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The Hebrew Word For Patience

“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” the Peter Finch character screams in the movie Network, one of the more memorable moments in cinematic history. In contemporary U.S. culture, it often seems as if speaking your mind, no matter how hurtful, and no matter what the consequences, is considered a virtue. That’s a problem!

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/hebrew-word-patience

Posted on: 2017/01/31 - 3:22pm

Pregnant in Israel

The belly of a pregnant woman is public property. Traditional Jewish law divides domains into public (reshut harabim) and private (reshut hayahid), much like American law. While there is probably no case establishing this in the She’elot U’tshuvot (body of law known as the Responsa Literature containing questions asked of authoritative rabbis), the general public in Israel has indeed ruled that my belly, like the bellies of all pregnant women, belongs to the reshut harabim.

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/pregnant-israel

Posted on: 2017/01/31 - 3:37pm

Light Through The Cracks - DW

Recently on the radio, I listened to the new president vigorously assert his belief in the effectiveness of torture. This is not news: he had made his views on the topic clear as a candidate. But this radio report was further evidence, piled onto President Trump’s intimidation of the media and his assertions that falsehoods are truths and truths falsehoods, that we are living in a new reality, where the leader of the free world champions the practices of despots and dictators.

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/light-through-cracks

Posted on: 2017/02/01 - 2:51pm

Goruch Statement

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/statement-supreme-court-nominee-judge-neil-gorsuch

Posted on: 2017/02/01 - 4:20pm

Statement on Knesset Law that Retroactively Authorizes Settlement Outposts

RRC/Jewish Reconstructionist Communities and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association strongly oppose the Knesset's passage earlier this week of a law known as the “Regularization Bill.” The law, which passed by a vote of 60-52, retroactively legalizes 4,000 settler housing units that were built without the Israeli government's authorization on property the government acknowledges was privately owned by Palestinians.

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/statement-knesset-law-retroactively-authorizes-settlement-outposts

Posted on: 2017/02/08 - 12:00am

Statement on Petach Tikvah Open Market Terrorist Attack

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/news/statement-petach-tikvah-open-market-terrorist-attack

Posted on: 2017/02/09 - 12:00am

A Discussion About Teaching Hanukkah: Miracle or Not?

Discussion from November 2004

Toni Bloomberg Grossman, Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation, Bethesda, MD

Hi everyone,

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/discussion-about-teaching-hanukkah-miracle-or-not

Posted on: 2017/02/10 - 2:31pm

Next Year In Jerusalem

Different Meanings

Each year, around seder tables throughout the world, Jews and our guests end the haggadah with the phrase, “L'shanah haba'ah biyerushalayim — Next Year in Jerusalem.” Like the four children who appear earlier in the haggadah text as paradigms for the ways Jews approach the historical narrative, those who say or hear “Next Year in Jerusalem” do so with many different degrees of self-knowledge or awareness in relationship to the phrase.

https://archive.reconstructingjudaism.org/article/next-year-jerusalem-0

Posted on: 2017/02/10 - 2:39pm