Jenna Weissman Joselit
By Jenna Weissman Joselit
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The Schmooze Travelling to Toledo
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree When people talk of travel as broadening, they usually have Paris in mind, not Toledo, Ohio. But as I discovered recently, travelling to the heartland of America can be just as eye-opening. I had come to the University of Toledo to deliver an illustrated lecture about the Ten Commandments…
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News How Religious Customs Take Their Toll
Keeping religion at arm?s length from the government is one thing. Keeping one religion at arm?s length from another, especially at the grassroots level of participation, is something else again. Whether we call it ??cultural appropriation?? or ? less ominously, perhaps ? cultural borrowing, there happens to be a lot of traffic between faiths in…
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Books Choosing ‘The Chosen,’ on Stage and Screen
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree There aren’t too many novels that can lay claim to a second, much less a third, lease on life as both a film and a play, especially when the subject at hand has to do with religion and faith. But “The Chosen,” Chaim Potok’s novel of Orthodox Jewish life…
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The Schmooze How the Violin Became the ‘Jewish National Instrument’
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Just the other night, amidst the glorious surroundings of the Music Room of The Phillips Collection, whose walls are bedecked with one masterpiece after another, over 100 people gathered together under the aegis of George Washington University’s Program in Judaic Studies to hear Professor James Loeffler of the University…
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The Schmooze Opening Museums on Sundays
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree In my household, Sundays are usually given over to two rituals: reading The New York Times and taking in a museum exhibition. I suspect your household is no different. But, as I explained recently to a group of George Washington alumni who had come together on a rainy Sunday…
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Culture Wonders Of America
Many American Jews are nothing if not zealous in their belief in the separation of church and state. One might even say it is among the cardinal principles of their faith. For a large swath of the American Jewish community, the best of all possible worlds is one in which religion stays in one corner…
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Books Jewish Children’s Ephemera Where You Least Expect Them
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree Princeton’s Cotsen Children’s Library is justly celebrated for the range of its holdings, the imaginative reach of its curators and its stimulating conferences, like the one I had the good fortune to attend just the other day, which explored the ephemera — the stuff — of childhood. From its…
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The Schmooze Being There
Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree The recent revelation that iTunes has created an app that seems to substitute for confession underscores the power of technology to redefine the very notion of ritual practice. So, too, has “Tweet Your Prayers,” in which electronic kvitlakh, or personal petitions, can be sent to the kotel, the Western…
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