Open Minded Torah : Of Irony, Fundamentalism and Love.
- 1st ed.
- 1 online resource (201 pages)
Cover -- Half-title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue, Velvel, Govorovo, 1939 -- Part I Desire and self -- 1 Making exceptions -- 2 Do it again, Denzel: Fantasy and second chances -- 3 Caught in the act: Torah and desire -- 4 Just dreamin': The Talmud and the interpretation of dreams -- 5 The big game: Baseball, John Milton, and making choices -- 6 Of rabbis and rotting meat -- 7 Identity is out! -- 8 Isaac's bad rap -- 9 Cheeseburger -- 10 Writing an inspirational story -- 11 Eros and translation -- 12 'Swaying towards perfection': Torah, worldliness,and perversion -- 13 Jacob's scar: Wounding and identity -- 14 Torah and the pleasure principle -- Part II Dispute and community -- 15 Oedipus in a Kippa -- 16 Open minded Torah I: Judaism and fundamentalism -- 17 Irony Über Alles: An episcopal passover -- 18 Of false kabbalists and conjurers: Parenting and idolatry -- 19 From Sinai to the Uzi: New and old Zionisms -- 20 Modernity is hell: Korah and Hobbes -- 21 Lost and found -- 22 The poetry of the world: God's place -- 23 Open minded Torah II: Judaism and postmodernism -- 24 Stepping up -- 25 Prayer and the people: A new siddur -- 26 A religion for adults? -- 27 Of fundamentalists, rabbis and irony -- 28 Don't take away my mitzva! -- 29 Fear and loathing in Jerusalem -- 30 Open minded Torah III: Between fundamentalism and postmodernism -- Part III Time and memory -- 31 'Carpe Diem, Dude' -- 32 The antidote for religion: Fear of God -- 33 Speech in exile and the voice of the shofar -- 34 Back to the future: Yom Kippur, time, and creative repentance -- 35 Shades of faith: My sukka is not insured by AIG -- 36 'A special conversation': Freud, the Maharal, and the Sabbath -- 37 Lighting up: The beauty of Hanuka -- 38 Whose letter is it anyway? Esther, Aristotle, and the art of letter-writing. 39 Cosmic consciousness: The Beatles, passover,and the power of storytelling -- 40 Trauma's legacy: On Israel's Memorial Day -- 41 Why I gave up biblical criticism andjust learned to love -- 42 Faceless: The ninth of Av -- Epilogue: Shmuel, Jerusalem, 2011 -- Citations -- Select bibliography -- Index.
In "Open Minded Torah", William Kolbrener offers a voice advocating renewed Jewish commitment andopenness for the twenty-first century.