Jewish Sensibilities
Kyrie Eleison Plus Kumbaya
Reviewed by Stephen J. Whitfield
Mark Oppenheimer, Knocking on Heaven’s Door: American Religion in the Age of Counterculture (New Haven: Yale University Press): 273 pp., $30.00.
When the press exposed Richard Nixon for belonging to a New Jersey country club that lacked any black or Jewish members, a spokesman explained that the former president would not resign [...]
“CHOOSE LIFE I REALLY MEAN IT”!
By Neil Gillman
End of life decision-making is complicated. Clinical, economic, psychological, and social values are often in conflict; physicians and nurses, chaplains, social-workers and ethicists, the patient and the patient’s family don’t always agree; and time is short. The process is tension-filled. Appropriately so, for what is at stake is a human life.
Does this case [...]
Ten Jewish Sensibilities
Vanessa Ochs
These ten sensibilities help us understand how our Jewishness defines or contributes to the way we live.
Ennobling Ignorance
Jeffrey Spitzer
Adherence to halakhah is not the issue; familiarity with the relevant categories and their sources in classical texts is.
In the Image of God
Jonathan Schofer
The idea that people are made in the image of God—tzelem Elokim—is both anthropological and theological, asserting some correspondence between the human and the Divine.
Sensibilities and Halakhah
Dov Lerea
The term “sensibility” highlights some of the compelling strengths of a liberal community; it also points to that community’s most unstable, intrinsic weaknesses.
Discussion Guide – Jewish Sensibilities
1. How would you characterize and chart a list of ten sensibilities to guide Jewish life today?
2. In a society ever more connected to popular culture, how do we transmit core Jewish values to our children?
3. How have Jewish values influenced contemporary American ethics, and how much have contemporary American cultural values informed Jewish sensibilities?
