Tag: Religion
A Woman is Acquired
“A woman is acquired [in marriage] in three ways…by money, by document, or by intercourse.” This is how the first mishnah in the tractate Kiddushin begins. In just this sentence alone we gain a ... Read More
What’s the Big Deal About Interfaith Marriage?
I attended the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Melbourne, Australia. I was amazed by the preponderance of sacred fashion statements (the hats!), the number of New Age practitioners from ... Read More
Religion Is All About Sex?
The Freudian take on religion, that it is all about sex, or more precisely all about repressed sexual urges, is hardly new. Nevertheless, it was somewhat startling when renowned sociologist of relig... Read More
Teaching Heschel and King by Leslie Hilgeman
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – quote used by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I don’t often write about classes I take at rabbinical school. But every so... Read More
Dealing with Mental Illness as a Person of Faith
The end of 2012 was marred with the tragic events that took place at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14, 2012. While the community reeled with the shocking loss and th... Read More
The Triple Goddess: the Mother in the Ganges, Mother Theresa, and Kali
My spiritual journey in India reached its second stage: the Mother, who manifests the potential of the Maiden. The seed growing into a mature tree, the full moon marking the greatest point of lunar in... Read More
Love Those Whom You Study: the Legacy of Sarah Hammond and the Ethic of Critical Empathy
Last Thanksgiving, the field of academic religious studies lost one its brightest young luminaries. Sarah Hammond had just begun her career as a professor of American religious history at the College ... Read More
Racism and Pluralism: Two Sides of an American Coin
It is an early Tuesday morning and the sun has just peeked from behind the mountains in the not-so-distant backdrop of my classroom. The course is Inter-Religious Dialogue and Leadership, and today’... Read More