Category
January 31, 2014
1. THE CHURCH AND THE HELICOPTER
A year after graduating college, I worked downtown in the immense shadows of the World Trade Center, and as part of my freewheeling, four-hour daily lunch break I would eat and drink my way past these two giants, up Broadway, down Fulton Street and over to the Strand Book Annex.
Skirball’s founding chairman passes the baton
Addressing the more than 600 attendees of the Skirball Cultural Center’s Founders Gala last October, Howard I. Friedman, the center’s first, and until Jan. 2 its only, board chairman, spoke about one of his favorite subjects: the significance of ideas in sustaining Jewish life.
New Skirball chair no stranger to community leadership
Twenty years ago, Peter M. Weil enjoyed a private tour of Hebrew University of Jerusalem that left a lasting impression. A friend of the university had arranged the visit, during which the school’s leaders took Weil to see their archive of some of Albert Einstein’s personal manuscripts.
Making sanctuaries of our lives
A few weeks ago, I spent four beautiful days on a meditation retreat with the Institute for Jewish Spirituality (IJS) at the American Jewish University’s Brandeis-Bardin Campus. Spending time in silence, mindful yoga, walking and eating, as well as deep Torah learning with leading scholars from the United States and Israel, I felt that we were doing exactly what the Torah is calling us to in this week’s parasha, Terumah.