Home

Reflecting on Cool

Sh'ma Book Reviews

Letters to the Editor

A New Initiative: The Sh'ma Salon

Topic Discussion Guide

Our Artistic NiSh'ma

Sigi Ziering Sh'ma Ethics

The Balcony by Ruth Calderon

Past Issues

New Sh'ma Partnership and Advisory Board

Upcoming: Sh’ma does not publish in July and August. For the High Holidays, September rehabilitates “sin.” Sponsorship opportunities available

A New and Broader Sh’ma Partnership

Sh'ma welcomes several institutions into a new partnership that will our intellectual capital while creating an innovative funding structure. In response to a challenge grant by the Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation, Sh'ma has created a new funding partnership that models the core values that the journal has espoused for decades. This new partnership draws on the resources — financial as well as intellectual — of Jewish seminaries, university Jewish studies departments, and communal philanthropic leaders. This cluster of institutions will help broaden the magazine's pluralistic agenda.

Our New Sh'ma Partners Include

Hebrew College Rabbinical School

Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion

Jewish Theological Seminary of America

Reconstructionist Rabbinical College

The Robert A. and Sandra S. Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University

Taube Center for Jewish Studies, Stanford University

Frankel Center for Jewish Studies, University of Michigan

The Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation

Carol Spinner

Bruce Whizin

Marilyn Ziering

The Sh'ma Advisory Board meets every month or two by conference call. The primary role of the Advisory Board is to make suggestions about the editorial calendar, as well as help frame the individual issues—that is, to help the editor create the most interesting and thoughtful conversations each month. This year, the Board will also help strategize about our online presence, and how to best utilize our archive dating back 37 years and including some 3,000 essays.

Our members include:

Dr. Aryeh Cohen is Associate Professor of Rabbinic Literature at the American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism). He has taught at Hebew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Brandeis University. Dr. Cohen is the author of Rereading Talmud: Gender, Law and the Poetics of Sugyot (Scholars Press, 1998) and co-editor of Beginning/Again: Towards a Hermeneutics of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002). He is also a member of the Sh'ma advisory board. Cohen is a popular lecturer on Talmud, on politics and on the contemporary Jewish scene. His writing on these topics and others has been published in Conservative Judasim,  Sh'ma, The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, The Association of Jewish Studies Review, Tikkun, The Reconstructionist, Kerem, The Jewish Spectator, The Jewish Journal and elsewhere.

Brigitte Dayan is the Director of the Wexner Alumni Network , having joined the Wexner Foundation in 2002. Prior to that, she was managing editor of JUF News, a monthly Jewish newspaper in Chicago. Dayan has served as education director at Anshe Sholom Bnai Israel Congregation in Chicago and has taught Jewish studies in adult education programs and in day schools. A native of Paris and Chicago, she holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University, where she graduated with Highest Distinction. She also holds a master's degree in Bible from Yeshiva University and spent two years studying Talmud at New York's Drisha Institute for Women.

Dr. Charlotte Fonrobert is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Taube Center for Jewish Studies at Stanford University. Her books include Menstrual Purity: Rabbinic and Christian Reconstructions of Biblical Gender, Jewish Conceptions and Practice of Space, and The Cambridge Companion to Rabbinic Literature. She is the Coordinator of the Text and Culture Speaker Series at Stanford.

Dr. Neil Gillman has served the past several years as the Chair of the Sh'ma Advisory Committee. He is the author of several books and essays, including Sacred Fragments: Recovering Theology for the Modern Jew (winner of the 1991 National Jewish Book Award in Jewish Thought); Conservative Judaism: A New Century; The Way into Encountering God in Judaism; Gabriel Marcel on Religious Knowledge; The Death of Death: Resurrection and Immortality in Jewish Thought ; and The Jewish Approach to God: A Brief Introduction for Christians. His most recent book is Traces of God: Seeing God in Torah, History and Everyday Life. One of Dr. Gillman's recent essays, an excursus on eschatology, appeared in Etz Hayim: Torah and Commentary (ed. David Lieber, 2001).

He was a member of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, which produced Emet Ve'Emunah, the first statement of principles for Conservative Judaism.

A popular speaker and teacher, Dr. Gillman has served as scholar-in-residence in many Conservative and Reform congregations. In the summer of 2002, Dr. Gillman taught two courses on the philosophies of Mordecai Kaplan and Abraham Joshua Heschel at the Russian State University of the Humanities in Moscow on behalf of Project Judaica. Dr. Gillman is the Aaron Rabinowitz and Simon H. Rifkind Professor of Jewish Philosophy at JTS.

