From an interview with Sarah Miles, author of Jesus Freak: Feeding, Healing, Raising the Dead, by Lisa Webster over at Religion Dispatches.
There are so many problems with church as it is. Do you think the institution is redeemable?
Well, I don’t think the answer is: let’s have a church with groovy music that the kids like. That’s just endless marketing.
The whole interview is here, and it’s worth reading.
Filed under
Looking for an opportunity for full time study in an egalitarian setting? Yeshivat Hadar in New York City offers a chance for both summer and year ’round study for women and men to study together – and you even get a living stipend. I’ve been to a bunch of classes, lectures, and more than a handful of weekday services. It’s quite an eclectic bunch of of students – and their teachers are excellent. Want to learn more? Check out this Wednesday night’s event – in person or online.
The Cairo Geniza: Crumpled Papers, Revolutionary Prayers
A Taste of Yeshivat Hadar — open to allConsidering applying to Yeshivat Hadar’s 2010 Summer or Full-Year Program?
Interested in experiencing learning at Yeshivat Hadar and asking your questions?When: Wednesday, January 13, 2010, 7:30-9:00 pm
Where: Yeshivat Hadar, 190 Amsterdam Avenue (at 69th Street), NYC
Cost: Free
Taught by Rabbi Elie KaunferIn December 1896, Solomon Schechter traveled to the “Ben Ezra Synagogue” in Old Cairo and discovered 200,000 Hebrew manuscripts, some from as early as the 9th century. Among them were alternative liturgies that will astound those used to the standard Ashkenazi prayerbook, including alternate versions of the weekday Amidah. In this class, we will study how crumpled papers in a forgotten attic can change our understanding of prayer.
RSVP to info-at-mechonhadar.org
Prospective Applicants to Yeshivat Hadar are especially welcome to this program, which will end with Q+A about Yeshivat Hadar’s full-time programs.
Can’t come to NYC? Join us on the phone or on ustream. Here’s how:
Go here to watch a live broadcast. Register for a free account ahead of time, and login to chat your questions.Have specific questions? Email Aryeh Bernstein, Director of Recruitment, at bernstein-at-mechonhadar.org.
You can download our applications here: Summer (2010) and Full-Year Program (2010-11).
Filed under
A little while back, in addressing recent discussions of minyanim and reacting to Rabbi Elie Kaunfer, BZ posted:
Rabbi Kaunfer writes “New self-proclaimed movements sprung up — Reconstructionism, and the Renewal and Chavurah Movements.” The “Chavurah movement” is not now and has never been a “self-proclaimed movement” parallel to the “big three” or the Reconstructionist movement. Rabbi Kaunfer himself has argued for why the latest wave of independent minyanim do not constitute a “movement” in that mold, and the same is true for earlier waves of havurot.
This has led me to think about the similarities and differences between what people tend to refer to as Chavura, Conservative, Independent Minyan, Orthodox, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Renewal. (note that I alphabetized them rather than forcing them into a spectrum that doesn’t quite fit). Of course these labels have substantial overlap. Some are parallel. Some are not. They all come about because people want quick categories that they can use to label the Jewish approach of themselves and others.
–This next paragraph can be skipped, it defines a few terms and frames the issue, but some might find it needlessly semantic–Some of these labels are (what I’ll call) institutional, ideological, and/or aesthetic. Institutional groupings are based on a subset of Jews being unified based on connection to an institution(s). For instance, The Conservative movement is an institutional grouping since it’s people are connected through camps, schools, youth groups, an other institutions. It is also an ideological grouping since it has positions on many questions that it endorses. Conservative Jews have tendencies to think about Israel in certain ways, egalitarianism, etc. Of course, some differ and there is some diversity, but certainly, you can see what I mean by ideological grouping. By aesthetic, I mean a preference for decision-making model, prayer approach, or something else which is not explicitly Ideological. In many cases these issues are deeply moral, so I don’t mean to imply that this is in any sense superficial. Minyanim, for instance are united by a desire for lay-ledness and thus “Minyan” is an aesthetic grouping. This is a rather arbitrary nuance but there certainly is a nuance between how people think about the world (ideology) and how they prefer their prayer specifically (prayer aesthetic) that while influenced by the former is a slightly different issue.
Now I’ll take a look at a few common groupings and examine what they are, where they come from, and which they are parallel too, and not.
More »
Filed under
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu.)
