Mordechai Kaplan on Religion

Kaplan is one of the great Jewish philosophers and theologians of the 20th century often referenced in the same sentence with the likes of Martin Buber, Abraham Joshua Heshel, etc. Among the many issues he wrote on, an overarching theme was writing about Judaism in the context of American, and the "modern" world. He is also the foundational thinker/Rabbi for the Reconstructionist movement which I grew up in, and still identify with at times. I really enjoyed this paragraph on a vision of a universalist notion of religion and wanted to share it with you. Love M.

"It should not be difficult to render Jewish religion viable in the modern cultural climate. All that is necessary is to accustom the modern-minded Jew to realize that religion is fundamentally a type of human experience which derives from an affirmative and hopeful reaction to life as a whole. So viewed, religion is basically the acceptance of human life as having meaning, that is, as capable of entering into ever-increasing webs of relationship with the rest of reality and of being dominated by purposes of its own choosing. Religion is the ability to discover creative possibilities in the most unpromising aspects of human life. The mystic doctrine that "the sparks of divinity" inhere in all things is what all religion should seek to verify. If we regard human life as deserving that we give it the best that is in us, we necessarily regard it as sacred and divine. If we accept life in that spirit, we are not only religious in the truest and best sense of the term, but we also attain the insight which enables us to appreciate what mankind has sought to achieve through religion. We then begin to understand religion as a dynamic and evolving process, and not as a fixed system of beliefs and ordinances to be either wholly accepted or rejected"

I don't think this quote necessarily captures all of what religion is (how could any one quote, book, or writer do that?) but for me, where I am with my spiritual journey and facing the rigid binary of religious/secular Jews in Israel, it was a breath of fresh air to hear religion and Judaism described as such.
Have an amazing week!

Faith Voices for the Common Good

Friends, I am not sure if you've heard of this site/initiative, but it is one that I favor.  Do check out: www.faithvoices.org  

Rita Nakashima Brock, Lisa Sharon Harper, Peter Heltzel, et al (progressive Christians) all argue that "we" have lost (or perhaps, never had) the conception of a common good that actually includes all peoples.  What would it look like for us to create an inter-religious, transracial, hetero-cultural, cross-gender, sexually inclusive, multi-class, international, etc coalition, the purpose of which would be to cultivate a unified sense of and "practically" and "materially" actualize the "common good?"  

Thoughts?

With Hope,

Jason

meaningful melodies

I came across a beautiful article in the NYTimes today...here is an excerpt:

Melody is its own idea, like sculpture. You don’t look at a piece of sculpture to see what is resting on top of it. A great melody has its own design, a beautiful combination of intervals and rhythms usually expressing the emotion of the song. Somehow a melody is connected, like the sense of smell, to memory, so when you hear a song it connects you in a flood of emotions to the time and place of that song. I am sure there are reasons in the brain for this, but as a songwriter I don’t need to know how the brain does it, only that it does. Here, for example, is one article that puts it succinctly. There are so many articles and books about what music does to the brain that I can’t list them all here.

the rest of the article: http://measureformeasure.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/whats-a-melody-for/

love,
emily

Hello Friends,

I am sending you all waves of love. I hope you can feel them covering you as you listen to this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6yhgFxDQMw&feature=related

-jch

simple

Let's all make spiritual talk simple today:
God is trying to sell you something. And you don't want to buy.
This is what your suffering is: your fantastic haggling,
your manic screaming over the price.
-Hafiz

food for thought; still don't know if i agree.
love,
aa

Faith is the Courageous Trust in Life

"Having faith does not mean subscribing to some dogmas or to some articles of faith or anything like that. Faith ultimately is courage to trust in life. The particular form that our religious faith takes depends entirely on the time and place and the social structure and the cultural forms into which we were born, and there is an infinite variety of these. But the essence of our faith is the same at all times and in all places, and it is the courage to trust in life."

