February 2014 – Excerpted

“When the enemy is nested in homes and apartments and no one wears a uniform but everyone has a cellphone camera, you have a real strategic and moral challenge”

28 February 20143 March 2014 Drew KaplanIsrael

You don’t want to be in these wars. This is not your grandfather’s battlefield. When the enemy is nested in homes and apartments and no one wears a uniform but everyone has a cellphone camera,[…]

“JCCs must now make Jewish education, culture, and identity a central part of their mission”

27 February 2014 Drew KaplanJewish Community

Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) can also be an important part of the renaissance, as they are positioned to connect with Jews who are not otherwise involved in Jewish life. When the JCC movement began in[…]

“In most periods of the history of the Jews in the United States, fewer than half of American Jews have been members of synagogues” yet, “it has been the most significant Jewish institution in the life of Jews”

27 February 2014 Drew KaplanSynagogues

The Zionist thinker and Hebrew-language essayist Asher Ginsberg (better known by his pen-name, Ahad Ha’am) once said that “more than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews.” If we were[…]

“Not much changed from earlier decades in the Reform synagogue during the 1950s and well into the 1960s”

26 February 2014 Drew KaplanReform Judaism

To a great extent, not much changed from earlier decades in the Reform synagogue during the 1950s and well into the 1960s, though, by the late 1960s, as we will see, the synagogue had become[…]

“The content of American-educated Orthodox rabbis’ English-language sermons was dramatically different from that of the (mostly) Yiddish-language sermons of an earlier generation”

26 February 2014 Drew KaplanModern Orthodoxy

…the content of American-educated Orthodox rabbis’ English-language sermons was dramatically different from that of the (mostly) Yiddish-language sermons of an earlier generation. This was particularly true between the World Wars in New York City, where[…]

“The intermarriage of one Jewish individual is rarely a sudden occurrence…”

25 February 2014 Drew KaplanIntermarriage

The intermarriage of one Jewish individual is rarely a sudden occurrence. Rather, an individual’s choice to intermarry is a function of the depth of their Jewish education and experiences, the density of the Jewish population[…]

“Rabbis need to see themselves as teaching Judaism, not as upholding the tenets of a particular movement”

25 February 2014 Drew KaplanJewish Community

The denominations, and the seminaries where they train their rabbis, will have to recognize this and take a more holistic view of their role in Jewish life. Rabbis need to see themselves as teaching Judaism,[…]

“The relativizing of the absolute is absolute in the Reform movement…”

24 February 2014 Drew KaplanReform Judaism

The “sacred core” of the Reform Movement is personal sovereignty. In defining Judaism as a set of options from which Reform Jews are free to draw selectively, its adherents are ruled by what Rabbi Heschel[…]

“Modernizing Orthodoxies”: “a group of religious movements bearing a familial resemblance”

24 February 2014 Drew KaplanHaredim/Haredi-ism

Rather than seeing Orthodoxy as a more or less fixed entity, with “modern” and “ultra” flavors, I suggest we look at it as a cluster of processes, enacted across a range of what I call[…]

Difficulty in precisely translating the word צדקה

24 February 2014 Drew KaplanTzedakah

The word tzedakah is untranslatable because it joins together two concepts that in other languages are opposites, namely charity and justice. Suppose, for example, that I give someone £100. Either he is entitled to it,[…]

Excerpted

Excerpts of Interest

Month: February 2014

“When the enemy is nested in homes and apartments and no one wears a uniform but everyone has a cellphone camera, you have a real strategic and moral challenge”

“JCCs must now make Jewish education, culture, and identity a central part of their mission”

“In most periods of the history of the Jews in the United States, fewer than half of American Jews have been members of synagogues” yet, “it has been the most significant Jewish institution in the life of Jews”

“Not much changed from earlier decades in the Reform synagogue during the 1950s and well into the 1960s”

“The content of American-educated Orthodox rabbis’ English-language sermons was dramatically different from that of the (mostly) Yiddish-language sermons of an earlier generation”

“The intermarriage of one Jewish individual is rarely a sudden occurrence…”

“Rabbis need to see themselves as teaching Judaism, not as upholding the tenets of a particular movement”

“The relativizing of the absolute is absolute in the Reform movement…”

“Modernizing Orthodoxies”: “a group of religious movements bearing a familial resemblance”

Difficulty in precisely translating the word צדקה