Blogging from the Bolt Bus on the way, appropriately, to the National Havurah Committee board meeting:
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight wrote this insightful post last fortnight following the elections:
Why did Democrats lose in Virginia and New Jersey on Tuesday? Because independent voters moved against them, say the pundits.
This is true [... b]ut it doesn’t really tell us very much. It’s a lot like saying: the Yankees won the Game 6 last night because they scored more runs than the Phillies. Or: the unemployment rate went up because there were fewer jobs.
It’s worth a read in its own right, but I want to focus on one section and draw an analogy to the Jewish community:
Part of the problem is that ‘independents’ are not a particularly coherent group. At a minimum, the category of ‘independents’ includes:
1) People who are mainline Democrats or Republicans for all intents and purposes, but who reject the formality of being labeled as such;
2) People who have a mix of conservative and liberal views that don’t fit neatly onto the one-dimensional political spectrum, such as libertarians;
3) People to the extreme left or the extreme right of the political spectrum, who consider the Democratic and Republican parties to be equally contemptible;
4) People who are extremely disengaged from politics and who may not have fully-formed political views;
5) True-blue moderates;
6) Members of organized third parties.These voters have almost nothing to do with each other and yet they all get grouped under the same umbrella as ‘independents’.
Similarly, many overlapping terms are used for Jewish individuals and communities who are not affiliated with any of the major denominations: independent, unaffiliated, nondenominational, postdenominational, Just Jewish, etc. More »
Filed under
“We are all mediators, translators.” -Jacques Derrida
There have been three distinct moments since I began learning in the Jewish legal tradition that have significantly altered my perspective on the goals and intent of what we apply the blanket term, Halakhah. It is something that I struggle with on a daily basis and has a direct effect on my faith, my practice and my identity. More »
Filed under
So…Simchas Torah. Lately, it’s become famous for being the #2 Jewish drinking holiday, but my past few Simchas Torahs have all been pretty clean events — festive and debaucherous in that wholesome way where we jump around with the Torah and sweat up our thrift-store suits until we’ve soo earned every penny of that $15 dry-cleaning visit.
And it’s not just me, I don’t think. People have been raving about G-dcast in a way that makes me blush like they’re saying how good I look, and it’s all positive and gung-ho in a way that appeals to 5-year-olds. And David’s post about the new Moses movie that probably will owe more to 300 than Charlton Heston…but making an action movie about the Torah is as close as Hollywood will probably ever come to a studying-books-can-be-cool movie as we’ll get.
This year, I went to San Francisco. I’d somehow managed to convince my ex-boss, David Levithan (who wrote the awesome Boy Meets Boy, as well as the so-indie-its-jeans-hurt Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist), to narrate for us. So we did V’Zot Habracha with a bang.
Then, of course — because some good things don’t have to come to an end — we did our real conclusion episode, and did Bereshit again. (There was a whole huge concert, and Elana Jagoda performed her alterna-folk-dancey children’s anthems, and Julie Seltzer talked about being a soferet, but mostly talked about her project baking a different challah for every parsha in the Torah, and we all just generally rocked out.)
And then the lights dimmed, and we rewound the Torah, and showed our final episode.
Filed under
This series has been crossposted to The Reform Shuckle. Here is the Intro.
To those of you who were worried that I was unhealthily smug, worry not. My day of davening at Hadar was the most humbling prayer experience of my life. Many have complained, mostly in the comments here, that this High Holiday Sampler Plate Adventure series has been rather smug. I’ve often been accused of smugness and I won’t go so far as to deny it.
First, let me apologize to anyone who was actually looking forward to my reflections on watching Kol Nidrei live streaming at Jewish TV Network. I couldn’t get it to work right, so I just went to bed frustrated. I was gonna live-tweet it and everything. But alas.
Uv’chen, I’ve been hearing about Kehilat Hadar since I moved into this part of the world and I’ve been told for a couple years now that I need to check it out. I dunno if Yom Kipur was the best day to make my first trip to Hadar or not, but I had a great time. And by a great time, I mean a deeply reflective time.
In recent years, I’ve had Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist prayer experiences, not to mention post-, non-, anti-, and multi- denominational ones. Hadar is the closest I’ve ever come to Orthodox. Despite the deeply various backgrounds of the people who come to Hadar, the founders and the feel is certainly as close as you can get to Orthodox while remaining egalitarian.
