What do Esther, Moses, Joseph and Ruth have in common? They all might have had trouble finding a rabbi to do their wedding! Jewish genetics, archival research, and contemporary scholarship has shed new light on an old-new challenge of Jewish life
This session will introduce the curriculum and lesson plans being taught to 50% of schoolchildren in Israel on nature and environmental issues, including lesson plans that connect Judaism to the environment, season by season. Part of the goal in teaching nature and environmental issues to children in Israel is getting them to KNOW and LOVE the Land of Israel.
A conversation on the values and principles that guide and inspire our everyday decisions. If there is time, we will start writing our own personal ethical wills
This workshop is for those who want to compose their own prayers for a refuah shlemah, a complete healing of body, mind and spirit. We will look at the role and structure of healing prayer from past to present and how creative prayer can be joined closely or stand free from traditional Jewish prayer. Together we will discuss and describe the many ways that we as contemporary Jews understand G-d and therefore how we might each approach the One. Participants will then have the opportunity to create their own prayers as an expression of the heart.
Is kavannah (intense feeling) a necessary component of prayer or the fulfillment of the mitzvot? In an attempt to answer, or at least respond to the questions, we will study two rabbinic stories which touch upon the relationship between kavannah at the fulfillment of the mitzvot.
James Kugel in his 2007 best seller "How to Read the Bible" stated that the gap between academic and traditional Bible study was "unbridgeable". Ben Katz believes that it is not the case. In this session, Ben Katz will show that academic Bible study is not always as scientific as its proponents make it out to be, while at least some medieval Bible commentators are quite critical and 'modern' in outlook. The presenter will also give examples of some of the recent trends towards literary analysis of Scripture.
