Sarah Silverman's memoir:THE BEDWETTER

by: Leah Platkin

Thu Apr 29, 2010 at 16:32:29 PM EDT

 Little miss Sarah Silverman has done it again.  We are shocked, we are appalled, and we are laughing uncontrollably.  For those of you who are not familiar, Silverman is an outlandish Jewish comedienne who is known for making highly inappropriate jokes and challenging controversial subject matter.  She uses humor as a tactic to confront racial, ethnic, religious, and gender based stereotypes.  What I have always appreciated about Sarah Silverman, is that she is an all encompassing woman (smart, funny, attractive) and she is always the first to make fun of herself.  

Death and Closure

by: Joshua Gershman

Fri Jan 16, 2009 at 15:02:48 PM EST

The World to Come, by Dara Horn, is a book about death. Am I oversimplifying? Of course I am. The book has so much more to offer - complex relationships between husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, and parents and children – a unique perspective on the Russian state in the early 20th Century – violence against Jews - and let’s not forget a fantastic mystery about how a small Marc Chagall painting made its way from middle-of-nowhere Russia to suburban New Jersey.

For me though, it is a book about death and how people deal with it – or fail to deal with it.

I first read this book a few years ago, at the end of what was a very trying year in my life, in which I dealt with my own personal tragedies. Reading through it the first time I had to force myself to put the book down, I could not help but be touched by the story enfolding in front of me. I think back on my reading of this book as putting some needed closure on what was a tumultuous year.

While this book is not “new”, and I am a few years removed from reading it, I found myself thinking about it recently – one because a colleague of mine just read it – and because it is nearing that time on the calendar when certain anniversaries are approaching.

This was a book that I will never forget. To say that I enjoyed reading it would be a vast understatement.

It’s worth so much more to me than that.

Searching for God in the 21st century

by: Rabbi Jill Jacobs

Wed Sep 17, 2008 at 09:08:03 AM EDT

Equity in Jewish Organizations: Why It's Important and How To Get There

by: Hannah Farber

Wed Jul 23, 2008 at 15:14:25 PM EDT

 “The Jewish communal field is staffed predominantly by women, yet the majority of [its] CEO positions are occupied by men.”

Why are the people in charge mostly men?

• The executive search process relies on a largely male network for referral and recruitment of candidates

• Leadership style is viewed differently depending on gender. For example, an “aggressive” style is often seen as positive and necessary for men but as a negative attribute among women.”

• Work-life balance and challenges of relocation impede women’s advancement significantly. While these issues also affect men, they have more of a negative impact on women.

Why is it a problem?

Spiritual Activism: Reading R. Avi Weiss' guide to leadership

by: Jeremy Burton

Tue Apr 22, 2008 at 18:07:39 PM EDT

After the enthusiastic public plug for this book at the Bronfman forum a few months ago, I may have come in with too many expectations placed on “Spiritual Activism: A Jewish Guide to Leadership and Repairing the World,” (Jewish Lights Publishing) the new volume from Rabbi Avi Weiss.  Nevertheless, having read it over the past week, it’s a compelling articulation of this long time activist and orthodox leader’s world view.

To preface, a challenge of discussing this work on Jspot is our domestic focus.  It is impossible to truly capture and grapple with R. Weiss’ world view without discussing Israel and the global Jewish community. That much of his activism has centered overseas – on Holocaust memory in Europe, on defense of Jewish communities in Latin America, and from his early days of Soviet Jewry work – is well know.  To engage some of his arguments without addressing these works or to ignore his assertion that “total… commitment to the State of Israel must remain unconditional” as a guideline for legitimate Jewish dissent leaves a hole in any discussion of his vision.

Nonetheless, I’ll leave that post for other blogs.  It does not preclude me from observing some larger points about his worldview of interest to us.

Spiritual Activism, the book, is not many things.  For one, it is not a comprehensive review of R. Weiss’s life work.  Surprisingly, to me, the aspect of his life to which I have found the most attachment and admiration amongst my friends goes ignored here.  That is, his passionate commitment to inclusiveness and dignity within the Orthodox community, even demanding halachic creativity and risking approbation for himself.  From his unmentioned earliest efforts on behalf of agunot and women’s leadership in the congregational prayer space, to his work creating welcoming synagogues for the disabled (which draws but a single mention here), there is nary a word about his vision for Orthodoxy, his views of the Orthodox establishment, nor how these connect to his larger philosophy as an activist.  Coming at a time when he is boldly leading the charge to once again challenge exclusionary and xenophobic tendencies in the Orthodox rabbinate on the matter of converts and their descendents, one is left wondering what aspect of his self-identity as a halachic authority he seeks to protect by not, at least here, connecting his anti-establishment world view to his struggles with the Rabbinical Council of America.

That one of his potentially most transformative legacies as a leader - the challenging of the Yeshiva University dominance of the Orthodox rabbinate by his establishment of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah - goes undiscussed, other than by his disclaimer that the views in this book are his and his alone, serves further to underline that this very large segment of his life’s work is absent from this particular table.