But then things changed.

After his hit “100 Years” in 2003, Ondrasik (the man who is Five For Fighting) faded away into the recesses of pop culture.

Once VH1 and MTV stopped playing music videos on their main channels, and TV aired channels to stream 24/7 individual genres of popular music (rap, hip-hop, pop, rock, etc.), Five For Fighting’s music videos were no longer slated for the videos the kids would watch.

When Five For Fighting released “The Riddle (You and I)” in 2006, the teenagers of 2003 were no longer counting down for their favorite music videos. They’d just click whatever they wanted immediately on YouTube.

When the music video died, video did not just kill the radio star. It was an epic battle.

Five For Fighting’s single hit #4. But not on radio for the young people. This was Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Charts. Long live rock. Let it be. Middle aged.

At a certain point, the new kids on the block couldn’t take it anymore (or so the DJs decided). The piano and the slow tempi Five For Fighting played 3 years ago added up to exactly that:  the music of 3 years ago. It was a forced retirement.

Three years after already being three years too late–we’re talking 2009 now–54F released a largely unheard album, Slice. Its single “Chances” peaked at #8 on the US Adult Contemporary Chart. (But how many people can even name 5 current US Adult Contemporary hits?)

Since the producer didn’t get Ondrasik to write a song for young people, it doesn’t matter how good or bad the songwriting was on Slice. The melody of the single they chose is perhaps the least dynamic track on the album. No catchy chorus, the words are heavy, and the kids already confessed not to liking Five For Fighting anymore.

But the album could have been a comeback. They could have chosen a better single. Why not the nostalgic “Slice,” the patriotic “Note To The Unknown Soldier,” the aspirational “Story Of Your Life,” or the rhythmically complex “Love Can’t Change The Weather?”

Or, why not my favorite song from the album, “Above The Timberline?” This song (co-written with Stephen Schwartz, the man behind Wicked and Godspell) is the most sophisticated, most experimental, catchiest, hardest-rocking, most sublime song on the whole record.

It could have been huge.

And maybe that’s why they didn’t choose it.

“I get a little tired” is a very vulnerable opening line for this masterpiece of a song. We are listening to a story about resigning from this world to pursue something higher. Literally and metaphorically.

“You need to find a mountaintop / And get out of this town,” advises Ondrasik. Forget all the mundane worries of the life you know.

Look upon high. “Above the timberline.” It’s not easy to get your mind all the way up there. “The higher I go, the harder I climb.”

You can almost hear echoes of the second of the Psalmist’s 15 Psalms of Ascents (120-134). Esa einai el heharim—I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Me’ayin yavo ezri? From where will my help come?

Granted a distance from all of these earthly troubles, Ondrasik feels a greater intimacy with the one who gives him comfort (a woman, or a god)? “I’m closer to you. / It’s clear in my mind. / Love shines bright above the timberline.”

The singer is—unbeknownst to him—engaging in the Hasidic practice of hitbodedut, the “seclusion of the self” to commune with nature and all that is Divine. He is guided only by himself and the spirits. “I’m listening to the wind. / I’m writing down the words.”

Five For Fighting, rising to the stars and the moon, is enshrouded in the robes of a mystical journey. And it all begins with his focus on the horizon: above the timberline. That point where our eyes no longer see the skies—the end of the heavens, miktzeh hashamayim (Psalm 19:7)—is called Mi by the Zohar. Mi is not merely an abbreviation of miktzeh, but it is the Hebrew word for “Who?”

When the Kabbalist sees the edge of the skies, the Jewish mystic does not see an answer, but a question. Who is the Mystery beyond the skies (Zohar I:1b)? And, to whom is John talking anyway?

Well, who cares about John Ondrasik? These esoteric mysteries and existentialist questions that arise in Ondrasik’s mystical ascent are essentially divorced from the everyday experiences of the Billboard Hot 100 demographic: cool kids. The peak of religiosity in popular music is Macklemore and Ryan Lewis trying on outdated clothing at a thrift shop.

But who cares about those kids? John Ondrasik declares his allusive muse, “All that really matters: / You’ll all I’ll ever need.”

The things that matter to Five For Fighting really won’t matter to the American youth. They’re deeply personal—relevant only to a maturely developed sense of self. As for the things that concern most people, Mr. Ondrasik is leaving those “realities / Parked down at the curb.”

“Above The Timberline” is the boldest song Five For Fighting has ever tried. In fact, I believe it is the best song he has ever written, and I am happy to give Stephen Schwartz credit for advancing John Ondrasik’s songwriting to a place more magical than ever heretofore explored.

With a song of Zoharic concerns like this one, it’s no wonder that Five For Fighting has been slated for the Adult Charts. This fascination with the unearthly must be the reason that it is rumored that you have to be 40 years old before you study Kabbalah. (False by the way. The great Kabbalist Isaac Luria died at the age of 38—the same age Ondrasik was when he released the smash hit “100 Years.”)

Age might not really matter, but we still see age as the dividing line. There’s no rule that says you have to be 40 to like adult radio. But obsessing with the material world (boys, girls, clothes, money, etc.): this is the excuse that keeps kids away from mysticism, from nature, from deep questions, and from Five For Fighting.

A mystical journey or an intimate melody can be the best secret–a secret best kept kept secret. Intimacy can fizzle when you try to make it popular.

