Sh’ma Blog: Destinations

BY: RACHEL KAHN TROSTER
The Torah is replete with hero narratives, stories of brave men who set out into the unknown and return changed men, rewarded by God for their daring to set out into the wilderness. Abram goes to the place God will show him in return for countless blessings. Jacob flees his brother, discovers [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Still Searching

BY: ZOE JICK
Its always been straightforward before. My go-to community was right in front of me. Growing up in Reform day school, my Jewish circle didn’t extend far passed my family and my classmates. In high school, I found NFTY and Israel summer programs. My Jewish support system lay in late night phone calls with [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Taking Ownership of Your Judaism

BY: STEVEN REIN
Prior to my arrival at Park Avenue Synagogue, I lived on the Upper West Side for seven years and I davened at Kehilat Hadar. Hadar, founded in 2001 in the basement of a church, is the forebearer of the independent minyan movement that has become a buzz in the Jewish press nationwide. What [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Torah Mi Sinai – A Mystical Proof

BY: MATT BAR
The December issue of Sh’ma explores a multitude of reflections on personal journeys that lead some toward their Judaism, others, away from it. As usual, the Ultra-Reform Midwestern Jew (Myself) related most to the former Ultra-Orthodox Hasid from Brooklyn.
“Over the next decade or so, as my attachment [...]

Sh’ma Blog: It’s not easy.

BY: CARYN AVIV
I want to sit down for coffee with Marci Shore and Shulem Deen.   I want to talk with them about how they’re both rootless cosmopolitans, in their own particular, yet very different ways.  They’re both global travelers and itinerants, literally and metaphorically.  Both seem to identify as secular Jews.  Marci, in her piece [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Dating with a Sucky Brand

BY: JAKE GOODMAN
My Branding Problem:  Overview

A date is an interview, a testing of waters, an attempt to envision what a shared life with a particular other individual might look and feel like.  Once the basic standard of attraction has been met, the real question we all seem to ask ourselves is, “Can I stomach [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Being “reformed”

BY: JULIE PELC ADLER
“I’m reformed,” I hear one student tell another by means of explaining his lack of Jewish observance. I cringe, thinking of the years of theological evolution and volumes of critical scholarship underlying the progressive movement of Reform Judaism, none of which inform this young man’s Jewish choices.
I remember my own upbringing [...]

Sh’ma Blog: Building a Jewish Practice: Circle, Line, or Spiral?

BY: RACHEL PETROFF KESSLER
I continue to find my place as a Jewish professional, with an eye on what will sustain me and my family during what I hope will be a long career in the field, and not lead to burn out after a few short years. I know that this effort will be life-long, [...]

Sh’ma Blog: The Paradoxes of Authenticity: A Latino-Jewish Casebook

BY: JUAN MEJIA
My Jewish journey started in the most unusual of places: an Anti-Semitic quip at a family Christmas dinner.  Fueled by the festive mirth, one of my family members of my traditional Colombian Catholic family made a rather mild anti-Semitic comment in the presence of my grandfather.  His response astonished all of us: “We [...]

Sh’ma Blog: From When Do We Recite the Sh’ma in the Evening? Finding a Talmudic Theory of Jewish Practice

In most instruction manuals, you would expect to begin with an introduction, a table of contents, a definition of terms, some sort of systematic approach to whatever it is you’re about to learn. Yet, the Talmud begins seemingly in the middle of a discussion. It assumes a vast amount of background knowledge from the very first sentence. Without this background knowledge, the following discussion would be incomprehensible: