“The Man Who Knew God: Decoding Jeremiah” by Mordecai Schreiber: Review by Barry L. Schwartz
2010
Speaking Our Pain: Anguish, Wonder, and Comfort in the Psalms
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The psalms, that body of biblical literature so beautiful and passionate, so full of longing, are often rejected by those committed to progressive politics. Here, though, I would like to encourage those of us interested in changing the world and transforming ourselves to turn to them again and take another look.
2010
Word Jazz: Music and the Poetry of Rav Kook
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We can sense the shared matrix of poetry and music in the rhythmic loam of language from which they both arose. Some of our languages preserve the connection in name: in Hebrew we use shirah to signify both song and poem, as if all song implies poetry and all poetry implies music.
2010
Ha’Rav Kook: Master of the Lights
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A world of chaos stands before us, all the time that we have not yet reached the “tikkun elyon”—the highest level of healing, repairing, transforming—by uniting all life forces and all their diverse tendencies. As long as each one exalts himself, claiming, I am sovereign, I and no other—there cannot be peace in our midst (Notebook 8:429).
2010
OYL! Corruption, the Spirit, the Earth, and Us
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This is not an oil “spill” we are facing, the way water might spill from a dish or oil from a tanker—a finite amount in the first place, and then we clean up. This is more like piercing a hole into the Caverns of Hell, so that they pour forth without limit.
2010
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Stern College: Gender Transition and Jewish Ethics
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I was sure that coming out as trans would end my employment by Yeshiva University, but after months when I was forbidden to set foot on campus, the unthinkable happened.
2010
Philosophers of Catastrophe and the Last Kantian in Nazi Germany: How Judaism Redeems Western Philosophy
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A death-camp dog knew better than many philosophers. It took Jews like Rosenzweig and Levinas to point out the flaw and the remedy.
2010
Are Israeli Policies Entrenching Anti-Semitism Worldwide?
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Critical discussions of Israeli policy are too often tarred as “anti-Semitism” and shut down. In reality, holding Israel to an ethical standard is necessary to stem a rising tide of real anti-Semitism.
Jewish Wisdom
Next Year in Jerusalem? Passover for those whose moral compass has not gone dead
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Here is a series of articles that may help you negotiate through the Passover holiday and the ethical morass facing those who wish to celebrate the holiday of our freedom from slavery without going dead to the reality of the Jewish people’s role in the suffering of the Palestinian people, today, right now, as we celebrate this year’s Passover!
Jewish Wisdom
Spiritual Wisdom for Passover: Seder Haggadah Supplement
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I’d like to share an excerpt from the Passover supplement published in the March/April 2010 issue of Tikkun. Passover is not meant to be merely a celebration of the Jewish victory for liberation in our past, but is rather meant to stimulate us to extend that liberation to the whole world. Such liberation would bring an end to the destruction of the environment. It would bring an end to the cheapening of cultural life by the dominance of an ethos of “looking out for number one.” It would bring an end to rampant materialism and our society’s belief in salvation through mechanical objects and technological fixes …
2009
Conversation on Vegetarianism
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An exchange between Tikkun reader Ruth Eisenbud and Michael Lerner, in response to Daniel Brook’s article “The Planet-Saving Mitzvah: Why Jews Should Consider Vegetarianism” in the July/August 2009 issue of Tikkun. magazine.
2009
The Planet-Saving Mitzvah: Why Jews Should Consider Vegetarianism
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God’s original plan for how to be kosher.
2008
God without God
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The atheists have all the best arguments. They find the religious world utterly indefensible, both morally and intellectually. Thankfully the God the atheist denies is not the God that people of true faith affirm.
2007
How Jewish was Jesus?
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There is a consensus among Biblical scholars that Jesus and the New Testament can only be understood in the context of the ancient Jewish sociocultural system. However, Christian theologies over the centuries have largely developed in synthesis with Greek philosophy.
2007
Conservative Judaism: Good for the Gays?
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In the gay Jewish community few people are breaking out the champagne over the Conservative movement’s long-expected split decision on homosexuality this past December. It was, the conventional wisdom goes, a positive step—nothing more.