A German-Trained American Rabbi in Yorkshire

(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: In a discussion of G-d, one might as well show a picture of the sunrise over the Sea of Galilee. There must be a connection there somewhere.) It is not particularly easy to give up a comfortable image of "God." The bearded-one in the sky may to some extent be a straw-man used by some to denigrate those that are perceived to have a less sophisticated spirituality. I am pretty sure that I may have even done that a few times, but I am not sure any more of my own wisdom enough to mock anyone else's definition. I cannot personally agree with a personal father/savior anthropomorphism, but I also can no longer throw quite the same stones. This is all merely a long and drawn out introduction to say that the struggle to re-allow spirituality into your life when years ago the concept and trappings both were given up for dead is in many ways a semantic struggle. Since most of us think in words we formulate most of our spirituality in words and are therefor force...

(Picture Note: Progressive Rabbinical, Cantorial and Education students from around the world join with HUC alumni to celebrate Havdalah, the celebration at the end of the Sabbath to highlight the transition to the new week.) Something special is happening this year at the Hebrew Union College, Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem . My ego doesn’t exactly demand that I be part of that something special, but the fact that I am does add certain sweetness and should not take away from the fact that the idea about which I shall shortly speak is indeed excellent. This year, for the first time in the institution’s history, HUC-JIR will host all first year students at the three major accredited “Progressive” Jewish rabbinical seminaries. That means that students from Leo Baeck College in London, Abraham Geiger Kolleg in Berlin and Hebrew Union College in LA, New York and Cincinnati have already joined together in Israel and are embarking on a unique experiment—th...