Posts

QNA: what’s the deal with Jews and Christmas?

In an attempt to re-start my Adventures in Judaism blog, I’ve decided to start a sort of FAQ series called (drumroll please) Questions Nobody Asked. In other words, questions I’ve been wrestling with that I thought others might be interested in my answers to. (Isn’t that how FAQ lists get generated anyway?) The first question I’d like to tackle is a timely topic: “what’s the deal with Jews and Christmas?” Why has this question been coming up for me lately, you might ask? Well, if you feel the need to ask then I suppose you haven’t been living in America for the past month and a half. There has been the pervasive saturation of the auditory atmosphere with Christmas music that started the day after Halloween. There have been the people wondering out loud on all sorts of social media whether “Merry Christmas” is okay to say as a generic salutation this time of the year. There has been my department’s “Christmas Potluck” that was decorated thoroughly in red and green, tables scattered with
Post a Comment
Read more

A dream of trees

Yesterday we marked the celebration of two holidays, two birthdays even. In a rare coincidence, the American national observance of Martin Luther King, Jr’s birthday fell on the same day as the Jewish observance of “the birthday of the trees,” otherwise known as Tu B’Shevat.  Martin Luther King, Jr, or MLK as he is often known, was rightly famous for many things, not the least of which was his ability as an orator. And his most famous speech was the one in which he told us that he had a dream, a dream that someday his black grandchildren would play side by side with my white children in a world where people would be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin.  This speech was delivered in the summer of 1963, 55 and a half years ago. And that dream has come tantalizingly close to reality – my children have indeed played side-by-side with children of diverse skin colors, ethnic backgrounds, and religious upbringings in their various schoolyards and day care
Post a Comment
Read more

Shalosh Shanim Tovot (three good years)

This High Holy Day season marks the end of my third full Jewish year of living Jewishly (even though I only formally completed my conversion about a year ago) and the start of what promises to be a lovely and exciting fourth year! As it happens, this is about as long as I have managed to stay with one religion in my entire adult life – it seems that my pattern prior to this point has been to embrace a faith tradition with the “zeal of the newly converted” for a couple of years, wear out during the third year as I start to confront all of the places where the theology or practice or culture of that faith just don't fit me, then begin to dabble with alternatives or outright jump ship at the beginning of the fourth year – and so it is time to announce that I am about to become either Sufi Muslim or Zen Buddhist, or some sort of fusion of both.  Just kidding. Seriously, that was just a joke. My rabbis can stop having a heart attack now. For the first time I can remember in
Post a Comment
Read more

Elul reflections 2: trusting God and going all-in

As I continue to prepare for a New Year, the Melekh Ha'Olam has been sending me a couple of messages that I am not especially comfortable with: trust me, and slow down. I'm having trouble with both of those, but I'm going to focus on the first one today. The "trust me" message has come from a couple of unusual sources of life-career-faith advice: the admissions professionals at the two AJR rabbinical schools.  There are, as it happens, two completely unrelated schools, one on the East Coast and one on the West, both named Academy of Jewish Religion, both experimenting with the radical idea of offering their entire catalog of courses online via teleconference to those of us poor souls who live in Middle America, far far away from any of the brick-and-mortar rabbinical schools. And so I, naturally, inquired into both of them. The admissions professionals from both places scheduled initial phone interviews with me just a few days after I inquired. And t
1 comment
Read more

Elul reflections 1: hesed

There is some debate about the relative importance and, for lack of a better word, "relative holiness" of the many (many) Jewish holidays. But if pressed, I suspect that most Jews would identify Yom Kippur -- which is just around the corner now -- as the holiest of Jewish holy days: the day on which we seek forgiveness, reconciliation, and at-one-ment with God (however we understand Him/Her). But I propose that a lot of Jews are less aware of the holiness of the entire month that precedes the Days of Awe, the month of Elul, which is already upon us! Elul is a time for introspection and self-reflection, for a practice known as h eshbon ha-nephesh , accounting of the soul. For the four weeks of Elul, I am trying to write one blog post a week looking at values, drawn from the Jewish tradition of Mussar as interpreted by contemporary sage Alan Morinis, that I think I -- and perhaps we as a society -- need to have more of in our "soul accounts." This week: h esed (
Post a Comment
Read more

How is this Judaism different...

So here I am, day one of "re-entry" into my normal life after my first whirlwind, wondrous "Smicha Week" with the ALEPH Ordination Program. And I'm trying to figure out how to integrate all that I learned and present you, my dear readers, with some sort of "take-home message" from my forty eight days on Sinai.  Well, I learned a lot of things that I'm still sifting through, like "davening (praying) shacharit before breakfast every morning is a really awesome way to start your day" and "you can actually do your prayer services differently every single time and have them all feel 'right'" and "if I can get out of my I'm-a-smart-guy-who-everybody-should-listen-to ego and start listening to all of these other smart people I'm surrounded by I can really learn some stuff." But I'm still processing all of that (and more!) and maybe I'll come out with a lessons-learned blog later this week.
Post a Comment
Read more

Reflections on "The Holocaust as an Identity Marker"

"What [Fackenheim] claims all [self-affirming] Jews hear is a 'commanding voice' from Auschwitz that tells them they must persist as Jews, lest they grant Hitler a post-humous victory. … In the face of all those terrible murders, many Jews, whatever their ideological commitments, have been moved by a strong resolution to continue as Jews..." (Alter, Feb 1981, p.55) "American Jews, [Novick] argues, may have given Hitler a posthumous victory by tacitly endorsing his definition of the Jew as despised pariah." (Penkower, Mar 2000, p.129) " 'What we have done is to make the murder of the Jews of Europe into one of the principal components of the civil religion of American Jews' " (Neusner, Aug 1979, quoted in Alter, Feb 1981, p.55) "Serious problems do arise with the near fixation of American Jews on the Holocaust. … can the destiny of Jews be joined decisively to victimization? … the Holocaust, while vital to understanding Jewr
Post a Comment
Read more