There's More To You Than You Realize / 19 Sep 2019
The Problem With Treating Ordinary People Like Heroes
Every ordinary person has the ability to do extraordinary things.
Interviews With Wise People Of Today / 12 Sep 2019
Rabbi Michal Loving On The Challenges Of Being A Female Rabbi
An interview with Rabbi Michal Loving of southern California.
Inspiring People / 05 Sep 2019
What We Can Learn From Saint Romero About Social Justice
What Liberation Theology can teach us today.
Art & Culture / 30 Aug 2019
What Madeleine L’Engle Taught Me About The Power Of Naming
The work of the artist, the act of creation, is an act of naming and making a thing known.
News & Politics / 27 Aug 2019
To Address The Problem of Guns, We Need Both Data And Emotion
In the span of two days, two mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton have once again brought anguish over gun deaths to the forefront of the public conversation. An outpouring of emotion was followed by questions of how many times this needs to happen again before lawmakers make substantial steps to reduce gun violence. Soon afterwards, Neil deGrasse Tyson attempted to help bring reason to a very emotional topic: Understandably, Twitter and the media excoriated him — for the timing, for some potential inaccuracies in the numbers, and for coming off as cold-hearted. Where I think his biggest mistake was, though, was in separating emotion and data. For any kind of solution, we need both. Fear and anger are what compel us to act, including the willingness to gather data. As psychologist Daniel Goleman wrote in his book Emotional Intelligence: All emotions are, in essence, impulses to act, the instant plans for handling life that evolution has instilled in us. The very root of the word emotion is motere, the Latin verb “to move,” plus the prefix “e-” to connote “move away,” suggesting that a tendency to act is implicit in every emotion. (6) I think (or at least hope) everyone would agree that we want fewer gun deaths in our country. And if we are angry about those deaths, or scared for our children’s lives, we need to lean into those feelings in our efforts to bring about positive change. As John Oliver remarked, “while the depressingly familiar numbness that you may be currently feeling can help you handle the pain in the short term, in the long term it can actually be a real problem because unless something hurts as much as it’s supposed to, nothing gets done about it.” So we do need to feel…
Inspiring People, Wisdom Warehouse |
October 07, 2013
10 Pieces of Wisdom from Desmond Tutu on his Birthday
Today – October 7 – is Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s 82nd birthday.? I have the honor of serving on the Board of The Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation (DTPF)? whose mission is to help provide tools to create peace within, among and between people. Peace-making or what I call Peace-ing is an ongoing daily practice of attending to our own self and our ever widening webs of relationships that are our families, our communities and the diverse people of the world. Meeting Archbishop Tutu, hearing him speak and teach is an......
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Daily Life, Wisdom Warehouse |
October 04, 2013
Respecting Opposing Views: How to Look at the Other Side
Seems like every morning we wake to the overwhelming headlines of fighting, anger and polarization – there aren’t many conversations today that aren’t anchored by disagreement.? From Congress, the media, cocktail parties and even our own dinner tables we’re seemingly unable to see that “the other side’s” opinion may be based in some truth. Instead opposing views should immediately be dissed or destroyed. Remember the Aesop fable, “The Fox and the Grapes”? where a fox sees some high-hanging luscious grapes and wishes to eat them. The fox jumps and jumps but fails......
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News & Politics, Videos, Wisdom Warehouse |
October 04, 2013
Video: Brad Hirschfield on Washington’s Bad Example
From Odyssey Network’s Faith on the Record series: “This week the political fight in Washington came to a crisis point over the Affordable Care Act and the debt ceiling, leading to a shutdown of the federal government.? There is a lot we can learn from the bad example being set in our nation’s capital, says Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, President of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.? “When doctrine and dogma get in the way of addressing the real pain that people are feeling, something is terribly wrong.”” Odyssey Networks......
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Sometimes we need to let the past be in the past. It’s not always easy – and it’s certainly not always appropriate choice. But sometimes it’s true that forgetting a part of your past is the best way to create a better future. Forgetting can be a remarkable gift – allowing ourselves to forget painful things we regret, resolving to forget the hurtful acts of others. Most of us have moments in our past that we wish were different, and many of us carry those hurts and resentments with us, each new......
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What would you do if forty days before your daughter’s wedding it gets called off?? In your disappointment, would you stew in sadness, would you cancel everything, try to get your money back? You don’t if you’re William and Carol Fowler. When their daughter Tamara’s wedding was canceled, the Fowlers called Hosea Feed the Hungry, a nonprofit organization that provides homeless individuals with services and resources, and invited 200 homeless people to what they called “The Fowler Celebration of Love.” William said he “prayed on it during the night and God had......
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This face could change our world and shape history.? Whether that happens or not, depends not only on him, but on you, and what you see when you see his face.? In part, what you see depends on whether or not you know to whom the face belongs, or if you simply see some religious guy – probably Muslim, or is that a Sikh turban?? But it’s actually bigger than that. What do any of us see when we see anyone or anything unfamiliar to us, “whatever religion ‘that guy’ follows”?? That’s......
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Relationships & Family, Wisdom Warehouse |
September 30, 2013
What the Looming Government Shutdown Can Teach Us About Relationships
The Federal government is poised to shut down in hours, but there is at least one bright side to this most recent round of ugly political theater:? it reminds us that playing the blame game is no way to sustain healthy relationships, or really succeed at getting anything of lasting significance accomplished. Elected officials are spending vastly more time and energy assigning blame for the impeding hardships which will result if the government shuts down, than they do trying to avoid the shutdown and avert the suffering.? Find that offensive?? Me too!......
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Spirituality & Faith, Videos, Wisdom Warehouse |
September 26, 2013
Video: Brad Hirschfield on Nairobi, Peshawar, and the Simchat Torah
From Odyssey Network’s Faith on the Record series: “This week saw two horrific acts of violence – a suicide bombing of a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan and the siege at an upscale mall Nairobi, Kenya – which left hundreds of people dead and injured.? Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, President of CLAL, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, reflects on these events through the lens of Simchat Torah, the Jewish celebration of the end of the annual reading of the Torah and the beginning of a new cycle of reading the......
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Business & Education, Wisdom Warehouse |
September 26, 2013
3D Character Printing: Building Better People
Imagine a gathering of over ?”400 innovators, troublemakers, entrepreneurs inventors and transformation artists” where for a couple of days, thirty-two story-tellers from around the world from every field share their wisdom. ?Well this is BIF#9, the BIF Summit in Providence, Rhode Island – and I was as one of the storytellers. ?It was crazy, inspiring, creative, playful, purposeful and safe – a holy secular place at its best! Sitting there listening to amazing innovators (see this installment of Week in Wisdom) and engaging in conversations about identifying better ways to deliver value......
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News & Politics, Wisdom Warehouse |
September 25, 2013
Why Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Grandchildren Give Him Hope
On Monday night I had the honor of being at a dinner at the Plaza Hotel in NYC hosted by The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace billed as a “conversation with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jewish American Leadership.”? About fifty people attended: Palestinian leadership, American political leadership including Martin Indyk, Special Envoy for Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations, and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, Jewish organizational leaders, and American Jewish notables including Professors Alan Dershowitz and Daniel Kahneman, Noble Prize recipient, and Abby Joseph Cohen of Goldman Sachs. The meeting......
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Latest Video
Watch: Barbara Johns, Teenage Revolutionary Against Racism
16-year-old Barbara Johns stood up against racial segregation and inequality in America's schools,
