Rabbi Daniel Brenner

With a warm December day (thanks global scorching!) I suggested to the familia that we take the dog for a walk to a new park. Having exhausted most of the wooded areas nearby, I consulted Reb Google and then rallied the troops into the car to a destination in Paterson, NJ — a spot a mere 17 minutes from Montclair. After driving through an old factory district (with a beautiful brick something or other that has been converted into a…

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“Today’s rising Reconstructionist leaders, little concerned with Kaplan’s ideas, seem driven instead by nebulous notions of personal fulfillment combined, however improbably, with “progressive” political activism.” I was reading the JTA today and ran across a link to Jewish Ideas Daily with an article about one of my favorite topics, Mordecai Kaplan. I’ve never met Joseph Siev so I really can’t tell what is behind his rant here, but it starts out in a good place and ends up with some…

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In ye olden times, one rifled through a dusty cardboard box, pulled out beige folders, and basked in the wonderment of a page of long lost prose. I jammed an old USB memory stick into my laptop today to find a text I had translated seven years ago and stumbled across this piece, a truly ridiculous story I once used to explain the origins of Reconstructionism to a group of second graders. After reading it, I thought that it should…

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Now that I’ve raised my first two children to young adulthood (and I think our third one is already more mature than I am) I am herby qualified to comment on the wonderful world of parenting. The good folks at the URJ, Union of Reform Judaism, asked me and my colleague Deborah Meyer to say a few words about teen boys and what is going on with them in a podcast. Here it is. Wendy Grinberg has done an excellent…

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Here’s a photo of my sweetheart’s book – just published. We went to New Orleans together after the storm, a trip that led to a play and then this collection of plays.

Check this out — an essay I penned some nine years ago is, thanks to the inactivists in San Fran, number one on the list of Most Viewed at NYU’s Berman Jewish Policy Archive. Here’s the post.. The Week’s Most Viewed PublicationsPosted At : May 16, 2011 2:25 PM | Posted By : Tara BognarRelated Categories: bjpaA bit of an international/historical angle this last week, along with some bonus reflections on the father/son dynamics of circumcision. 1. The Future of…

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In what has to be an all-time low for Jewish list making, Lea Michele, the Glee star, has now been dubbed one of the ten most important people under 32 working in the “Jewish sphere.” The Post expects these ten to rise to “powerful positions.” Michele, who in the photo in this post is obviously practicing her full prostration for Aleinu on Yom Kippur, is on a list with some very impressive people, including Google’s Jared Cohen, the Jewish Agency’s…

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