Home

Koret Foundation Sh'ma Book Reviews

Letters to the Editor

A New Initiative: The Sh'ma Salon

Topic Discussion Guide

A new Artistic NiSh'ma

Sigi Ziering Sh'ma Ethics

Taube New Visions

The Balcony by Ruth Calderon

Torah Commentaries:
Erica Brown
Nechama Leibowitz
Mekor Chaim

Past Issues

Upcoming: Capturing holiness on the page and canvas Creating holy communities Teaching and learning as holy work Cultivating holiness within and outside of a spiritual practice Musings on hearing the shofar Kedushah and Separation Shawn Landres Gershom Gorenberg Sponsorship opportunities available

End World Child Hunger!
Tell your friends about Project Manna, a new multi-faith cyberactivism campaign that takes only a minute.

A Different Sexual Revolution

Judith Plaskow and Elliot Rose Kukla explore the potential and limits of a shared transgender and feminist movement.
read more

Alicia Svigals: In 20 years of playing klezmer music, I had never before examined the question. Beyond a vague wish to apologize when presenting certain material, and a parallel project to write more relevant lyrics for our songs, I had never entertained the contradiction between songs celebrating brides and grooms, and my life as a lesbian.
read more

Esther Perel: Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in New York, and the host of the Downtown Salon. She speaks in this interview with Sh’ma Editor Susan Berrin about the Search for Desire.
read more

Danya Ruttenberg: Even otherwise liberal people often fear that speaking frankly about sexuality, in all its messy complexity, will encourage young adults to become sexually active—but this is unrealistic.
read more

David Silverstein: Jewish teens learn their religion’s take on sexual ethics by amassing a laundry list of vague “dont’s” through a grapevine of rabbis, fearful parents, and sometimes unprepared youth educators.
read more

Jillian Cogan: What my friends and I discovered was similar to what Danya Ruttenberg describes in her essay: a list of “don’ts” instead of what Judaism actually says about having a healthy relationship.
read more

Shelley Halman: I agree with Danya’s students when they speak about the emotional ramifications of sex. It complicates everything.
read more

Ben Tepfer: Teenagers hardly take Jewish values into account when figuring out their own responses to sexual ethics and behavior.
read more

Quote of the Month

“Love is about having and desire is about wanting. Wanting is the movement of an arm reaching out, but in order to reach out there needs to be a space.”

Esther Perel, “In Search of Desire”


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