Which is to say that I can’t remember the last time I spent about 50% of Jewish service as confused and lost as I was for most of yesterday. I’m normally someone who prides himself on his facility with the sidur. Even the machzor, which I don’t know as well as the daily or Shabat sidur, has never been hard for me to navigate. So normally, when things in a service don’t got just the way I want them to, I’m frustrated or annoyed or exasperated.
I was certainly frustrated yesterday, but in a good way. I felt challenged yesterday by a lack of knowledge. And when it comes to gaps I discover in my liturgical knowledge, my instinct is always to fill the gaps. Mostly, I was humbled. Yes, you read that right. I said I was humbled. There were tunes I’d never heard before, sung loudly and raucously with clapping, dancing and podium-pounding. It was an attitude I’d never encountered before on Yom Kipur. There was excitement, but the proceedings still managed to remain as somber as I ordinarily think of Yom Kipur as being. These nearly joyous outbursts of song nicely paralleled Rabbi Shai Held‘s sermon, easily the highlight of the day, in which he spoke of a bizarre Talmudic verse which calls Tu B’Av and Yom Kipur the most joyous days of the Jewish year.
Aside from the new (to me) tunes, this was my first encounter with an entire congregation that prostrates itself during the Avodah service! Not to mention the part of the service when everyone at Hadar lays flat on the floor, face down. That one was new to me, so if anyone wants to leave a comment with an explanation, it’s much appreciated.
Yesterday was an endurance test. I arrived at 8:50 a.m. and shacharit has started five minutes earlier. Finally, at 7:30 p.m., about eleven hours later, we wrapped up Ne’ilah. (That’s eleven hours of davening, with only a one-hour break, for those keeping score at home.) Yes, I thought! Now I can go eat. Without skipping a beat, they launched right into Ma’ariv. I briefly entertained the idea of sticking around, but my grumbling stomach and aching head said otherwise. Luckily, Hadar was handing out candy, juice boxes and water bottles on the way out!
I’ve never felt so truly reached by the liturgy of the day, so I’m glad of Hadar’s part in helping the fast and the davening do their intended work on me.
I’ll now move on to a few thoughts about Hadar as a community. Keep in mind that I’ve never been on an ordinary Shabat, so I don’t know what Hadar is normally like.
I’ve heard the charge leveled at Hadar that it is elitist or cliquey. I suppose I can see that from this limited experience, but it is not as if I arrived not knowing anyone in the room. Within the cavernous, packed church multi-purpose room we occupied for the day, I spotted about five bloggers I know (including a few Jewschoolers, including our BZ and Jen Taylor Friedman). I also spotted Tamar Fox, who gave me my first break blogging anywhere other than my own blog, sitting directly in front of me. My boss, a former coworker and about a half-dozen of our volunteers were there too. I ran into a few other friends as well, some of them Yeshivat Hadar alumni and some current Hadar students. So I felt comfortable because of all the familiar, friendly faces, but I can see how others would not have the same experience.
All in all, a good gmar chatimah, I think. Hoping yours was good too.
Filed under
This series will be crossposted to The Reform Shuckle.
I don’t like Rosh Hashanah and I don’t like Yom Kipur. There are things I like about them–repentance (see Tshuvot!), shofars (see Where have all the shofarot gone? and Why I used a bullhorn last night) and pomegranates–but I have to admit that I’ve never been satisfied with either, no matter where I’ve been and no matter what my age.
So this year, I’m not going to go the same place twice during the season of repentance.
Sophomore and junior year of high school were the last two years I did the same thing twice for High Holidays–I went to the Reform synagogue I grew up at. Senior year of high school, I was in Israel. I spent Rosh Hashanah that year at Kibbutz Lotan (see Shanah Tovah! Cleansing in the desert) and Yom Kipur at Beit Shmuel (see David sees Texans, still hates Yom Kipur, cries), with a brief YK morning stint at an Orthodox Italian synagogue. Freshman year of college I tried a Reconstructionist shul for RH (see I’m not a Reconstructionist, but I play one on Rosh Hashanah). And last year, I did RH and YK at my adopted congregation here in NJ, Chavurat Lamdeinu.
Though elements of each of these years of RH and YK have been fine, I’ve never been satisfied with the overall experience. Whether it has to do with where I go or with my willingness or unwillingness to repent remains to be seen.
