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Tears on the Digital Road to Jerusalem 
Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, Longform, Longform, Spirituality & Faith, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
June 30, 2021

Tears on the Digital Road to Jerusalem 

“If a picture paints a thousand words, then an experience paints 10,000.” “Stand where He stood. Walk where He walked. Discover it for yourself.” When we bring rising Christian leaders on pilgrimage to Israel, we emphasize that there is nothing like seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and feeling the complicated, beautiful, Holy Land that birthed their tradition and ours. Born out of necessity amid the pandemic, we began to experiment with digital pilgrimages to see if they could feel every bit as real as those that happened in person. We knew from the......

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Joshua Stanton
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Passing the Mantle
Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
June 17, 2021

Passing the Mantle

Torah is endless. We conclude our reading of Deuteronomy and begin anew with Genesis in the same breath each Simchat Torah. It is continuous, a blueprint for the world that unfolds before us. By contrast, the humans spoken of in the Torah are temporal beings, whose ends are sometimes of greater significance than their beginnings. In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Chukat (Numbers 19:1 – 22:1), we read of the death of the original High Priest, Aaron. We know far more about it than we do of his birth, or even of......

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Joshua Stanton
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Imagine a Sabbatical
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May 06, 2021

Imagine a Sabbatical

I was once speaking on a panel at the Pentagon, along with a dozen or so other religious leaders. We were sharing our respective traditions with Pentagon leaders, who in turn could support religious pluralism across the military in collaboration with its chaplaincy staff. The gathering took place in a large auditorium, with a much fuller audience than I would have expected. Many of the officers seemed exhausted from their tireless work to keep our country safe. Some were even dozing off – or trying their best to avoid doing so. The......

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Joshua Stanton
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Looking Evil In the Face, Boldly and Beautifully
Historic Profiles, Inspiring Story, Longform, Longform, Relationships & Family, Uncategorized |
May 04, 2021

Looking Evil In the Face, Boldly and Beautifully

“If there is only one book you are going to read….” is not something I say often, and something I don’t think should ever be said about a topic as important and as complicated as the Holocaust. I will say though, that anyone who cares about the topic, or any questions of evil and how we respond to it, really must read Faris Cassell’s new, and already award-winning book, The Unanswered Letter. I recently had the opportunity to talk with Faris about her work, which had already been awarded first place in......

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Brad Hirschfield
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Derek Chauvin, Justice and Deuteronomy 16:20
Compassion and Empathy, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Wisdom Daily News |
April 20, 2021

Derek Chauvin, Justice and Deuteronomy 16:20

Closing arguments in Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd are unfolding as I write. The voices of protestors, speculators, and commentators rise, along with the voices of attorneys for both the state and for Mr. Chauvin, all calling for “Justice,” in these final hours before the case is handed to the jury. There is no shortage of stridently held opinions about what should happen here — not from the lawyers, the protestors, the commentators or the speculators — most notably, from Rep. Maxine Waters, whose words both inspire and......

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Brad Hirschfield
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Deeper Intentions and the Life of Daunte Wright
Another Way Of Looking At Things, Longform, News & Politics, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
April 14, 2021

Deeper Intentions and the Life of Daunte Wright

At the very same time the trial against Derek Chauvin is unfolding in Minneapolis, another Black man, Daunte Wright, has been killed by a police officer in nearby Brooklyn Center.  George Floyd, as is well known and viscerally horrifying, was killed by Chauvin as the now-former officer pressed down on his neck for nine and one-half minutes, ignoring pleas for mercy and for justice.  The intention to use force was clear. The trial will determine if nine and a half minutes of application of such force can be equated to murderous intent......

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Michael Bernstein
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