Category: Learning
God Questions
Many Jews, as we enter into our 20s, begin to critique the religious education we were given as children. While we were perhaps taught the importance of community, the obligation to tikkun olam, or th... Read More
Making Room for People With Disabilities
Here in Illinois, Governor Quinn has been pushing hard to close state institutions for people with developmental disabilities, along with some prisons and state mental hospitals. There are a handful o... Read More
Speaking of Israel
More than one of my politically and religiously liberal friends, when I told them I was converting to Judaism, gave as one of their first responses, “What about Israel?” Good question. What abo... Read More
An Unexpected Turn
In my last post I struggled with my place in and expectations of the church. A few months later and now I am a youth director and justice associate at a local church. Funny how life works. As a UMC le... Read More
“Not the Jesus I Love: Waco Residents Perception of the Branch Davidian Conflict” by Janet Jensen
On April 19, 1993, the 51-day standoff between the FBI and the Branch Davidians at Mount Carmel, a compound located close to Waco, Texas, came to what the Waco Tribune Herald described as a “fiery e... Read More
In Defense of an Undergraduate Education
Bill Bonner's diatribe against undergraduate education at UVA in the name of Thomas Jefferson and Rabbi HIllel demonstrates the same lazy habits of thinking and writing that I try to drill out of my f... Read More
What I’d tell 12-year-old me
As a man reaches a certain age – the age when peers start losing their parents – there are lines of thought that start to recur whether he likes it or not. How many people are left carrying on the... Read More
Meet the press (what’s left of it)
“It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing… Who do you want answering the phone?” Thus began a Hillary Clinton ad during ... Read More