I’ll begin tonight with Erev RH services at Chavurat Lamdeinu, my usual place of davening these days.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll be at a Unitarian Church where a certain gospel music composer I happen to know will be helping to lead a service that will incorporate a number of gospel tunes. As far as I can tell, this service is not listed anywhere online. If you’re interested in going, it’s at All Souls Unitarian Church between on Lexington between 79th and 80th at 10:30 a.m. Let me know if you’re gonna bet there so I can we can say hi.
If the gospel crowd isn’t doing a tashlich thing, I’ll head over to the Brooklyn Bridge or something else equally iconic and do tashlich.
I don’t do two days of RH (see everything BZ has ever written, this series in particular.)
On Sunday, I’ll kick off my ten days of repentance by heading into Manhattan for The New Shul‘s “The House of Awe and Repentance Cafe“, part of their new senior rabbi‘s season of installation festivities. It promises to be an art installation involving a variety of media and exploring the concept of repentance. Or something. We’ll see.
For Kol Nidrei, I’ll try my hand at an online service by staying in to watch Jewish TV Network‘s live streaming KN service.
And, finally, for Yom Kipur day, I’ll skew more traditional than my norm for a change. As noted, I’ve skewed to the left before when I tried out the Reconstructionist shul, but I’ve never tried something more traditional than what I’m used to. To that end, I’ll be heading back in to Manhattan for Kehilat Hadar‘s traditional-egal take on YK. As one fellow refugee of the Reform mainstream recently told me, “I like Hadar for YK because that’s the one time in the year when I want to feel as frum as possible.” Yeah. We’ll see how I feel about that when I’m still standing around in services trying not listen to my stomach.
Expect posts throughout this season of renewal and repentance chronicling my High Holidays Sampler Plate Adventure.
Shanah tovah umetukah!
Filed under
Is this the twilight zone? What parallel universe has Yeshiva University Chancellor Rabbi Norman Lamm been living in?
According to Lamm, Reform Judaism has never played a role in American Jewry, and Conservative barely has. And the increased membership in Reform congregations is only because when you “add goyim to Jews then you will do OK.”
He claims that only Modern Orthodox and Hareidim will play a role in the future of American Judaism. “The future of American Jewry is in the hands of haredim and the modern Orthodox. We have to find ways of working together.” He is wrong. No, the answer is not doing kiruv to Reform and Conservative Jews (and, no, those denominations are not about offering a “watered down” version of Judaism).
His opinions are arrogant, insulting, and completely out of touch with reality. That someone with his (potential) influence, overseeing a large institution of students, teachers, and future leaders, can spread such a twisted version of history is amazing. Had he said, “denominational Judaism was disappearing,” sure, I wouldn’t disagree. But the blurring of denominational affiliation, the rise in independent and unaffiliated communities, does not mean “Orthodox wins!”
(It also seems like Lamm was just looking forward to having a soapbox, as he took the opportunity to talk about the Pope, interfaith relations, and homosexuality as well.
Filed under
The “This is my Prayer- Va’ani Tefillati: Women in prayer” Conference will be held at the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School on Sun. March 1, 2009. It’s planners promise that it will be “groundbreaking”- and while I don’t think anything revolutionary will happen, I do think it will be interesting to hear the presenters- which include Dr. Aliza Lavie, Anita Diamant, Debbie Friedman, Judith Hauptman, Dina Najman and Vanessa Ochs. Participants must register by Feb 24, 2009.
Filed under
by David A.M. Wilensky of the Reform Shuckle and the RJ blog.
When the early Reform Jews of Germany set out to begin their Jewish Reformation, one of the first “arcane rituals” they tossed out was the practice wearing talit. They didn’t just stop a talit katan during the day, but the ceased to wear a talit gadol when they prayed. Tzitzit, in essence, left their lives completely.
The symbolism here is not lost on me. Tzitzit are a meta-mitzvah. The Torah tells us, once in Bamidbar and once in D’varim, to affix fringes to our four-cornered garments. The reason? We should see these fringes and be reminded of all of the other mitzvot that we must follow. And so, as the Reform Jews began their trek into the world of autonomy, abandoning mitzvot left and right, they saw fit to discard the most mitzvah-y of all mitzvot, the mitvah that reminds of all the other mitzvot.
