Greetings, friendly visitors! It's been several hours since that added soul and special ambiance said to be conferred by the Sabbath has lifted from my corner of our kooky world, and a new week has begun according to the way rabbinic Judaism measures time.
Despite being a techie and in fact currently an IT consultant by trade, I'm incredibly late to the blogging party. In fact, blogging on platforms such as this is probably on its way out. Nevertheless, after contemplating starting a blog for thinking out loud about Judaism and other topics since roughly 2010, here it is.
Why do I feel that this is a worthwhile endeavor and not totally doomed to be a waste of my time and yours? I have no special insight--I'm not a prophet, a psychic, or a genius. What I am is most succinctly described by a French word taught to me by a brilliant anthropology professor in undergrad: I am a bricoleur. I collect odds and ends and tinker with them. Yes, that means books and gadgets and doodads and trinkets and computer parts and all kinds of crap that clogs my physical space. But for the purposes of this discussion, I'm a collector and combiner of ideas. The ideas that I collect are usually not unique or original on their own, but it's probably fair to say that I combine them in ways that are statistically and culturally unusual.
What's so unusual? I'm a living, breathing 21st century Reform Jew born in 1991 who believes in a personal God, a conscious, spiritual afterlife, objective morality, and virtue ethics. My theoretical approach to morality and epistemology could be described as neo-modern liberalism in the vein of Agnes Heller and Carlos Escudé. My entire consciousness of God and interaction with spiritual realities is infused with the language, cadence, ambiance, and worldview of the historic Union Prayer Book and the Pittsburgh and Columbus platforms, even though I grew up without any of these, and had never heard of them until I was a freshman in undergrad roughly eight years ago. When I see or hear classic siddur texts in Hebrew or in vernacular languages, the music in my head is Western classical choral and organ music. I live and breathe the theological and aesthetic ambiance and inhabit the thought- and sound-worlds of liberal Judaism as it was practiced in Western Europe and North America from the mid 19th to late-mid 20th centuries CE. This ethos is often critiqued as being hyper-rational, and yet I behold in it a deep mysticism and a way of looking at the world that finds it alive with divine magic and activity.
What else is weird about me? Well, despite being located in an already unusual sub-tradition within the modern Jewish landscape, I'm also a bit of an eclectic. My ultimate beliefs about God and the universe are quite vanilla for rabbinic Judaism, but I'm deeply influenced by aspects of the spiritualities of other traditions, especially Catholicism, Anglicanism, Baha'ism, moderate Sunni Islam, and even some earth-based spiritualities that are often categorized as "New Age" or even "pagan."
Those who read this without knowing me personally may be scratching their heads, perhaps especially if they have any idea of what I'm talking about. Instead of trying ad nauseam to convey an abstract sense of what this all means, the coming days and weeks will see short, topical posts reflecting on an application of this worldview to everyday life. I hope you enjoy!
Despite being a techie and in fact currently an IT consultant by trade, I'm incredibly late to the blogging party. In fact, blogging on platforms such as this is probably on its way out. Nevertheless, after contemplating starting a blog for thinking out loud about Judaism and other topics since roughly 2010, here it is.
Why do I feel that this is a worthwhile endeavor and not totally doomed to be a waste of my time and yours? I have no special insight--I'm not a prophet, a psychic, or a genius. What I am is most succinctly described by a French word taught to me by a brilliant anthropology professor in undergrad: I am a bricoleur. I collect odds and ends and tinker with them. Yes, that means books and gadgets and doodads and trinkets and computer parts and all kinds of crap that clogs my physical space. But for the purposes of this discussion, I'm a collector and combiner of ideas. The ideas that I collect are usually not unique or original on their own, but it's probably fair to say that I combine them in ways that are statistically and culturally unusual.
What's so unusual? I'm a living, breathing 21st century Reform Jew born in 1991 who believes in a personal God, a conscious, spiritual afterlife, objective morality, and virtue ethics. My theoretical approach to morality and epistemology could be described as neo-modern liberalism in the vein of Agnes Heller and Carlos Escudé. My entire consciousness of God and interaction with spiritual realities is infused with the language, cadence, ambiance, and worldview of the historic Union Prayer Book and the Pittsburgh and Columbus platforms, even though I grew up without any of these, and had never heard of them until I was a freshman in undergrad roughly eight years ago. When I see or hear classic siddur texts in Hebrew or in vernacular languages, the music in my head is Western classical choral and organ music. I live and breathe the theological and aesthetic ambiance and inhabit the thought- and sound-worlds of liberal Judaism as it was practiced in Western Europe and North America from the mid 19th to late-mid 20th centuries CE. This ethos is often critiqued as being hyper-rational, and yet I behold in it a deep mysticism and a way of looking at the world that finds it alive with divine magic and activity.
What else is weird about me? Well, despite being located in an already unusual sub-tradition within the modern Jewish landscape, I'm also a bit of an eclectic. My ultimate beliefs about God and the universe are quite vanilla for rabbinic Judaism, but I'm deeply influenced by aspects of the spiritualities of other traditions, especially Catholicism, Anglicanism, Baha'ism, moderate Sunni Islam, and even some earth-based spiritualities that are often categorized as "New Age" or even "pagan."
Those who read this without knowing me personally may be scratching their heads, perhaps especially if they have any idea of what I'm talking about. Instead of trying ad nauseam to convey an abstract sense of what this all means, the coming days and weeks will see short, topical posts reflecting on an application of this worldview to everyday life. I hope you enjoy!
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