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RELIGIOUS LIFE resources
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choosing RELIGIOUS PRACTICE
Religulous an empty satire
October 3, 2008
By Gardening Grandma
Rosh HaShanah had been over for a few hours when I found myself at the Emelin Film Club for a preview showing of Bill Maher's Religulous.
Most of the time Maher, who didn't know about his mother's Jewish faith until he'd already decided to leave Catholicism behind, spends a lot of time on Jesus and Christianity, but gives Islam and Judaism short shrift. And of course, the only people he interviews--regardless of their faith--are those who are on the extreme edge. So there's not a Jew without payes in the movie.
I'd been looking forward to seeing the movie, but I expected more than some laughs - no matter how good they are. I thought there might be some new insights, some hope that the movie would make fanatics think harder about their actions.
Instead, it's Maher doing Maher. He is stuck in his view that organized religion is both absurd and terrifying, and, by ignoring anyone who isn't fanatical about their faith he deprives himself of understanding the role religion plays for the majority of people living in the 21st century.
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Religious Life
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Rabbi Bachman knocks it out of the park
October 2, 2008
(3 Comments)
By David A.M. Wilensky (First published on The Reform Shuckle)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The man is a genius. Check out a transcript of Rabbi Andy Bachman's erev Rosh Hashanah sermon here. Here' an excerpt:
Surrendering total control is never easy-especially as members of a synagogue community founded on principles that value the intellect over the experiential; the rational over the mysterious; Reform over Tradition. Of course, as we continually need to remind ourselves, the historical circumstances that founded this community in 1861 are quite different from those that demand action in the world today. Our membership, ever growing, comes from all walks of Jewish life-Reform, Conservative and Orthodox and non-Jewish life as well. I find that fewer people have an intellectual ax to grind with Tradition and Reform is not much more than: 1. a commitment to egalitarian values for men, women, gays and lesbians; 2. a rationalist and historical view of the authorship of Torah; and, 3. devotion to the principles of Tikkun Olam, Social Justice and Social Action. But "Reforming Judaism?" I've yet to encounter in my years here a single Jew who truly wants to Reform Judaism. After all, in humility, we could easily spend the next 50 years just figuring out what Judaism IS!
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Community | Holidays | Israel | Religious Life
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Assimilation and Its Discontents
September 29, 2008
By Gardening Grandma
In its 40th anniversary issue, New York magazine takes a look at how Jews have been assimilated into New York and how, by doing so, have lost some of their identity.
Contributing writer David Samuels writes:
The ascendancy of the Jews of New York can be viewed as a Hollywood-style triumph, but it can also be read as the tragedy of a group of brilliant outsiders who remade a city in their own image, only to cut themselves off from the roots of their tribal genius, ensuring that the future will belong to the children of the new outsiders--Koreans, Indians, Russians, and Chinese.
I'm not sure I agree that "success has ruined the New York Jew." I rather like feeling at home in the city.
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Community | Religious Life
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Strengthening Reform 13: Mordechai Kaplan and Reform
September 14, 2008
(12 Comments)
By William Berkson
In the last post in this series, I looked at the ideas of one important thinker who has had an important influence on Reform Judaism: Martin Buber. Here I will look at another big influence on Reform in the 20th century, Mordechai Kaplan. Here are three key views of Kaplan.
1. Kaplan's religious naturalism.
Classical Reform had been highly theistic, making a traditionally personal God and ethics almost the whole of Judaism. By contrast, Kaplan made God a personal sum of processes in Man that make for salvation, where 'salvation' means a better life both personally and socially--and 'better' means ethically and emotionally.
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Religious Life
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Honoring Fallen Soldiers
September 5, 2008
(25 Comments)
By Rabbi Eric Yoffie
A rabbinic colleague recently sought my advice. Two congregants whose son had served as a doctor in a war zone had asked her to read from the bimah the names of American soldiers killed that week in Iraq. Should the congregation adopt this practice in conjunction with the recitation of Kaddish on erev Shabbat and Shabbat morning?
Though she was sympathetic to the request, this rabbi feared that the practice might ignite a controversy. While most of her congregants opposed the war, those who supported it might interpret the reading of names as an act of protest against U.S. policy in Iraq. She didn't want the issue to divide the congregation or offend those who had come to say Kaddish for a loved one. What, she asked, would I recommend?
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By Rabbi Eric Yoffie | Religious Life
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Tribalism, Reform Judaism, Rites and Choices
September 4, 2008
(18 Comments)
By dcc
Answer this question for me honestly: Do you, as an active Reform Jew, practice a Jewish tradition simply because that is what Jews have always done? Professor Carol Ochs writes in this week's d'var Torah that our portion teaches us that we can't "keep doing something just because we have always done it." I don't observe rituals simply because my parents do (or don't) observe them, but in all honesty my family's observance does inform my personal observance. And for that matter my community's observance plays a significant role in the formation of mine as well. But I can say with no doubt in my mind that I do not follow Jewish tradition simply because it is the way it has always been done.
So why do we continue to practice the brit mila?
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Lifecycle | Religious Life
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Strengthening Reform: 12. Buber and Reform Judaism
September 3, 2008
(7 Comments)
By William Berkson In the previous post in this series, I described one example of the approach that I think can greatly strengthen Reform Judaism. The key is better to support the sanctity of relationships, and in particular family relationships. And the way to do this is through studying and living the values of Torah and Talmud, supplemented by some of the insights of modern psychology. And the synagogue can be the center of a community that carries out this mission of sacred learning and family support.
My recommendation for Reform to focus on the sanctity of personal relationships of course owes a great deal to the great 20th century Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber. Buber said that a central way we experience holiness is in I-Thou relationships. In these open and honest relationships we are not simply viewing the other person as a means (an I-it relationship), but are encountering them in a relationship in which both egos are to some extent merged in the I-thou interaction, even while keeping their identity. And we also experience a oneness with God in such interactions.
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Religious Life
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Keva, Kavanah, and Back to Keva
August 25, 2008
By Larry Kaufman
As part of introducing Mishkan T'filah at Beth Emet several months ago, Rabbi Peter Knobel gave us "permission" to wander away from whatever the congregation was reading or singing, and to go anywhere else on the two-page spread that felt more comfortable, or for that matter, wherever our individual thoughts and prayers might lead us. In doing so, he reminded us that in a world where multi-tasking has become commonplace, we might very well be able to join our voices with the community, while our minds were somewhere else.
I thought about this at Shabbat services, less than a year into our use of the new, yet by now taken-for-granted, siddur. We know when and how to follow the liturgy on the printed page; and we know (since we are a worship group of regulars) when we will deviate from the text and follow from memory the lashon (language) and minhag (custom) of our former home-made prayer book.
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Filed Under:
Religious Life | Shabbat
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