Education

Embark on a journey of Jewish learning and discovery, exploring the depth of our Education resources, where tagged items including audio, programs, and podcast episodes await your exploration.

New Paths for Ba'alei Teshuva: Part One

This series of blog posts seeks to discuss, if only preliminarily, the journey of ba’alei teshuvah (loosely defined as those who were not raised in a home of halakhic observance but chose this way of life at some point) and their place within…
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The Catholic Church, Gay Rights and the Jewish Community

Rabbi Jay Kelman

The mark of maturity is the ability to disagree with others respectfully; to be able to appreciate the integrity and sincerity of an argument even as you may fundamentally disagree with it. This is easier said than done, and it is truly the rare…
Article

The Hertz Chumash United Us

Rabbi Jay Kelman

During shul this past week, I was reading the notes of the Hertz Chumash, as I often do. This likely puts me in small company as the Hertz Chumash has gone the way—pardon the expression—of the dodo bird. It so happens the shul at which I daven has a…
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The Open Society

In his groundbreaking book, The Heretical Imperative, Professor Peter Berger argued that modernity—and its emphasis on freedom of choice—has profoundly affected every area of society, religion included. In a world where personal and communal…
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Authenticity

Sin gets bad press these days, because it is experienced as a guest that brings a whole slew of unwelcome associates into the house--guilt, bad feeling, punitiveness. These alleged running mates of sin are anathema to most, and so the very ability…
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Beyond Conformity: Connecting to our Judaism

Dr. William Kolbrener

From Shakespeare to Freud, Einstein to Eliot - what is the role of play in creative thinking?; and is there a role for play in contemporary Jewish life? We explore how play and desire are essential for a radical Jewish creativity for the 21st…
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MaTaN Mother & Daughter Bat Mitzvah Program 2012: Jewish Women Through the Ages

Pnina Weintraub

A Bat Mitzvah is an opportunity for a girl to prepare for her entry into Jewish adulthood by exploring what it means to be a Jewish woman. The aim of the MaTaN Bat Mitzvah program, Jewish Women Through the Ages, is to see how we, as Jewish women,…
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What is Really Happening to our Kids During that Gap Year in Israel (Renewing Our Spirit 2011)

Dr. Yoel Finkelman

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Preparing to Die, Learning to Live

  Dear Sir,    Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding the upcoming High Holidays. You want to know why it is that people who have palpably little Jewish involvement for the other 362 days of the calendar bother to attend…
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The Silence of Eternity

Dr. Elliott Malamet

Education, Mark Twain once quipped, consists mainly in what we have unlearned. For a great many Jews today, shul is a kind of ponderous opera, taking place in a foreign tongue, that they desperately wish to unlearn. Depending on the opera house in…
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