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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.

Place, Space, and the Shaping of American Judaism

Shaul Kelner: As post-war America blazed a trail to the suburban frontier, the urban ethnographer Herbert Gans trained his sights on this new form of settlement. Did the shift to the suburbs really spell the demise of culture and community?
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Daniel Sokatch and Josh Kun: In Los Angeles urban and suburban communities have a different set of meanings. So, what does it mean to be Jewish in Los Angeles and what does it mean to be in relationship with the other communities that blend and blur into the Jewish community?
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Alan Silverstein: In 2007, suburbia has emerged as the American Jewish norm for all but certain sectors of the Orthodox community. Suburban Jewry’s communal life revolves around the quest for social networks forged within synagogues, federations, JCC’s and, Jewish day schools.
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Muriel Harris: Responding to Rabbi Silverstein’s essay, Harris looks at the dilemmas of small communities that are neither in traditional suburbs or urban centers.
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Quote of the Month

Suburbanization “reshaped how Jews went about practicing Judaism and was perceived for decades, fairly or not, as the final step in the deracination of American Jewish culture.”

Riv-Ellen Prell


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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