Why I’m Back in Jerusalem – For the Next Six Months (sort of)

 Here’s a happy update – written for the Lab/Shul community and/or the rest of my friends who care to know:   I arrived in Israel on Jan. 6 with my family, excited for our adventure : Half a year’s worth of a sabbatical in Israel. Why?  it’s a long story but suffice to say that […]

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Jesus in Birkenau (& other strange stories of faith, lost & found, from a week @ Yad Vashem)

Amichai Lau-Lavie, Jerusalem, July 2012   Half way through his lecture, the Czech professor, 83, starts to sing, quietly, but with feeling, a melody he remembers from a night in Birkenau, 68 years ago. This is happening at an academic conference, and the singing is a bit weird and some people are clearly uncomfortable, and […]

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The Presence of Absence: Another Theological Model/Thinking about the Holocaust (4)

In summer 2012 I enrolled at a JTS summer course: Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Jewish Thinking. The course enabled me to focus on several philosophical, historical, aesthetic and theological issues related to this complex topic. I wrote several papers examining some of these issues. This is the fourth essay – exploring the startling theological (and thealogical […]

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Breaking the Silence/Thinking about the Holocaust (3)

In summer 2012 I enrolled at a JTS summer course: Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Jewish Thinking. The course enabled me to focus on several philosophical, historical, aesthetic and theological issues related to this complex topic. I wrote several papers examining some of these issues. This is the third essay – exploring the choice to be silent […]

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The Choice of Hope/Thinking about the Holocaust (2)

In summer 2012 I enrolled at a JTS summer course: Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Jewish Thinking. The course enabled me to focus on several philosophical, historical, aesthetic and theological issues related to this complex topic. I wrote several papers examining some of these issues. This is the second essay – exploring the choice to hope – […]

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