Several months ago I was on Capitol Hill meeting a prominent Congresswoman in the Rayburn Room. We met in a corner of the large room, while at its center a technical crew was preparing for a press conference. The banner behind the podium read “Energy Independence.” The House energy bill was going to be presented under that banner later in the day.
She asked, half jokingly, if we had come to talk with her about energy, it being the subject du jour.
Yes, I responded. She was somewhat surprised, as were some of the other Representatives and Senators I had approached. After all, what do Jews have to do with energy policy?
Continue reading ‘Putting Some Bite in U.S. Energy Policy’
Some of Noah Feldman’s “Orthodox Paradox” resonated with me. Like him, I am an alumnus of Boston’s Maimonides Hebrew Day School, which “made me who I am”. Like him, I have since struggled to integrate the precepts of two very different world views and value systems, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.
Some of Feldman’s arguments are compelling. The rabbi who challenged a physician on treating gentile patients on Shabbat was guilty not only of a serious error of judgment, but also of perverting Judaism’s fundamental teaching that all of humanity are created in God’s image. I well understand Feldman’s discomfort with the injunction to exterminate the Amalekites, but long ago chose to historicize the teaching rather than struggle to discover its contemporary salience. To be sure his disingenuousness in claiming that he had been deliberately airbrushed out of the reunion photo badly undermines his credibility.
Continue reading ‘Commentary on Noah Feldman’
The Holy See recently announced that it is proud to be neutral – carbon neutral. Very shortly, in fact, the Vatican will become the fist sovereign state in the world to become entirely carbon neutral. It intends to plant trees in Hungary to offset the emissions used in Vatican City, to begin to convert their facilities’ energy sources to solar power and raise awareness through conferences and teaching about environmental responsibilities.
While the Catholic Church is by far the largest single Christian body in the world, they are by no means the only one concerned over the future of the environment. Concern for the future of our planet has quickly become a religious issue that transcends liberal and conservative labels, cuts across interreligious lines, and takes on theological significance in the sermons of religious leaders.
Catholics, Anglicans, Orthodox, Presbyterians, American Mainline Protestants, Evangelical Protestants, Muslims, Buddhists and Jews have begun to make “earth stewardship” both a political and religious imperative.
Continue reading ‘“Caring for Creation” Gains Speed’
Friends, colleagues, even family members frequently admonish me that my universe of Jewish discourse consists primarily of active Jews. As a result, these well-wishers tell me, I am spending too much time addressing AJC leadership, where I work, the modern Orthodox community where I live, and the Jewish Theological Seminary, where I frequently teach. Rather than address the universe of committed Jews primarily, I am therefore urged to “get out of the bubble” and find out what is on the minds and hearts of Jews in the street.
Continue reading ‘Jewish Identity and Jewish Peoplehood: Convergence or Divergence?’