A Visual Language: Seeing and Ceremony – An Interview with Tobi Kahn
A Visual Language: Seeing and Ceremony – An Interview with Tobi Kahn, Originally Published in Sh’ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, February 2005.
Articles
Not Your Grandfather’s Reform Judaism
Leon A. Morris We Reform Jews want it both ways. We want to be the great open tent for the majority of American Jews who seek some kind of Jewish identification. But we also want to be a movement of serious, committed Jews embracing a liberal Jewish theology . Located on the left of the … Read more
But Enough About Me
Rabbi Leon A. Morris, The Jewish Week, June 10th, 2004 Has narcissism become the predominant religion of American life? Personal fulfillment, the individual’s search for meaning, and other self referential notions indicate the ways in which traditional motivations for religious observance have fallen by the wayside. In pre—modern times, our behavior was exclusively regulated by … Read more
Beyond, or Mixing, Denominations
Rabbi Leon A. Morris Some time ago, Nike launched a new concept in sneakers called “Nike iD!” Catering to a generation no longer content with buying a specific model of athletic footwear shared by thousands, Nike iD enables customers to go to their Web site and to “make your mark with customizable gear,” the combination … Read more
From Rebellion to Embrace
April 2006 – The Jewish Week Rabbi Leon A. Morris From the time he was 13 years old, my grandfather put on tefillin every day. One day, when he was in his mid-20s, as a resident physician far from his childhood home, he rushed to the hospital one morning without having had the chance to … Read more
A First-hand Account of Israel’s Wagner Debate
NEW YORK, July 17 (JTA) — The opportunity to hear the German State Orchestra, Staatskapelle Berlin, perform in Jerusalem was in itself ironic. That Daniel Barenboim, the orchestra’s world-famous conductor, is an Israeli Jew made a performance in Jerusalem all the more intriguing. Moments after Shabbat ended on July 7, two friends and I hurried … Read more
Taking It With You: Bringing Joseph’s Bones Out of Egypt
January 1999 Rabbi Leon A. Morris In this week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, Joseph and his brothers show two very different ways of reacting in response to the past. Joseph’s brothers fear that he will take revenge on them once their father has died. They ask, “What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and … Read more
Reform Judaism
Rabbi Leon A. Morris, Sh’ma Journal At the time of publication the writer was a fourth year rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College Reform Judaism will grow and thrive not by thoughtlessly seeking out a perceived “center”, but by recapturing the sense of dialectic that Judaism has always treasured and Reform has all but lost. … Read more
Reform Jews Embracing Mitzvot – Session
Many Liberal Jews for quite some time have been rethinking earlier attitudes and approaches to the Mitzvot. In 1885, Reform rabbis in America declared as binding only the moral laws, but rejected “all such [mitzvot] as are not adapted to the views and habits of modern civilization.” Since that time, Reform Judaism has undergone many … Read more