Google Web Sh'ma
 

Upcoming:
Work & Economics: the Domestic Agenda of the Next President
Louis Newman: a Jewish Lens on Money
Paul Buhle revisits Michael Gold's Jews Without Money
Allison Schachter examines poverty through Glückel of Hameln
Shifra Bronznick on working conditions in Jewish Organizations
Steve Gutow & Melissa Boteach on Sh'mitah as an Economic Model
Rebecca Kobrin on Bankruptcy and the Historical Culture of Risk
Scott Shay on Today's Banks
Book Recommendations for the New President
An Economic Round Table with Barney Frank, Simon Greer, and others

Sponsorship opportunities available

 

Jewish Family & Life!
JFLmedia.com

Visit These Links

Get free Towing service.

Cute, comfortable, and stylish maternity jeans from petite to extra large.

Chandeliers, pendants, and other ceiling fixtures for your home - hundreds of styles and finishes.

Ergonomic executive chairs, available in leather, vinyl, and fabric.

Each month the journal Sh’ma posts three or four essays from the print publication. To read all of the essays—which create a “conversation-in-print”—click on “New Subscription” above.  In the December issue of Sh’ma, we’ve invited scholars and other writers to think about how various classical Jewish texts as well as some of their own work begins and concludes, and how they get from one point to the next. We open with Charlotte Fonrobert musing on how she lives within the seemingly odd meanderings of the Talmud; elsewhere Norman Cohen reflects on the Bible’s ending and how different Judaism might have been had it ended with Joshua; Jane Kanarek looks at siyyum, the ritual of ending the study of a talmudic tractate; David Nimmer reflects on copyright protection; Adam Kirsch on saying something new about Disraeli; and two essays address the critical role commentary plays in writing and interpretation. Other writers explore similar questions in the context of other forms of cultural creation – how visual arts and contemporary expression serve as ways of engaging Jewish text. As writers—and readers—know, few books begin quite as emphatically as the Bible, and few canonic texts start and end with the inconclusiveness of the Talmud, where the “final word is left unsaid.” All writers and readers recognize how significant beginnings and endings are; how determinative these markers can become.  If you want the full issue, please order a subscription HERE.

Writing the Jewish Conversation

Charlotte Fonrobert: To this day, I am grappling with trying to understand the magic attraction that the talmudic text exerted on me during my first encounter as a Protestant seminary student.
read more

Norman Cohen: Why does the Torah end with the death of Moses rather than the culmination of the Israelites’ journey from slavery to the land?  Furthermore, why leave the people at the end of Deuteronomy bereft of their leader Moses, upon whom they depended throughout the 40 years in the desert, fragile and lacking confidence as they prepare to enter Canaan to do battle with “giants”?
read more

Jane Kanarek: The celebration marking the conclusion of studying a talmudic tractate has come to be known as a “siyyum,” a completion.  Because this celebrates such deep engagement with our ongoing interpretive tradition, should we widen our conception of which books are appropriate to celebrate through a festive meal?
read more

Michael Carasik: As the creator, translator, and editor of the Commentators’ Bible series, I try to hide in plain sight. As a translator, I am not merely standing between the Torah and its English-speaking readers; I’m also standing between those readers and the eleven commentators who are trying to be only slightly less transparent.
read more



 

Sign up for our
e-letter!

Quote of the Month

“A Jewish text’s value is its testimony to the idiosyncratic creativity of an anonymous, ‘ordinary’ Jew, who acted not from a position of traditional erudition but from a personal impulse to enhance his religious practice through visual adornment”

Jeffrey Shandler

Donate Now!

Our Mission
Sh'ma serves as a gathering place for independent dialogue -- rich conversation of differing positions presented in an honest, respectful, and sacred conversation. Our readers, like our authors, are intellectually sharp, seeking, concerned and literate. Sh'ma is a publication of Jewish Family & Life! JFLMedia.com

home | about us | contact us | classifieds | links
search | subscribe | write for us | support | past issues | Private Policy

Copyright (c)      Jewish Family & Life! 1998-2008 Produced by the creative minds at Jewish Family & Life!