Religion
“Day 49: Amichai Lau-Lavie,” by Jaccqueline Nicholls, pen and ink. Day 49 is the final drawing in the artist’s 2013 “Counting the Omer” series.
Counting the Omer by Drawing
This year’s project began with a scratch of an idea. In preparation for Sinai, the receiving of the Torah, I wanted to explore what it means to hold on to something.
Being Meir
Can spiritual growth be found in the “tension between one’s own cherished beliefs and someone else’s contradictory beliefs”? Absolutely.
Families, Holy and... there is no other kind: A Jewish Ayahuasca Journey
I saw, behind my father, his father, and his father, and his. I saw, behind him and to his left, his mother, and her parents, and hers. Stretching backward in time, I saw generations of my ancestors, not in any particular detail, but like a phalanx of men and women supporting me and holding me. And then, above and behind my father, I had a vision of something that felt like the God of our ancestors, of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
In Defense of the Online Minyan
The synagogue in ancient Alexandria, Egypt, was so large that they had to wave flags so that the people in the back knew when to answer “amen.” The online service is essentially the same thing.
In the Image: A Jewish Theology to Confront the Bullying Epidemic
We all know the problems of Leviticus 18 for LGBTQ Jews. Here, Margie Klein shows that Talmud provides a Jewish theology against homophobic bullying.
Sarah and Moses: God’s Teachers of Compassion
Or Rose argues for the continuing power of the rabbinic exegetical tradition in this reflection on R. Shapir (the Piaceszner) and the Holocaust.
New Teachings from Exodus: Berman & Waskow’s Freedom Journeys
Egypt’s revolution should remind us of the Jewish “Passover” revolution there 3000 years ago. Freedom Journeys comes at just the right time.
Queer and Practicing: Reclaiming the Lost Spiritual Path of Chutzpah
To find a place for LGBTQ Jews in Judaism, we must regain the chutzpah of our ancestors, the Talmudists who took seriously Deut 30:12, “the Law is not in Heaven”
“Straight-Welcoming?!” – Creating an Inclusive Community
Inclusivity runs both ways: how one LGBT shul became straight-welcoming
Parenthood and Prayer
We bring in the New Year with a babe, as the Velveteen Rabbi ponders the meaning of prayer.
The Jewish Medicine Wheel
The Jewish holidays are reflections of our internal psychological landscape, following the cycles of the earth. The medicine wheel is a road map to these cycles.
A Diaspora of the Mind: American Jewry and the Secularization of Otherness
The largely secularist American Jewish population, which feels neither the covenantal pull of its forefathers, nor the desire to emigrate to the Jewish nation-state, nor the impulse to convert, finds itself in a unique kind of cognitive purgatory.
On Chanukah and Extremism
What Adam Sandler doesn’t tell you: the Hasmonean intra-ethnic cleansing campaign that followed the Maccabean miracle of lights.
Pumpkin Latkes
Since Hanukkah is so close to Thanksgiving this year, why not pumpkin latkes?
On Orthodoxy, and Editing
A hello from Zeek’s new Online Editor, Rivka Fogel, discussing her experience as an Orthodox Jewish editor. Some musings on the discussions between Orthodoxy and non-Orthodoxy, and within Orthodoxy itself.
Reconstructing Yiddishkeit
Coming of age in an unprecedented riot of opportunities for self-expression, I gravitated toward the category of what Heeb Magazine founder Jennifer Bleyer calls “dim sum Jews.”
Dedicated Jewish Contemplatives: A Jewish Monastic option?
Norman R. Davies is a Dedicated Jewish Contemplative – a Jewish monk. He writes for Zeek on what’s that like, and the possibilities in Judaism for a monastic lifestyle.
History, Memory, and Identity: A Conversation with Laurence Silberstein
Laurence Silberstein, author of The Postzionism Debates: Knowledge and Power in Israeli Culture (Routledge, May 1999) discusses the evolving relationship between history and identity among Israelis and American Jews with Valerie Saturen, Editor of Middle East Mirror.
A Father's Death Marks A Chance to Start Anew
Jewish mourning customs are designed to ease the grief of the bereaved. But what happens if there is no community? What happens to someone like me, hanging in twenty-something limbo, neither tethered to the family I came from or anchored to the one I’ve yet to create?
Worship for Agnostics: Building a Personal Relationship with a Nonpersonal God
How can one believe in God, when all of the descriptions of God tell us more about the imagination and values of the believer than they do about the ineffable? The answer: if you can conceive of God, then what you conceive is not God.
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