Faith and Practice

Religion and Hybridity: Can someone be Jewish and Christian?

By David Levinsky

We can’t deny people what they have already taken for themselves: the ability to create identities that are satisfying and meaningful. American religious identities are fuzzy around the edges. The change is already here.

(This piece, from the Zeek archive, originally ran in May 2011.)

Arts and Culture

Mendelssohn’s Tea Pot: How Artists Reinvent the Past, and the Jewish Future

By Jenna Weissman Joselit

Lately, virtually everyone I know who has some kind of association – professional, emotional, familial, religious or intellectual – with the American Jewish community has been reading tea leaves, trying to figure out, in the wake of the Pew Research Center findings, what the future might hold.

I, too, have been reading tea leaves (Darjeeling, anyone?), but the ones I find at the bottom of my tea cup belong to Moses Mendelssohn, the celebrated 18th-century German Jewish philosopher who sought valiantly to come up with a series of strategies to align Jewishness with modernity.

Life and Action

#ReCatalyze Zeek -- aka Shameless Self-Promotion and Emphatic Gratitude (aka Co-Dependent Survival Necessities)

By Erica Brody

As Zeek’s editor and executive director, I wanted to share my gratitude to all the early adopters who’ve helped our#ReCatalyze Zeek campaign take off on Indiegogo. Each time a new crowd-funded donation comes in, I feel encouraged and energized by this showing of support for what we’re trying to do with Zeek and our vision for a strong, sustainable magazine in 2014!

Faith and Practice

Barely Time to Wait: Could the Grateful Dead Be Part of the Response to the Pew Study?

By David Weisberg

It was in the dining hall of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center just over two years ago when the light bulb appeared above my head. Our program director, Adam Segulah Sher, was welcoming participants for a weeklong retreat focused on serving on a chevra kadisha, a community’s secret burial society. “Welcome to this special week where we join together to learn how to honor the dead.” And there it appeared. Yes, we have a retreat focused on honoring the dead, but how about a retreat focused on honoring The Dead? A Shabbaton built upon dedication to the Grateful Dead, the legendary rock band.

From the beginning, it was something more than a joke.

News and Politics

A Year After Newtown, How Can We Bear the Guilt?

By Rabbi Aryeh Cohen

We must say loudly: This must stop here, this must stop now! In this this week’s Torah portion — read on the one-year anniversary of the slaughter at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, CT — Jacob recognized in Shimon and Levi that they had crossed the line into a culture and a life of violence, writes Rabbi Aryeh Cohen.

News and Politics

#WhatRabbisDo: Human Rights Day & Modern-day Slavery in the USA

By Rabbi Rachel Kahn-Troster

December 10th is International Human Rights Day, the 65th anniversary of the passage of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UDHR enshrines the idea of the inherent dignity of human life, realized through such protects as freedoms from slavery, unlawful imprisonment, and torture, and the rights to basic needs such as employment, a fair standard of living, and medical care. This year, in conjunction with Human Rights Shabbat, rabbis in 14 cities are visiting Wendy’s restaurants to ask that the corporation sign onto one of the most successful domestic human rights campaigns, the Fair Food Program of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers.

News and Politics

Mourning Mandela on the Heels of Hanukkah

By Sammie Moshenberg

I learned about Nelson Mandela’s death on my way back to the office from the White House Hanukkah reception yesterday. The news was not a complete surprise to anyone as the 95-year-old Mandela had been suffering with an intractable respiratory infection for many months. But it caught me short and saddened me deeply. With Hanukkah themes fresh in my consciousness, I could not help but see connections between the holiday and this great leader’s life.

News and Politics

Radicalize Thanksgivikkuh: Fight for Freedom (from Hunger)

By Abby J. Leibman

There’s certainly nothing wrong with enjoying delicious food with friends and family – that’s the best part about holidays. For those of us who can. But on behalf of the millions who can’t, I propose we embrace a far more radical interpretation of this momentous occasion.

Chanukah and Thanksgiving both celebrate the importance of freedom – freedom from oppression, from religious persecution and from want. As we gather to celebrate our hard won freedoms, we must also raise our voices. And keep raising them until everyone in America can enjoy the most basic freedom: freedom from want.

Life and Action

Women Have a Seat at the Table. But Wait. Who's Clearing? (Ahem, Men)

The sad truth is that, even in Jewish communities that stand for egalitarianism on the pulpit and in the pews, gender-equality disappears in the home.