Reconstructing Reconstructionism, Part Two

By John Propper December 17, 2012

This is the second in a two-part feature on recent changes in the Reconstructionist movement. For the first part, an interview with Rabbi Dan Ehrenkrantz, current president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, follow this link. The modern rabbi is vastly different from her traditional counterpart. In addition to the responsibilities of scholarship and leading meaningful liturgical…

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Staying in touch during Seminary [Long Distance Friendships]

By awasserman February 16, 2012

I’ve known them since I was 10 years old. We’ve gone through everything together- pimples, training bras, hating our parents, loving our parents, hating boys, loving boys (we’re back to hating them, FYI) high school, mean girls – you get my point. We were that group of girls who spent every waking moment together, who…

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Israel’s last day envisioned; UC Santa Cruz complaint; Labor strikes in Israel; and more [Required Reading]

By pkessler February 9, 2012

An Israeli filmmaker envisions what Israel’s “last day” would look like, although takes many creative liberties while doing so. However unsettling the video may be, Uriel Heilman notes, it provides a thought provoking, yet unrealistic, depiction of what an attack on Israel and the response would look like. [JTA] Members of the Jewish clergy have…

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Jewish seminaries doing it right (and by it, I mean ‘it’) [Sex!]

By David A.M. Wilensky February 1, 2012

Big news, folks. Three American Jewish seminaries have been pronounced “sexually healthy:” Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, the Reform seminary with branches in Cincinnati, New York City and Los Angeles Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, the — you guessed it — Reconstructionist seminary in Philly Jewish Theological Seminary, the Conservative seminary in New York City The Religious…

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Deep, but not profound

By bzalcman September 24, 2009

Do you ever feel like you just don’t get it? No matter what, it just doesn’t make sense. You try and then you try a bit harder and every time you think that maybe, just maybe you got it, it just slips away from you like a helium-filled balloon on its way to greener pastures….

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Judgement Day

By bzalcman August 31, 2009

I spent this past shabbat with a new group of seminary girls who are beginning their year of Torah study in Israel. Along with the other madrichot (counselors? there really is no translation for this kind of job, at least that I can think of), I led a discussion group with (most of) the girls…

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