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I'm not really sure why Neusner refrenced the Pittsburgh platform. He ought to know what's in there and I don't think he agrees with quite a bit of it. Maybe he meant the general thrust of it rather than the actual words, that, even if the words of the Pittsburgh Platform don't ring true...

I've been really surprised by Lithgow's performance on Dexter over the past season. I didn't know he was so versatile.

Avi, I think that passage you disagree with is less true today than it was 40 or 50 years ago. Reform Judaism did borrow a lot from Protestant Christianity both ideologically and in shifts in architecture and even ritual practice (stage in front, choirs, organ music, confirmation). There was a...

I don't see that as particularly goofy. Different people require different things from Judaism. Different people conceptualize God in different ways, relate to God in different ways. Maimonides was allowing for the different ways that people related in his day which he saw as good for society...

Was Maimonides a rationalist?

Raksha, it's true that in a religious context the term rationalist means something different. Like you say, I think has more to do with the type of reasoning one uses following certain premises and the value one places on empirical evidence and the like. I also think there's been a certain...

Avi, he was known as an opponent of hasidism but he wasn't opposed to it because it's mystical. Setting up the Vilna Gaon and the Besht as representatives of rationalism and mysticism is incorrect. Both were mystics.

Nice post. Small point of clarification: the Vilna Gaon was a mystic too.

Hey Avi, where's my deep ecumenism discussion? :/

BB, Not to mention some of the more non-dual approaches to the issue of yesh and ayin.

Saw Fantastic Mr Fox. Was delightful. Go see it.

I just finished Rorty and his Critics edited by Robert Brandom and On The Plurality of Worlds by David Lewis. Lewis' book was a bit of a let-down primarily because most of it was concerned with matters that I wasn't interested in or didn't disagree about. One section was useful because it...

If anyone's interested in following along the whole series, it's all of march '08 on this page: http://www.mechonhadar.org/web/guest/online-learning/liturgy I have completed the second lesson on modim and it does connect back quite a bit to the first lesson.

I saw that article a few days ago. I think he's in part defaulting. He didn't go to JTS for ideological reasons. He went because it offered him a superior education. There may be other reasons he's shifting denominations. The Conservative movement is not in a good state. Its best and brightest...

So as someone who does a bit of teaching yourself, would you say that you're feeling pedagogy envy? :/ (I think I've just derailed my own thread.)

Avi, Thanks to Prof. Google I'm now vaguely familiar, but I'm guessing you have some more specific reason for asking related to the teaching style maybe?

Another relevant link, came up in my RSS feed: Movement, Denominations, and Minyanim…oh my! | Jewschool

The idea is, if the text of the amidah is sourced from the tanach (and it often is) then one way of interpreting the text of the amidah is by looking at the context in which certain phrases appear and considering why the rabbis chose those particular passages. That requires looking back at those...

I have to say, I appreciate the erudition that you bring to certain topics on this forum.

I finished listening to the shiur. I think for myself I might actually go back to the site and follow along the rest of the series because this was very engaging. I have one other thought. Hopefully someone, you don't have to be Jewish, will give a listen and participate in this thread. I have...