) and she was both funny and articulate about the way that the media distorts religious voices. Best of all, this lo-tech video captures the crowd laughter and overall energy of the room. She comes on after Macky Alston’s intro.
Last week we had our faculty development seminar up at Auburn (which I enjoyed leading with Lucinda Mosher.) We had faculty from ten seminaries participating, and looking at the question: “What do we teach about the ‘religious other’ and why?” In addition to sharing ideas on how we teach, we went together to the Lotus Fire Zen Temple to speak with Sensei Shugen Arnold, shared a morning with Muslim physician and lay religious leader Dr. Faiz Khan, and went to…
Dear Rabbi:As you know, Thursday evening we usher in the holiday of Shavuot. And, as you know, in addition to marking the anniversary of the giving of our Torah, Shavuot also marks the time when farmers used to bring the first fruits of their crop to the Temple as bikurim (offerings).MAZON has long been proud of a religious and cultural heritage that emphasizes the continued importance of symbolic bikurim. Though the Temple no longer stands, today we act as a…
Double Word Score Intermediary objects –tablets, scrolls, books,It’s all code,chicken scratches, really,God as text, as word, as story, as law,language is a cousin once-removed, Meditate on these words,Really meaning go beyond the words,Place them upon your heart,Meaning tuck them somewhere inaccessible,Write them on your doorposts and gates,Then paint over them with smooth strokes in a latex semi-gloss,Teach them on the way,Open up the sunroof and throw them out the window. It is not the words,That is what the masters always…
So last night I was with a crowd of other Jewish professionals at the Jewish Center, the Orthodox shul that once was led by Mordecai Kaplan. That, I admit, is not blog-worthy. What is worth noting, though, is that the event was a lecture by Cardinal Egan. A bishop preaching from the pulpit in an Orthodox shul – I can hear Mel Brooks in my head “What is this? the inquistion?” I hate to to say it, but the forced…
I once saw Weird Al Yankovich, the Polish American king of pop satire, in an elevator in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Many years back, he spoofed the song “pretty fly for a White guy” with his “Pretty Fly for a Rabbi” replete with fake Yiddishisms. Now some genius has married Japanese anime and Weird Al and alas, another chapter of the Jewish people unfolds…. watch it at all unravel at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=457OT3R_AaI
Swimming in the Arabian Gulf By Rabbi Daniel S. Brenner A week after Qatar and Iran pledged $100 million dollars to the Arab League to aid the struggling Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, I was on a Qatar Airways flight, watching Rabbi Rolando Matalon stare out into the Saudi Arabian sky. The Qataris’ indirect gift to Hamas wasn’t going to stop him from going to Doha, nor was it going to deter the former Chief Rabbi of France and the other four…
Today I became a member of an ‘outreach advisory board’ for the new doc called The Calling by Daniel Alpert. Alpert’s brilliant idea is to track a few students over three years or so as they become religious leaders. So far, he’s followed a young Pakistani Imam-to-be at Hartford Seminary, a Latino Theologian (I wrote Novice earlier – out of ignorance – my apologies Steven) at a Catholic seminary in San Antonio and a guitar playing rabbinical student at JTS….