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More Questions for a Meaningful Passover
The Passover seder is an ethical answer to a series of questions. It is structured as a lesson, the symbolic foods and retelling of the story comes in response to 4 questions (or 4 variations of 1 question) asked traditionally by the youngest person at the table: why is this night different from all other…
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Movers and Shakers
I love my children’s elementary school, Lincoln Elementary. The school is an alternative program, called Lincoln Options, that focuses on values, community building, creativity and social justice. The experiential curriculum integrates subjects around guiding themes and topics. And there is a garden with chickens! Every year the school chooses an overall theme, and each class…
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Holidays and Red Lights: On Dayenu and Social Change
This week we entered the new month of Nissan—the month of Passover. The season of the Festival of Freedom is upon us. It is time to make our preparations for this physical and spiritual journey. We buy the matzo and special foods, we plan our Seders and special meals. And we think about the story…
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Whose Religion? Whose Liberty?
There is something seemingly odious happening to the concept of religious liberty in our country. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments in a case about (depending on how you look at it) religious liberty, reproductive rights, corporate personhood or the Affordable Care Act. In short, two corporations—the craft supply…
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Who Loves a Good Mystery? We Don’t.
As I’m sure many of you have been, this past week I have been slightly obsessed with the story of Malaysia Airlines flight 370. The complete disappearance of a Boeing 777 jet with over 200 people on board on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing is fascinating and terrifying. What happened? Was it a…
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Jews Love to Talk About Pew Studies: Pew Study
WASHINGTON—In its recent study of contemporary Jewry, the Pew Research Foundation found one overwhelming trend among Jews, regardless of background and affiliation—Jews love to talk about Pew studies. “The evidence is conclusive,” said Alan Murray, President of Pew Research Foundation, “a majority of American Jews have a strong desire to talk about Pew studies.” The…
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Blotting Out (And Putting Back In)
Last week I spoke about writing, this week too I’ll reflect on writing. Last week it was memoir authors, this week it is Torah scribes. Last Tuesday we had a rare treat at TBH, a sofer—a Torah scribe—came to TBH. He was there to inspect and appraise our Torah scrolls, something which we haven’t had…
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Israelites and Other Mistakes: A Memoir
Last Shabbat I had a wonderful opportunity that I don’t get very often—a chance to be intellectually stimulated by a topic having nothing to do with Judaism. The opportunity arose as I attended (crashed?) a panel at the annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Seattle, an annual gathering of close to…
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Jewish Synthesis
This quarter I have the good fortune to co-teach a class at South Puget Sound Community College on “Sacred Texts in World Religions.” As an end to our unit on Judaism, we had the students create posters to illustrate what they learned and create a visual representation of Judaism. We then had the students vote…
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