Category: Congregation
Should Religion Be Hard?: A Response to Tom Ehrich
Last month, Tom Ehrich published an article in the Washington Post asking whether communities of faith were making religion too hard. His conclusion? Yes. Ehrich concedes that some aspects of faith ar... Read More
Why I Keep Coming Back, or: Hooked
This past semester, I completed an ethnographic project on a Sacred Harp singing group in the Boston area, motivated by one central question: what is it about this old-timey style of music with its ar... Read More
A Divine Call for Affirmation
This past week, Jews around the world commenced the reading of the Book of Exodus as part of the annual Torah reading cycle. This past week’s Torah portion, Parashat Shemot, contain important moment... Read More
Intentional Community on the Urban Frontier
“I’m tired of urban living,” I had become accustomed to repeating to friends and family, “and I wonder when I will get fed up, pack my bags, and head to a farm.” My escap... Read More
Unrateable Terrors
I help teach a university course on The Holocaust in Historical Context. It is, it should be, impossible to remain unaffected by immersive study of Western Antisemitism and how religious, economic, po... Read More
The Hajj – Revisiting Commonalities
On the 14th of October 2013, Muslims celebrated the second most important holiday in their religious calendar, the Eid ul Adha (or the festival of the Hajj) which is the culmination of the annual pilg... Read More
For What and For Whom Do We Pray?
Prayer has been on my mind a lot over the past few weeks. Because I don’t pray, this recent preoccupation seems worth exploring. Aside from the use of prayer as a means of communication with the div... Read More
Saving Conservative Judaism: A Response to the Religious Landscape Survey
This essay was inspired by the following article: “Conservative Judaism turns 100 and Works to Reverse its Decline.” Back in 2009, when my fiancé and I were searching for a synagogue to a... Read More