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'Velveteen Rabbi' Tag
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Planning for the ultimate future
February 28, 2011Image borrowed from an online provider of wills. Is there a bracha for finishing the difficult work of estate planning? The formal term — “estate planning” — doesn’t begin to hint at the emotional and spiritual challenges of thinking about, and planning for, death. This is work that Ethan and I have been doing of [...]
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On land use zoning and discrimination (an update on the Al Falah Center & more)
February 25, 2011I posted a few weeks ago about the Al Falah Center, an initiative of the Muslim community in Bridgewater, NJ, and about local opposition to the proposed mosque, including opposition from local Tea Party leaders (as noted in this New Jersey Jewish News article.) My post was revised into a letter which the rabbinic cabinet [...]
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Kedushat Levi on work, rest, action, speech, Torah
February 23, 2011Here’s a taste of Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev’s commentary on this week’s Torah portion, Vayekhel. My translation is indented; explanations and commentary are interspersed. He says some lovely things about the interplay of work and speech, weekday and Shabbat — and then says something very powerful about the study of Torah, the building of [...]
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Liminal and limitless
February 21, 2011Ordination, my spiritual director told me recently, can be like childbirth. Yes, one opens up and something comes through one — but that’s not the end of the journey, it’s only the beginning. The work now is to learn how to keep my own spiritual channels open so that blessing can continue to flow, and [...]
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Three days at Knox
February 18, 2011Old Main. On my first day in Galesburg, after a walking tour of the Knox campus (including the site of one of the famed Lincoln-Douglas debates) and lunch with a handful of Knox faculty and staff, I had the profound pleasure of discussing my Akedah Cycle of poems (now published in 70 faces) with the [...]
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A.J. Jacobs Year of Living Biblically
February 16, 2011When A.J. Jacobs’ The Year of Living Biblically first came out, I ignored it. Pretty resolutely. It sounded gimmicky to me: seriously, this guy was going to spend a whole year trying to live according to what’s in the Bible? Did he not know, or not care, that his chosen enterprise was not actually how [...]
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Purim Katan: a koan of a festival
February 14, 2011In a leap year, as previously noted, there are two months of Adar. Each month of Adar has a 14th. On the 14th of the second Adar, we’ll celebrate Purim. On the 14th of the first Adar, we celebrate “Purim Katan,” “Little Purim.” Because leap years arise only seven times in every nineteen-year cycle, Purim [...]
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Kedushat Levi on Aarons clothes
February 11, 2011Reb Zalman tells a wonderful story about his first pulpit. The president of the board caught sight of him studying a text in his office, and said to a colleague with some consternation, “I thought we got a finished one!” The anecdote never fails to draw laughs in our community, because we know that the [...]
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Melodies for gratitude
February 7, 2011A while back, I posted about setting the Modah Ani — the morning prayer for gratitude — to the tune of a Richard Thompson song. After that post went live, a number of people wrote to tell me that they’d never heard Modah Ani before and that they appreciated hearing it. I love Modah Ani [...]
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Welcome to the blogosphere, Reb Jeff
February 4, 2011The latest addition to my blogroll is a brand-new blog which just entered the world this week. The blog is called RebJeff: A Blog About Jewish Joy, and it’s written by my dear friend Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser. Here’s an excerpt from the first post: The first psalm in the book of Psalms begins with the [...]
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Mid-winter
February 2, 2011Our back deck: table and chairs buried in snow. I’ve spent enough time around neopagans of various sorts to know that today is a cross-quarter (a day which falls precisely between a solstice and an equinox.) In the Northern hemisphere, today is the midpoint between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. We’re halfway between [...]
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Teaching a class on midrash!
January 31, 2011Today I get a rare opportunity: to guest-lecture to a college classroom! The class is on Good and Evil; the students will have just read Genesis 2 and Genesis 3, with which they are probably already pretty familiar. (Hint: Adam, Eve, a garden, and a certain snake.) But what may be less familiar to them [...]
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On the Palestine Papers
January 28, 2011I haven’t written anything here about The Palestine Papers. (If somehow that phrase doesn’t ring a bell for you, here’s a good introduction, from The Guardian: Secret papers reveal slow death of Middle East peace process.) In this, I’m with Emily L. Hauser, who writes in her post Loading…: There is too much information there, [...]
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The 70 faces book tour goes to Galesburg!
January 27, 2011It turns out the 70 faces book tour is going to start a bit earlier than anticipated, and in a truly exciting way: in mid-February, I’ll be spending a couple of days as a visiting scholar at Knox College in Galesburg, Ilinois! While I’m there, I’ll get to speak to some students who will have [...]