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Changing Notions of Torah
New blog posts every Monday and Thursday.
BY: JUAN MEJIA Most of my rabbinical activity is dedicated to teaching people who did not grow up with a clearly defined Jewish identity or who are converting to the Jewish people from without. In this capacity, I had always found it very challenging to teach Tanach to this crowd. It was easy to teach them [...]
Our monthly column on ethical issues arising from new trends in social media
Andrew Silow-Carroll “Hey, you’re Jewish? Have I got something for you!” The ads that pop up as I cruise around the web don’t exactly say that, but they might as well. Thanks to the wonders of website tracking, advertisers and “data brokers” are able to track my IP address as I move from site to site. Google, [...]
Discussion Guide
1. What do we need to understand about revelation in order to understand God? And how does our understanding of revelation inform our daily lives? Do you think that revelation is ongoing and that divine truth is accessible to us today?
2. If you think of Torah as (“just”) a myth, but a powerful one, what impact does that have on your life, your Judaism, your choices?
3. What, if any, are the missing pieces in your understanding of revelation — and how do the missing pieces impact the task of building Judaism?
4. Must the laws of the Torah be intrinsically moral to be holy? What do we do with laws that seem completely disconnected from our morality?
From this month's print journal
Current Articles
Elie Kaunfer
Revelation is often considered the most intimate moment between God and the Jewish people. It is compared to a wedding, the culmination of a love-affair, albeit a complicated one. But what if revelation was not a model for exclusive attachment but a narrative of universal relevance? How might that change our understanding of the critical moment of law-giving on Mount Sinai?
Chisda Magid & Ari Weiss Letter Exchange
While many important liberal values can be found in Jewish teachings, progressivism —the belief that ongoing sociopolitical reform improves our society — requires a certain degree of flexibility in order to continually adapt to changing socioeconomic conditions. The Torah would have to be treated as a living text. Otherwise, it risks becoming irrelevant to contemporary progressive Jews.
Searching the Torah’s Seams: A Roundtable on Teaching Torah: A group of entrepreneurial informal educators — people who use various art forms to teach and create midrash — speak about their vision of the creative possibilities for teaching Torah.
Aaron Potek
Connecting to God is not easy, and neither is the process of trying to figure out what God wants from me. Texts won’t make these challenges disappear, but I do believe they can open a door to a meaningful relationship with God.
Orit Kent & Allison Cook
We often hear about the desire to create communities in which Jews gather to actively engage in Torah study. But connecting learners to past and future Torah conversations takes a lot of work. It may also require a reframing of how we think about the task of Torah learning. The most [...]
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