The history of Chanukah squeezes us between two competing narratives: one of idealization and one of consternation.

The former encourages us to view Chanukah as a holiday of liberation, when the Maccabees overthrew their Hellenistic occupiers in pursuit of faith and freedom. The Jews wanted a homeland free of outside ruler and were willing to pick up arms in self-defense.

The latter emphasizes the un-miraculous nature of the conflict and the fact that, when ‘free’ during the Hasmonean period (which followed the Maccabean conquest), Jewish leaders at times engaged in programs of forced conversion and other unsavory acts. Freedom from Hellenistic domination did not liberate Jews from internal strife and harsh rulers.

Lowe’s recently pulled its advertising from the popular television show “All-American Muslim,” bowing to the pressure of Isalmophobes. It is unworthy of our business as Americans who care about the stories of all American religious communities.

We now need a new place to shop, as we approach the new year. Help us draft Home Depot to be the tolerant alternative!

We are asking Home Depot to buy the spots on “All-American Muslim” that Lowe’s used to purchase. If they do so, those who sign this petition commit to turning first to Home Depot as our home, appliance, and hardware store in 2012. We shop tolerantly — and want Home Depot to be our go-to store for religious freedom.

By signing this petition, you are showing that you want all religious communities in
American to have a free voice. You are exercising your freedom to shop at stores that further religious tolerance.

SIGN ON NOW! DRAFT HOME DEPOT AS THE STORE OF TOLERANCE IN 2012!

This article was co-authored by Matthew L. Skinner.

Picture this: an Iraqi reporter becomes interested in the work of a Jewish student in Israel after reading an article about Jewish-Muslim relations in medieval Spain that the student published online. The reporter contacts the student and interviews him about future prospects for Jewish-Muslim coexistence.

As the student in this story and co-author of this article, Joshua Stanton knows first-hand how technology is reshaping the way people of different religions interact. To start with, he and the Iraqi reporter would never have connected without the Internet, which enabled them to bypass regional politics and borders.

Yet the Internet’s potential can yield various outcomes. Despite our increased connectivity, people of different faith traditions remain all too likely to talk past one another. Just look at the comments section of any online news article.

This is a guest post by Jason A. Kerr, a doctoral candidate in English at Boston College. He is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On 7 October, Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, was speaking to reporters outside the Values Voter Summit in Washington, DC, where he had just introduced Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry. Taking aim at Perry’s rival for the nomination, Mitt Romney, Jeffress said that Romney, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “is not a Christian.” Jeffress went on to say, “This idea that Mormonism is a theological cult is not news…. That has been the historical position of Christianity for a long time.”

Jeffress has a point: evangelicals have long been uncomfortable with Mormonism, and significant theological differences – most notably over Christology – exist between the two groups. I’m not going to attempt to resolve those differences here, or to defend the proposition that Mormons are in fact Christian (even though I, as a Mormon, affirm my own faith in Christ).

Rather, I wish to seize on an opportunity inadvertently opened by Jeffress’s overly broad invocation of “the historical position of Christianity” to argue that Mormons and Baptists ought to make common cause in opposing the use of such appeals as tests of religious orthodoxy, let alone as de facto religious tests of fitness for political office.

Here’s the thing: “the historical position of Christianity” hasn’t always been kind to Baptists, either. In 1640s London, for instance, Baptist congregations found themselves altogether on the margins. Adherence to the doctrine of believer’s baptism put them at odds with the longstanding practice of baptizing infants, and their belief that church membership depended on such baptism meant separation from the established Church of England. Thus, Baptist gatherings were illegal, and entire congregations occasionally found themselves in prison. With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, enforcement broke down, and some churches began to meet more openly. For instance, a congregation led by Thomas Lambe held meetings in Bell Alley, Coleman Street that were open to the public and drew huge crowds.

A derivative of this sermon was delivered at Temple Beth Israel in Steubenville, Ohio on Yom Kippur during Kol Nidre services, at the start of Yom Kippur.

Many of the most dramatic moments in a hospital come when something goes unexpectedly wrong. A surgery gone array, a condition gone undiagnosed, or a patient who just doesn’t seem to be pulling through. The surgeons, doctors, nurses, technicians, and specialists do all that is within their power to help their patients — but sometimes there is nothing to be done.

This was a reality I experienced firsthand last year, while serving as a chaplain intern. I was working in the Palliative Care Unit at a large hospital in New York, meeting with patients who faced serious or life-threatening illness. Medicine could do so much — but not everything. Sometimes it couldn’t do anything at all.

In some of those moments of helplessness, when the hospital could no longer keep a patient alive, I took on a truly difficult role: I, along with a team of specialists far more experienced than myself, would break the news of a patient’s death to a family. We would sit in a meeting room off to the side of a hospital corridor. We would give the worst news to people who wanted nothing but the best for their loved ones.

