Archive for May, 2008
NiSh’ma – Visions from the Israeli “Cabinet”
Featured Artists: Heidi Berrin Shonkoff, Sharon Booma, Silvio Wolf, and Joshua Abarbanel
The Prime Minister
Prime Minister(s), Ruth Gavison and Gidi Grinstein: Today’s prime minister needs to combine clarity of vision with practical goals for the government. Israel’s strategic challenges are huge.
Minister of Justice
Yedidia Z. Stern
The State of Israel exists out of cultural duality: On one side is western-liberal culture and on the other is Jewish-tradition. Its laws and, perhaps more importantly, its citizens’ collective consciousness, define it as a “Jewish and democratic state.”
Minister of Religious Affairs
Donniel Hartman
Zionism and the rebuilding of the State of Israel entail the decision of the Jewish people to build our collective lives together. By collective lives I do not mean a loose confederation of denominations that join together in a number of common enterprises, in particular, at times of crisis. Rather, the Zionist dream is to build a common public domain where all join in together, a domain that belongs to us all equally and is shared accordingly.
Minister of Education
Ruth Calderon
Israel’s chief resource is its human potential. We have no oil, no water, we have no forests. Cultivating learning and the pursuit of knowledge of Torah, as well as of arts and sciences, have always been central Jewish values. The intellectual achievements of Jews have always stood out. In fact, the establishment of the state fostered the dream that Israel would become an epicenter of Jewish “genius.”
Silence is Not the Opposite of Speech
Sheila Peltz Weinberg
When Sylvia Boorstein and I cooked up the idea to bring rabbis on retreat to learn meditation and have them be in silence for four days, people thought we were crazy.
Recent Comments