-Brother David Steindl-Rast, "The Monk in Us"

This was a really beautiful article that had some wonderful Universalist notions about what 'truth' means (in a religious context) versus fear, and the paradox of experience between indidual experiences of meaning, and connection to a universal oneness. If you want the full article, I'll email it to you.
MGW

The Zohar and Jewish Mysticism

Today I sat in on a class I'm thinking about taking which is a text study class on the Zohar, the primary book on Kabalah and Jewish Mysticism. An hour of the class was spent doing Chavrutah (partner) text study on the two primary visions of the "Ma'aseh Merkavah" (sort of like a doctrine of chariot visions?)in the Hebrew bible. These visions come in the books of Ezekiel and Isaiah.
So, I'll fill you in on what the sages extrapolated from these passages if I take the class, but if your in the mood to read some really amazing, beautiful, trippy, terrifying, powerful, etc. descriptions of Angels and G-d, check out the 1st chapter of Ezekiel and Isaiah chapter 6. Would love to hear y'all's take!
Love as always

Skype Spirit

Just got to skype with Aaliya for 45 minutes and my soul is soaring. I feel so blessed to have such amazing friends in my life.

this is just the beginning...

"Just the Beginning" by Kurt Carr

This is one of the songs we are singing in Ebony this semester - it is incredibly inspirational for me this semester, especially with graduation (for real this time) looming in the not-so-distant distance.

song #9 on this website:
http://www.imeem.com/people/OVwbln9/playlist/D3tLHVKh/kurt_carr_music_playlist/

Enjoy, be inspired.
Love,
Emily

Inspiration in all places

I heard this quote while watching the Oscars last night, of all things, but I liked the message:

"I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again!"

-- Jerry Lewis

a sidenote: I am really enjoying this blog so far. Let's keep it up!


Lots of love to you all,

Emily

Contemporary Spiritualities

So I started classes at Hebrew U today (finally!); some ok, and some absolutely amazing.
My favorite class by far is called "Contemporary Spirituality in Israel and the United States" in which we're going to "examine the varieties of Jewish Spirituality presently being developed and offered in America and Israel today." So, basically right up my alley. The professor, Eliezer Shore, is this amazing Bal Tshuva Tzadik, who spent the first 20 minutes of class telling us about his spiritual journey of dropping out of Sarah Lawrence, studying Buddhist in monasteries, meditating around England, living in isolation in the North Carolina woods for half a year, and finally turning to Jewish mysticism, taking everything he picked up along the way with him. This guy just radiates loving energy, is absolutely brilliant, and is going to be so much for, and so nurturing for the soul to study with. In the first class, he literally references every book that is sitting besides my bed that I was debating taking to Israel; Abraham Joshua Heschel, Martin Buber; I and Thou, Victor Frankl; Man in Search of Meaning; Ken Wilber; a Brief History of Everything, and of course the tanach.
So, yeah, this class is far from the Wesleyan religion department to say the least. We each had to say how we identified "spritually" with a combination of the labels, "spritual," "religious," and "secular/scientific" with the object being to define the terms; trying to define spirituality in the first class! That would probably be Peter Gotschalk's final essay question if he taught this class...
Anyways, I'll leave y'all with a quote we talked over for quite awhile. It is not particularly inspirational, and in fact, I think I quite disagree with it, but it is certainly thought provoking for the class, and those of us on the "transcendental" journey. I'll post a better quote from the class soon.
So much love from Jerusalem, and missing all of you already,
Micah

"We Start with the simple observation that the "metaphysics" of the spiritual traditions have been thoroughly critiqued - "trashed" is probably the better word - by both modernist and postmodernist epistemologies, and there has arisen nothing compelling to take their space"
-Ken Wilber; Integral Spirituality, p. 33

OK, changed my mind, here's a bit more uplifting quote:

"The crises of our time are challenging the world religions to release a new spiritual force transcending religious, cultural, and national boundaries into a new consciousness of the oneness of the human community and so putting into effect a spiritual dynamic towards a solution of the world's problems...We affirm a new spirituality, divested of insularity and directed towards planetary consciousness"
-Statement read before the U.N., October 1995 (don't know by who)

I was looking back through quotes and passages I've saved - Aaliya, this is one that you sent me that feels important right now.

For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God.

Romans 8: 38-40

something big

"When you go down to the river to drink," he said, "sometimes, quite often, the sun appears. Even though that wasn't what we were after. Now and again, when you go looking for something small, you come up with something big."- Peter Hoeg, The Woman & The Ape
- Aa

Our first blog post!

Baby, the best is yet to come!
Love,
Aaliya
Emily
Jason
Micah