Dr. Lisa Grant is an Associate Professor of Jewish Education on the New York campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. She holds a B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. in public management from the University of Massachusetts. She earned her PhD in Jewish Education from the Jewish Theological Seminary in May, 2000. Her research and teaching interests include adult learning and religious development, teaching Bible to adults, and the place of Israel in American Jewish life.

Rabbi Richard Hirsh was the chair of the Reconstructionist Commission on the Role of the Rabbi, and the author of its report, “The Rabbi-Congregation Relationship: A Vision for the 21st Century.” His commentaries are featured in the new Reconstructionist Haggadah and High Holiday prayerbook, and he is also the author of A Guide to Jewish Practice: The Journey of Mourning and A Guide to Jewish Practice: Welcoming Children ( forthcoming ). His articles appear regularly in The Reconstructionist and Reconstructionism Today, as well as in many other Jewish and general publications.

Dr. Julian Levinson is the Samuel Shetzer Professor of American Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan. He has published articles on Jewish American literature, Yiddish poetry, Holocaust Literature and Film, and the role of Jewish Studies in the multicultural academy. His book, Exiles on Main Street: Jewish American Writers and American Literary Culture, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press.

Dr. Shaul Magid is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and the Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein Chair in Jewish Studies in Modern Judaism at Indiana University. His teaching focuses on Kabbala, Hasidism and medieval and modern Jewish philosophy. He is the editor of God's Voice from the Void: Old and New Essays on Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Suny Press, 2001), co-editor of Beginning Again: Toward a Hermeneutic of Jewish Texts (Seven Bridges Press, 2002) and author of Hasidism on the Margin: Reconciliation, Antinomianism, and Messianism in Izbica and Radzin Hasidism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2003). Shaul is the co-editor of the online Journal of Textual Reasoning and a member of the steering committee for the Study of Judaism for the American Academy of Religion. He is a member of the board of CHAI (The Children of Abraham Institute) dedicated to the pursuit of interfaith dialogue between Jews, Christians,and Muslims.

Josh Rolnick is a fiction writer whose short stories have won the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editor's Choice Prize. His fiction has also appeared in Western Humanities Review, Bellingham Review, and Gulf Coast . He is the former managing editor of Moment , a magazine of Jewish culture, politics, and religion, and founder of the journal's short story contest. Rolnick is also the former editorial director of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, a magazine covering best strategies for nonprofits, foundations, and socially responsible businesses. He has reported for news organizations including the Associated Press , in Jerusalem and Trenton, N.J., and Congressional Quarterly in Washington, D.C .

Rolnick is currently a director on the boards of trustees of the National Jewish Democratic Council, the Save a Child's Heart Foundation, and the Lippman Kanfer Family Foundation. He is a member of Moment 's editorial advisory board.

Rabbi Or Rose is Associate Dean and Director of Informal Education at the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College. He is the co-editor of Righteous Indignation: A Jewish Call for Justice and God in All Moments: Mystical & Practical Wisdom from the Hasidic Masters .

Carol Brennglass Spinner is Chair of the National Foundation for Jewish Culture Board and Co-Founder of Avoda Arts. An accomplished businesswoman and committed Jewish community philanthropist, Carol serves on the boards of JESNA and the JCCA, as well as the Casden Center for the Study of Jews in Contemporary America at the University of Southern California. She is an active member of UJA-Federation of New York's Commission on Jewish Identity and Renewal. She holds an M.S. in Educational Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from Harvard University. She co-founded—with Nessa Rapoport and Tobi Kahn — Avoda: Objects of The Spirit, an innovative, arts-based learning program that engages students 16-24 in the study of Judaism, ethics and morals.

Dr. David A. Teutsch is the Director of the Levin-Lieber Program in Jewish Ethics, The Louis and Myra Wiener Professor of Contemporary Jewish Civilization, and Chair, Department of Contemporary Jewish Civilization at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Teutsch is the editor in chief of the groundbreaking seven-volume  Kol Haneshamah prayer book series  (Reconstructionist Press, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1999, 2001) and  Imagining the Jewish Future  (SUNY Press, 1992). He is the author of Spiritual Community: The Power to Restore Hope, Community and Joy (Jewish Lights, 2005) and the multivolume A Guide to Jewish Practice (RRC Press, 2000 [ Kashrut ], 2005 [ Bioethics ], 2005 [ Tzedaka], 2006 [ Ethics of Speech ]). He is a past president of the Academic Coalition for Jewish Bioethics and president of the Society of Jewish Ethics. He is a well-known organizational consultant and trainer.