http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog Reclaiming Judaism as a Spiritual Practice. Mon, 19 May 2008 11:35:05 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Goldie: A few days back we visited the birth place of the opera composer Rossini - Pesaro, by the sea. There was a line about Rossini that awakened some new consciousness for me as an organizer. It was about how he would spend time getting to know the vocalists and rewrite ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/05/19/o-soul-o-we-o/ We are on a mountain top in Urbino, Italy at the university, home to a key stem cell bioethics professore. [pro-fessor-ey], central to my own recent professional research, so this is exciting. We’re finished with the cruise-rabbi segment of this trip, but one thing that happened on the ship connects ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/05/11/cellutations-from-urbino/ Rebbe on the Road: A Dearly Belated Seder Goldie:  Ellie the Elder breaks off a fragment of afikomen, wraps it in a napkin and quite obviously places it in her purse. The fellow beside her jokingly asks if she koshered her purse for Passover or, perchance, is the afikomen lodging next ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/04/27/a-dearly-belated-seder/ Rebbe on the Road Europe 2008 Part One: Hard"ship" Radical awe is my favorite companion in life. Via cruise, we’ve just spent a day each in Rome and Barcelona, cities where the tipping points of civilizations yield magnificent markers of art, literature and architecture. Time’s airbrushed streets of Barcelona’s former Jewish ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/04/14/rebbe-on-the-road-europe/ We’re back home in Philadelphia My teacher, Rabbi Dr. Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer wrote to say the Buddhist seminary across from the rabbinical college needs a homiletics teacher, would I be interested. What a cool compliment. Meanwhile, just about everyone I know who’s Jewish knows more about Buddhism than I do and when ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/03/16/reform-buddhism-go-figure/ Curacao was heart-breaking. A world heritage site is located here that contains a room of a man named Jacob’s collection of biblical period and earlier artifacts is better known for its museum on the history of the slave trade on that island. Here individuals stolen from their villages in Africa ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/03/16/curious-curacao-simmering-st-martin/ The pride of place, language and culture we witnessed among residents of Puerto Rico resembled what I wish more Jewish people could recover. This sense of cultural pride was uniquely evident on the cruise ship we boarded for a week’s travels around the islands.  While I was serving as rabbi, ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/03/16/cruise-ship-rabbi/ Ponce was one place we perched for a few nights. An old, classically Spanish town, where noble buildings still are crumbling whilst streets are being made anew with major government funding, we wandered freely to the beautiful, rather new, elegant and eloquently assembled art museum. The paintings of a guest ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/03/16/nosherei/ Here is a photo of our improvised Hanukkah first night candles, which we lit at a beachcomber dining spot near the sea in Rincon after getting lost in the pitch dark and not making it back to our B&B in time for sundown. While streets signs are in Spanish and ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/03/16/a-well-churched-rabbi/ The Passover Kiddush, a prayer for the holiday that is chanted over dark red grape wine or grape juice symbolizing the vitality of life reads, zman heyruteynu mikrah kodesh, “times we are free holiness happens.” Several things holy happened during free-time on our trip to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean ... http://reclaimingjudaism.org/blog/2008/03/16/times-we-are-free-holiness-happens/