David Ellenson
By David Ellenson
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Opinion Being Ourselves By Being For Others
There is a Hasidic allegory in which a rebbe explains why the stork, known in Hebrew as the hasidah, is characterized as a non-kosher animal. At the outset of his homily, the rebbe observes that the stork is labeled the hasidah (the merciful one) because the kindness and compassion this animal displays for its own…
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Opinion Conversion Is Not An Outreach Strategy
For more than a decade, a group of Jewish communal leaders has been arguing that the challenge of intermarriage can only be met by a policy of converting non-Jewish partners. They cite statistics indicating that among children raised in interfaith families in which the non-Jewish partner has not converted, only a small minority identify as…
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News You’re in the Army Now
On the first Friday night of July, I attended Sabbath eve services at Kehillat Ra’anan, a Progressive congregation in Ra’anana, Israel. The services — a prelude to the bat mitzvah of my niece Shirah, which was to be celebrated the next day — contained a memorable and moving new ritual, one I had never witnessed…
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News Religious Revival
Judaism has a long, complicated, fascinating history, and no chapter offers developments more unique than those written in the 350 years since the Jews first arrived in America. There are a number of reasons for this, though the most illuminating is perhaps that offered by the late Marshall Sklare, who noted that the United States…
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Opinion Abortion Ban Degrades And Devalues Women
President Bush recently signed a ban on so-called “partial birth abortions” into law. Enactment of this legislation marks a great victory for the religious right, and such passage surely reflects — as many commentators have pointed out — how successful the proponents of the ban have been in their campaign to restrict the scope of…
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Opinion The Particular Poignancy of Tisha B’Av, This Year in Jerusalem
Last March I spoke out publicly to express my distress when a scheduling difficulty made it impossible for Uri Lupolianski, an ultra-Orthodox Jew who was then the acting mayor of Jerusalem, to meet with a delegation from the Hebrew Union College—Jewish Institute of Religion’s Board of Governors. We had come to Israel to express solidarity…
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News In a Jerusalem Praying for Unity, Sectarianism Widens the Divide
The acting mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, was “busy” last Friday. That morning a delegation from the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion — headed by Chairman Burton Lehman, and including former chairmen Richard Scheuer and Stanley Gold — was scheduled to meet with Mayor Lupolianski at his office in City…
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