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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!
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Capturing Holiness on the Page and Canvas

Mimi Feigelson: The relationship between teachers and students has taken on multiple forms and shapes in our tradition. The Zohar (III 153a) sees them as the sun and moon — the foundation of our world. The Rambam (Avot 1, 6) equates that relationship to the highest form of friendship. The Chernobyl Rebbe, the Maor Aynayim perceives their connection as the kiddushin (matrimony) of husband and wife.
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Ira Stone: The goal of spiritual life is the transformation of human personality such that the central virtue of the Torah, V’ahavta l’rayecha kamocha, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” can be enacted. How to achieve this transformation became the central question of Jewish spirituality. Even among the greatest of Jewish mystics, unification with the Divine was understood to be dependent upon the rectification of middot.
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Ellen Bernstein: The language of Kingship is not fashionable today; actually, it hasn't been for years. Many people read "King" in the Rosh Hashanah liturgy and think "man" and "hierarchy" and either tune out, walk out, or look for some other way to engage in the service. But even before the most recent critique of Kingship, a whole generation of (Protestant) Bible scholars demeaned the Temple Priests and the idea of Kingship in favor of what they understood as the more democratic voice of the Bible - the Prophets.
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Devorah Zlochower and Arthur Waskow speak about kedusha, holiness, and activism."We're in a crisis today-the whole planet is in a convulsion, an earthquake. Politics, economics, and the relationship to the earth and sexuality and violence are all in convulsion. So we need to learn to dance in an earthquake."
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Quote of the Month

“We’re in a crisis today…. Politics, economics, and the relationship to the earth and sexuality and violence are all in convulsion… We need to learn to dance in an earthquake. It’s hard to do and it looks chaotic at first. It looks like you’re breaking all the rules because who knows the dance steps for dancing in an earthquake.”

Arthur Waskow, in an interview with Devorah Zlochower


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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