I, however, wear tzitzit. And I am a Reform Jew. More »
Filed under
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, floated a trial balloon this week: In light of the economic crisis, he suggested Reform and Conservative synagogues work together more closely, and in some cases even consider merging.
Based on a small sampling of local reactions, however, that trial balloon is made of lead.
In a Dec. 15 sermon to the URJ’s board of trustees in New York, Yoffie said synagogues should consider merging or sharing services, buildings and staff with neighboring congregations, including those of other movements.
“I have always believed that the passionate pluralism of North American synagogue life is a source of strength,” Yoffie said. “But now we are in a crisis situation and it may be that we can no longer afford what we once took for granted.”
I would quibble somewhat with Rabbi Yoffie’s framing: this solution wouldn’t be giving up pluralism, but replacing one type of pluralism (a larger community that includes multiple smaller communities representing different identities) with another (multiple identities represented in a single community). But I applaud his support of Jewish diversity (the full sermon goes further: “Except in crisis situations, a city with a Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox synagogue is a stronger Jewish community than a city with one synagogue alone; and three or four Reform congregations usually make for a stronger Reform community than one with a single Reform temple. Most of the time, unity is overrated, and diversity is a blessing. “), and for precisely this reason, I think the idea of merging Reform and Conservative congregations is a great idea.
I say this not because there is no difference between Reform and Conservative congregations, but for the opposite reason: Reform and Conservative congregations are so different that a merged congregation would have no choice but to recognize internal diversity of ideology, practice, and identity. And once the congregation fully accommodates two sharply different identities, it wouldn’t be such a leap to include additional identities outside of those two boxes. A large number of liberal Jews, such as myself, wouldn’t fit in in either the Reform movement or the Conservative movement as they exist today, but might have a place in a merged community that was less fixated on building barriers.
But not everyone sees it this way:
More »
Filed under
This post is the second in a series responding to sessions from Mechon Hadar’s Independent Minyan Conference last month. Thanks again to Mechon Hadar for placing all the audio online to make this ongoing conversation possible.
This time we’ll look at the closing plenary, “Minyanim and the Contexts of Contemporary Jewish Life”, a panel that included Prof. Jonathan Sarna (Brandeis), Prof. Sylvia Barack Fishman (Brandeis), Rabbi Prof. Art Green (Hebrew College), and Rabbi Elie Kaunfer (founder of the three Hadars).
More »
Filed under
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” –Mark Twain
***
Mechon Hadar has placed all the audio from their recent Independent Minyan Conference online, so those of us who weren’t there can listen and respond from afar. So we’ll be writing a series of posts here reacting to various sessions from the conference. And I’m starting with the keynote address by Professor Steven M. Cohen (not to be confused with Rep. Steve Cohen) on “The Groomed and the Bloomed: Varied Paths to Engagement in Independent Minyanim”. You can listen to the MP3 and view the PowerPoint presentation.
Cohen’s address is based on the data from the 2007 National Spiritual Communities Study, about which we have already blogged at length.
More »
Filed under
Because I am personally opposed to ever agreeing with anyone, I find myself, often, embroiled in interesting discussions with all sorts of folks. Over at JCarrot, I am having an interesting comments thread with Ben Murane (our own KFJ) about (I think) the difference between who is Jewish, and what is Jewish. The difficult part of this, of course, is that it’s not a completely separate question.
Who one is affects what one does, and the reverse, as well.
I recall a famous quote by (the eminently quotable) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr:
“To be is to do”–Socrates.
“To do is to be”–Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”–Frank Sinatra.
Er, I’m getting off-topic here. Anyhow, so Over at the NYT , there is what is apparently another discussion of the ongoing rift caused by the stringent versus loose approach to answering the question of “who is a Jew.”
The question for me is pretty fraught: I do believe that being this exclusive is ultimately untenable -but at the same time, there does need to be a certain level of internal definition of who gets to be considered “in.”
The question remaining, of course, as to who is in enough, or how in they have to be, in order to make such determinations.
That’s why I’m less interested in talking about who is Jewish, than what is Jewish. If one can agree on the latter, at least in broad terms, than the former can be fixed in almost any case.
Professionally, of course, I have dedicated myself to a particular kind of Judaism, and I do think that meaning inheres in Judaism in particular acts, practices and disciplines, and that there is a teleological reason for doing these practices. This doesn’t invalidate other kinds of doing, but it does mean that not all doing can be accepted as within the boundaries of Judaism. And in truth, I can’t really believe that anyone truly believes that anything goes. No matter how loose your boundaries are, there must be some, otherwise names become meaningless. If everything is “within” then one simply ceases to be – in simply a logical sense.
