Wandering Through the Desert: Sifting Through Our Past on our Way to Revelation
During Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we cast our sins in to the desert, freeing ourselves from their oppressive burden, unshackling our hearts and minds so that we can begin the year anew. Six months later another new year arrives (Exodus 12:12). After a period of enslavement we find ourselves once again loosening our chains and opening our souls, ready to reencounter that which we cast away.
Will Work for Meaning
On a recent, overcast Thursday evening, I co-led a presentation in San Marcos, Texas, about creating a local, interfaith environmental network. I didn’t know what to expect; in retrospect, I guess I didn’t expect much. San Marcos is a small town compared to the other cities in which I’ve offered this presentation. I wondered whether [...]
Parashat Emor: Embodied Leadership and Its Discontents
In Parashat Emor (Leviticus 21-24), read this past week in synagogues around the world, we are introduced to the relatives for whom Kohanim (priests) are permitted to mourn, as well as a list of various classes of priests who, owing to a mum (blemish), are barred from performing the sacrificial service in the Mishkan (Leviticus [...]
Engaging Compassion: Boston and the interrelatedness of our own actions.
Boston. Baghdad. New York. Kabul. Tel Aviv. Gaza… Syria… Burma… Rwanda… Tibet… the sorrow of violent tragedies that I have learned in my generation seems to have crossed all the borders. The reality is that there are no borders, even if we try to build the walls and fences that separate us. Hurt, like love, [...]
Tragedy: A Quaker and an Anthropologist’s Response
How does your faith or ethical tradition inform your response to tragedies? In the wake of the devastating blasts in Boston, one Twitter user, Mike_FTW, has gained fame for stating: In times of tragedy Twitter should go into Quaker mode. Shut up or be meaningful. — Mike Monteiro (@Mike_FTW) April 15, 2013 The question, [...]
Icebergs and Identity
Source: Uwe Kils (Attribution via Wikimeida Commons) I’ve often used the model of an iceberg in reflecting on identity. The most striking feature of an iceberg and perhaps the most often drawn analogy; how the majority of it is in fact ‘below the surface.’ Only a small fraction of an iceberg is readily perceived; the lesson [...]
Towards Acceptance, Holiness and Removing Stumbling Blocks
This week, we are once again reading Parashat Kedoshim (Leviticus 19:1-20:27). Biblical scholars commonly refer to these two chapters of Leviticus as the holiness code due to the numerous interpersonal commandments (mitzvot) that are found within. These mitzvot form the foundation of Torah and are applicable to everyone. In addition to loving our neighbor as [...]
Five Lessons in Ecumenical, Interfaith, and Extrafaith Organizing
The Princeton New Jim Crow Project is a coalition of local organizations working for awareness and reform of injustices in the criminal justice system. The group takes its name from Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010). The book has sparked a conversation across the country on racial [...]
Social Futures: Tackling Poverty in Medicine
Today the nursing staff held a birthday party for a patient. The party was not to celebrate with her, but to cheer on her departure from the service. She had moved into a new age bracket, and as a result, would receive care on the far side of campus. Her details are important insofar as [...]
Pacem in Terris and Mercy Mild
With almost daily reminders that War is Coming, it gets hard to imagine an alternative. Over the last month our media has been banging the drums of war suggesting that Kim Jong-un is borderline psychotic and is ready, at any moment, to drop a bomb. With images of their prison camps, videos of their propaganda, [...]
Contributing Scholars
Phillipe CopelandPhillipe Copeland is a Baha'i, a doctoral candidate in social work, a dedicated blogger, a husband and a father.
Christina YostChristina Yost is a first year M.Div. student at Methodist Theological School in Ohio and received her B.A. in Pre-Theology and Psychology at Ohio Wesleyan University. She is pursuing ordination in the United Methodist Church and is currently a certified candidate in the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference.
Elizabeth BonneyElizabeth is currently pursuing a Master of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School. Although she recently converted to Judaism, she comes from an ecumenical background; she was raised in the Presbyterian Church (USA), attended a Catholic high school, and graduated from a Baptist college, where she took interest in interfaith dialogue, gender studies, and equality advocacy.