Reactions would vary tremendously on the part of families. Some would express relief that a loved one’s suffering had ended. Others would cry out in pain at the loss. Still others would grieve circumstances that seemed so unfair. But most family members were filled with regret — not only for themselves, but also for the loved one who had died.

Why so much regret? For some, it was because of errors, or perceived mistakes, made early in life — incidents or challenges that the patient had long known about. But for many, there were a whole host of new regrets they voiced on behalf of their loved ones. These ideas had probably not occurred to the patient while he or she was alive. The regrets only became clear after death itself.

For many Jews, the Torah seems inaccessible. It is distant historically, culturally and linguistically. The Biblical figures seem far removed and unapproachable and the scenes and vignettes do not seem applicable to everyday life.

Yet this sense of distance from the Torah may be as much a function of religious education as it is of the ancient nature of the text itself. Hebrew schools face structural problems in engaging students, since many classes are convened on evenings and weekends, when already over-programmed young people are either tired or less receptive to further learning opportunities. Much of the same may be said for adult learning programs.

Teachers are pressed to overcompensate for the inherent timing challenges with programs that entice and engage students and draw them into learning. But these are often difficult lessons to prepare.

It is increasingly becoming recognized that if the Torah is to guide the lives of young Jews, it must itself come alive, and be an experience rather than just another objective in an already long day of school and extracurricular activities. This notion is supported by a Dr. Jack Wertheimer‘s landmark study, Schools that Work: What We Can Learn from Good Jewish Secondary Schools. According to Wertheimer, successful supplementary Jewish education programs exhibited at least three major characteristics, in addition to several administrative aims: they “develop a community among their students, staff and parents”; emphasize “taking Jewish study seriously” and “engage in experiential learning.”

In truly rabbinic fashion, a new question has emerged to answer the longstanding challenge of Jewish education: Could it be that all three of these goals could be achieved through games — not simply by playing them, but also in designing them?

Rabbi Owen Gottlieb certainly thinks so. A resident faculty member at CLAL and Jim Joseph Fellow at NYU working towards a Ph.D. in Education and Jewish Studies, he founded ConverJent to be an oasis of “Seriously Fun Jewish Games for Learning.” ConverJent provides workshops and training in Torah learning through game design and has organized a new Jewish Games Roundtable, as well as designs digital and offline games for Jewish learners.

Rabbi Michael Lerner has helped lead a growing chorus of American rabbis who are voicing their support for the Park51 Islamic community center (often mislabeled the “Ground Zero Mosque”) in Lower Manhattan. His video of support, featured here, is a call for people of all traditions to recognize the holiness in each other. It also touches on the singular hope that Americans have of honoring each other’s freedoms and affirming each other’s beliefs.

Please join Rabbi Lerner in doing the same! Whether you are a rabbi or a nun, a lay leader or proud humanist, the need to protect religious freedom in America has never been more important. Religious Freedom USA, the organization that first featured Rabbi Lerner’s video, is quickly becoming an interfaith movement to support of Park51 as a praiseworthy center that must be protected as an expression of religious freedom.

Religious Freedom USA, of which I am proud to be a founding member, has started a petition in support of Park51. It affirms,

Since the first pilgrims reached the shores of Plymouth, America has shone as a beacon of religious freedom, illuminating the path to liberty for the oppressed from every land, in every generation. Extreme criticism of the proposed Muslim community center in lower Manhattan is an affront to the religious freedom that our Founding Fathers fought to secure. We stand by our belief in freedom of worship and freedom of expression and consider the Park51 community center to be an expression of both. We are proud to unite behind it as a symbol of religious freedom.

Join the movement. Religious freedom is either guaranteed to all or safe for none. It is a cause vital to the entire Tikkun community, as Rabbi Lerner has made so tremendously clear.

[To learn more about this topic, check out Rabbi Lerner's post on the ADL's opposition to the mosque and Josh Stanton's previous post on the controversy.]

One of many images from www.yivoencyclopedia.org

From liturgy to ideology, Yiddish literature and the mass immigration to the United States, Eastern Europe birthed many of modern Jewry’s most important intellectual and social trends. Its impact on Jewish history is on par with that of Medieval Spain and al-Andalus, and even in some respects the period of the great Talmudic academies in Baghdad.

Yet its incredible history and derivate lessons have been largely limited to books and those familiar with them. The People of the Book have long allowed their expansive history to be confined by the medium through which it was presented. This trend has become particularly stark in recent years, as the Internet has expanded the ways in which history and knowledge can be transmitted, as well as the audience with which it can be shared.