Anyhow, I invite others to pop in on the conversation, here or there.
Filed under
Pluralism is one of the most significant trends in 21st-century Jewish life. Hillel is creating pluralistic Jewish communities on college campuses during many Jews’ formative years, and producing a generation of leaders committed to Jewish pluralism. The Limmud franchise is spreading to new cities every year. The National Havurah Committee is experiencing a boom led by a new generation. New communities are sprouting up outside of the institutional movements, and many of them are committed in one way or another to pluralism. Even decidedly non-pluralistic organizations like Chabad and Aish are using pluralistic rhetoric as a marketing tool.
But what is Jewish pluralism really about? Mah Rabu’s Hilchot Pluralism series examines the theory and practice of creating pluralistic Jewish communities, but focuses entirely on the “how”, not on the “why”. Hilchot Pluralism takes it for granted that the reader is interested in creating a pluralistic community (why else would s/he be reading it?), and doesn’t address the question of why pluralism would be desirable (other than bringing up some situations in which pluralism isn’t desirable or isn’t possible).
A new article in the Columbia Current starts to ask these other questions. Dov Friedman looks at different philosophical approaches to Jewish pluralism.
For those who believe that law is fundamentally correct and that other conceptions of Judaism are incorrect, their theology precludes them from creating and joining in communal practices that deviate from their understanding of Jewish law.
Alternatively, those who believe that Judaism houses an infinite number of truths are always at risk of losing a coherent foundation upon which to build their community; they may build a pluralist community, but what would tie such a community together? It would have nothing to rally around except pluralism itself—making pluralism the end instead of a means to a more harmonious community.
For those who believe in the value of pluralism, it is an ominous reality to be faced either with traditionalism that may stamp out pluralism, or with pluralism that may stamp out tradition. In order to understand what a fully “pluralist” perspective entails, we must examine the ways in which the term is used.
Filed under
Recent postings on the uterus problem (see here) have been right to question the tshuvah that recently was issued from the bowels of the CJLS. I’m sorry that I got scooped on this because it’s a long standing argument that I have been having with my teachers (whom I respect very much, despite our disagreements) for years now. First of all, here is the URL for the actual tshuvah. I recommend reading it.
Secondly, I want to give kudos to Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ and Rabbi Jason Miller’s comments on the post at jspot. Both of them note that there need to be more social supports put in place for people to have children, Rabbi Jacobs noting:
–Would rabbinical students be more willing to have kids while in grad school if the rabbinical schools offered on-site child care?
–Would it be easier for Jewish women professionals (and men) to participate in professional conferences (such as the RA, from which I just returned, and where I bumped into a few poor women trying to nurse on the floor of the bathroom), if these conferences offered nursing rooms, child care, or other accommodations? (a shout out to the Wexner Foundation for being a leader in this regard)
–Would Jewish women professionals be able more easily to “have it all†if more Jewish institutions offered flex time, family health insurance, on-site child care, and paid for child care when the mom or dad is on the road?
And Rabbi Miller adding:
— not just for the women. As a 26-year-old rabbinical student whose wife was working full-time, I often felt the challenge of sitting in a class while bottle-feeding my baby son. An on-site day-care facility at JTS would have been an important resource.
He also on his own blog made some comments.
(Although I do want to note that I can’t imagine why any women were nursing on the floor of the bathroom, since the hotel in question is luxurious to the point of ridiculousness, and the WC had an anteroom with, I’m told, quite comfortable chairs and, I’m told by a nursing friend, the heat turned way up so that it was a perfectly comfortable place to strip down and nurse if necessary. Of course, the very luxuriousness of the hotel was apparently rather a sore point amongst the many, many Conservative rabbis who lack large convention stipends or, indeed, any, such as those who aren’t pulpit rabbis, or who are, but whose pulpits are more modest, say, under 500 members. A sore point indeed).
More »
Filed under
Once again, we are delighted to announce the courses for the 2008 National Havurah Committee Summer Institute! The Institute will be August 11-17 at Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. Every teacher is a student, and every student is a teacher.
Morning:
Afternoon:
See you in August!
Filed under
follow us on Twitter
follow us on Facebook
subscribe to our email