Category Archives: A Changing Landscape

Affinities and Israel: A Roundtable

general
January 1, 2008

Israel has been for so many years as essential to our Jewish lives as the air we breathe, a preoccupation so keen, so inspiring, often so exasperating — even for those living outside its borders. Judging on the basis of this roundtable, there is reason to believe that the next generation of Jews — including those actively engaged in Jewish life— tend to shunt Israel aside as a formative, crucial factor. Young Orthodox Jews, on the whole, continue to embrace Israel fervently, and with little equivocation. But they stand out as the exceptions. Whatever this mean, it seems clear that the following discussion is intriguing, and well worth pondering. More »

Recentering the Kehilah: Gender and Sexual Identity in Jewish Emergent Communities

general
January 1, 2008

J. Shawn Landres
Jewish Emergent is an appropriate subject for discussion in an issue devoted to center and periphery, not least because the phenomenon is seen by many as originating on the fringes of organized Jewish religious life, but also, more broadly, because it comprises profound expressions of dissent and disaffection about conventional Jewish religious life. More »

At the Center, Is Gender Still Peripheral?

general
January 1, 2008

Deborah Skolnick Einhorn
Who and what will create the permanent bridge dedicated to gender-focused traffic, from periphery to center? This bridge must support the transport of women’s organizations into the center, as well as the movement of a fully-integrated gender sensibility into currently central organizations. More »

Taking Hillel and History to Heart

general
January 1, 2008

Abraham H. Foxman
Why did you make that statement? How did you arrive at that position? Is it in the best interest of the Jewish community to speak publicly on that issue?
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Women Remaking American Judaism

general
January 1, 2008

Women Remaking American Judaism, Riv-Ellen Prell, ed. Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 2007. $25.95, 352 pp.
Reviewed by Judith Rosenbaum
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Discussion Guide - A Changing Landscape

January 1, 2008

How might Jewish community life change if we stop thinking about a “center” and peripheries, and think instead of multiple centers, or “nodes”? How does a stronger diasporic culture impact the relationship of American Jews to Israel? What is the impact of individuality and new trends in social networking on synagogues as central addresses of More »