Even as Jewish organizations have created websites, online forums, and online publications in response to the growing demand for online resources, Jewish education has remained largely offline. Even as the digitization of the Talmud has facilitated rabbinic scholarship, it has seemed taboo to suggest that Jewish history, philosophy, theology, and liturgy could be accessed through anything but a book or a knowledgeable person.

Just this past week, however, theYIVO Institute for Jewish Research made significant headway in changing the notion that education for the People of the Book might somehow be confined to books alone. After extensive planning and preparation, the institute launched an online edition of theYIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. While it may not leave book learning totally behind (the print edition is being published by Yale University Press), it is set to alter the way that Jews learn about the heartland of Eastern European Jewry.

Photo by Katya Dreyer-Oren

How should future religious leaders be trained so that they can at once be rooted in their traditions and equipped to work with people of others? This question has been asked with increased urgency, as American theological seminaries have tried to adapt to what has become the most religiously diverse country in history. Answers have proven somewhat elusive.

This week, from April 14 – 16, a group of remarkable visionaries and emerging inter-religious leaders convened at Andover Newton Theological School and Hebrew College to discuss potential answers during the pioneering CIRCLE National Conference 2010. Participants included Brad Hirshfield, co-Founder of CLAL: The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, Ingrid Mattson, Director of the Macdonald Center for the Study of Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary and Executive Director of the Islamic Society of North America, and Stephen Graham, Director of Faculty Development and Initiatives in Theological Education at the Association of Theological Schools.

It seemed fitting to hold the conference jointly at two of the few seminaries to cohabitate the same campus and maintain a close administrative and curricular relationship. Students at Hebrew College and Andover Newton can cross-register for courses, while several classes are team-taught by professors from both institutions. The campus also houses the Center for Interreligious and Communal Leadership Education (CIRCLE), whose “mission is to nurture a new generation of moral and spiritual leaders equipped for service in a religiously diverse world” through a fellowship program, leadership training, and inter-campus initiatives and programs. Its administrators, Dr. Jennifer Peace and Rabbi Or Rose, saw the conference as a natural extension of their work.

On February 24, Rev. Paul Raushenbush issued a call for articles entitled “Dear Religious (and Sane) America” to inaugurate the launch of the Huffington Post’s new religion section. According to the article,

HuffPost Religion is dedicated to providing a provocative, respectful, and hopefully productive forum for addressing the ways in which religion intersects our personal, communal, national and international life. HuffPost Religion will demonstrate the vibrant diversity of religious traditions, perspectives and experiences that exist alongside and inform one another in America and throughout the world.

Huffington is clearly trying to expand its reach and become one of the big players in religion media, much as it already has in politics, popular culture, and even business. Based on initial responses to the section, it appears to be well on its way.

1969 was a year that changed the lives ofLen and Libby Traubman. Their first child, Eleanor, was born. And like millions of other people, they saw the first photos of Earth taken from space. The image of our planet “embedded itself in us,” notes Len, and “emphasized the idea of echad, of wahad,” as “oneness” is known in Hebrew and Arabic. While it was a particularly formative year for the Traubmans, their life’s work to promote dialogue had not yet begun.

After years of volunteer work, in 1984 the Traubmans went to the Soviet Union as part of the Beyond War movement to find out whom these “enemies” actually were. In meeting face to face with many Soviet citizens who were assumed “ready to extinguish us at a moment’s notice,” they “found a way to connect through the telling of personal narratives.” The two had come to the table of dialogue with one “internal set of images” but left with another.

In the late 1980s, Beyond War and the Traubman couple were approached by Palestinian and Israeli citizen-leaders to apply their knowledge of dialogue to deeply troubled Middle East relationships. This resulted in the historic June 1991 conference in the California redwoods, which established a signed “Framework For A Public Peace Process” and affirmed that authentic citizen-to-citizen relationships and models of cooperation were necessary for any government treaty to succeed. This 1991 moment introduced to the world the term “public peace process,” having previously been known as “track-two diplomacy.” Even as government representatives meet to negotiate what everyone hopes will be a final peace accord, true peace cannot be reached until large numbers of individual Palestinians and Israelis engage to humanize one another by hearing one another’s stories with a new quality of listening-to-learn.

Many religious leaders like to feel in control and give others advice. Though I am still a very much a rabbi-in-progress, with three-and-a-half years of study to go before ordination, I think it would show a great deal more strength for clergy to admit their shortcomings and be honest about how often they (and fairly soon soon we) don’t know what to do or how to do it.

In the spirit of seeking, rather than giving, advice, I wanted to share some of the fears that I have about my future career – and lifestyle – as a rabbi. I was recently asked to record these as part of a professional development course at Hebrew Union College but thought they might be of interest here and foment conversation about the difficult life’s choices that many religious leaders face.