A German-Trained American Rabbi in Yorkshire

I haven't known what to write about the latest incident of "tractor terror" in Jerusalem this past week. The first one took place near the open-air market that both Sandra and I frequented, and the violation of one of my "homes" affected me. But the latest one took place one block from HUC in one direction and ended one block from where Sandra and I lived in the other direction. So rather than try to address it, I want to share the words of the Dean of the HUC Jerusalem campus (and one of the finest gentlemen I have ever had the pleasure of learning from) that were posted in the Jerusalem post. Reform Reflections: Life and death on King David street Posted by Rabbi Michael Marmur For much of my adult life I have studied, taught and worked on King David Street in Jerusalem. It is certainly no ordinary work address. World leaders stay there - in recent months we have played host to Bush, Blair, then Bush again, Blair, Rice...

(Picture note: One of my favorite of the Chagall Windows at Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. The inspiration for the windows, other than Chagall's purely amazing creativity, was the section of Torah dealing with Israel/Jacob's blessings to his sons. The blessing that inspires this window starts, "Joseph is a fruitful bough, a fruitful bough by a spring; his branches run over the wall." Why is בן פרת, literally "descendant that bears fruit" repeated? I think because Torah, above else, has power by forcing us to ask questions and always examine and move forward in our lives, rather than leaving status quo alone. There is always work to do. As descendants of Israel we continue to ask the questions prompted by a repeated word here, and extra pronoun there. And in those Kleinigkeiten we find G-d because G-d is in the process of making connections much more than any temporary answer that we would wish to stand on and claim to be the only truth. At le...

(Picture Note -- Sandra and I at the beach in Tel Aviv -- I am really going to miss this place.) During our first weeks in rabbinical school, we were told that our program was a combination professional school, graduate school, and seminary. Although I believe that there is truth in this analysis (after all, our hours spent in class seem to reflect three programs rather than one) I think that there is also an indefinable fourth school at play—let’s call it the discard-all-preconceived-notions-school— perhaps we might even call it the “pay close attention and you might learn something really valuable” school. HUC chooses to call it the “Israel Seminar,” and for anyone who decided this year to allow for the possibility that someone in Israel might know something more than they about this region, the Israel Seminar provided an education that money simply cannot buy. I had my own share of preconceptions about Israel . As a self-proclaimed moderate I believed that I possessed ...

In conjunction with His Royal Highness Prince el Hassan bin Talal of Jordan ( recent winner of the Abraham Geiger Award ) and Dr. Hans Küng , President of the Global Ethic Foundation, Switzerland, the Director of my school in Germany, Dr. Rabbi Walter Homolka ( hier auf Deutsch ), issued the following statement that I wished to pass on to all. We—Muslim, Jewish, and Christian—decry the violent attack targeting the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem this week. The murder of eight students is a tragedy for all people of faith. We strongly condemn this act of violence at a Jewish religious seminary. Such aggression contributes to the vicious cycle of violence that has tormented Israel-Palestine and the region. Gaza has been under Israeli military attack for a week. Dozens of Palestinians have died on Israel’s southern border with the territory, where militants have launched Qassam rocket attacks into Israeli southern towns for more than a month. Just this week, international huma...