According to his website, John Ondrasik is at work on new album now. The kids might never hear it, and he’ll just have to hope that those who seek the esoteric, and such an esoteric album, find it anyway.

“A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

Next month (May 25th to be precise) will be the 30th anniversary of the release of Return of the Jedi, and it was one of the movies I watched most often as a child. I cheered on the Rebels and the Ewoks against the evil Empire, I willed Luke to not pick up his lightsaber and turn to the dark side.

But no matter how many times I watched the movie, it’s only now that I realise how much bonfires play important roles important moments in the film.

There are four distinct fires lit on the forest moon of Endor, but what is their unique significance to the movie? And what light can they shed on the bonfire festival of Lag BaOmer that we celebrate this year on Saturday night and Sunday (27-28th April)?

“I’m rather embarrassed, General Solo, but it appears you are to be the main course at a banquet in my honour.”
    -C3PO

The first fire is the one that threatens to cook our heroes in a feast held in honour of C3PO. While this threat is more comic than serious, the Ewoks themselves are far from the most threatening of Star Wars’ aliens, it does conjure the idea of the danger of fire that burns and destroys.

Lag BaOmer has this darker side too, as it is supposed to commemorate the deaths of 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s students, or rather a celebration to mark the day they stopped dying. And it also has its more playful side, as children ‘play fight’ with bows and arrows, mimicking the actions of shooting and hurting.

“Our cruisers can’t repel firepower of that magnitude” shouts Admiral Ackbar as the supposedly surprise attack on the Death Star goes awry. ‘Firepower’ is the destructive force of the Death Star that threatens all life and all freedom in the galaxy, the essence of fire as bringer of death.

“We are now part of the tribe”
    -C3PO

The second bonfire of Return of the Jedi serves a very different purpose, as C3PO tells the assembled tribe of Ewoks the essential plot of the movies so far (with added sound effects) leading to the integration of the main cast into the community. This is a contemplative moment, looking back at how far they have come, the pain they have suffered, all with the knowledge that there is still much more to come.

Lag BaOmer is similarly placed in the Omer, the 49 days of counting between Pesach and Shavuot. This is the 33rd day, over two thirds of the way there, with much joy (Yom Ha’atzmaut) and pain (Yom Hashoah) already endured, yet still with more to do.

Like those sing-a-long campfires on summer camp, bonfires can bond people together, are a natural venue for telling the stories that define who we are and bond us together, strengthening us for the journey we still have to take.

“I’ll not leave you here. I’ve got to save you.”
“You already have, Luke. You already have.”
    -Luke Skywalker to Anakin.

    Darth Vader turns against his master to save his son. In doing so, he turns from the path of the dark side and is saved from the evil he had chosen in his life. As the movie reaches its finale, the camera focusses on the pyre that Luke has built for his father, and the flames that lick the now empty black armour. Like Obi-Wan and Yoda before him, Anakin Skywalker’s spirit has become one with the force, appearing to Luke in his ghostly form.

The fire of this funeral pyre is both a sign of mourning and of release, as Luke remembers the man who was his father and the outward shell that was Darth Vader’s fearsome appearance. Darth Vader is dead but Anakin Skywalker goes on living forever.

Traditionally, Jews do not cremate their dead, but we have an echo of this in the tradition of Lag BaOmer as the day of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai’s death, the great 1st century sage and mythic author of the Zohar. The fires of this day are not literally Rabbi Shimon’s funerary rites, but metaphorically they also mark the transition between this world and the next, the loss of the physical and the transformation into the eternal.

The shell of the body is here, but it is empty – we feel the spirit live on.

“Yub Nub”
    -Ewok Celebration Song

Finally there is the fire of pure joy and celebration, as the Ewoks and the rebels dance together at the defeat of the Emperor and the Death Star. The battle has been won, and while the war may be far from over – after all, would the entire Galactic Empire simply collapse without the Emperor? – but it is a victory, and that is reason enough to be happy.

   Lag BaOmer is an expression of this kind of joy. Many couples choose to get married on this day, as the traditional rituals of mourning that are observed in the omer are suspended, including listening to music.

The world is a place of great danger, a fire that burns and consumes. None of us make it out of here alive.

But we are alive here today, in the middle of our journey from slavery to freedom, bound together as a people by our collective stories, our suffering and our triumphs.

We know that while we mourn for all that we’ve lost, that nothing is truly lost forever. Whether a memory or a spirit, something remains.

And so we light our bonfires, play music, and sing with joy.

    Roni Tabick is a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. You can read more of his work here: www.mythicwriting.blogspot.com. Or follow him on twitter: www.twitter.com/rtabick

Roni shares his thoughts about “Radiance”:

‘Radiance’ began with the desire to create a fantasy world based on Jewish traditions and mythology, grounded in the torah and kabbalah – I wanted to write a Jewish ‘Constantine’ but with less Keanu Reeves, and a sophisticated view of religion.

Over many months, I posted a first draft at a rate of a chapter a week on my blog www.mythicwriting.blogspot.com. In the salon I will be reading a chapter that I wrote for the second draft, filling in some of the early part of the story, in which the main character, Asher, goes to his father’s funeral.

Growing up in London as the son of two Reform rabbis-his mother was the first woman ordained as a rabbi in the United Kingdom-Roni Tabick always lived a richly Jewish life, but it’s been in the Conservative/Masorti Movement, and at The Rabbinical School of The Jewish Theological Seminary, where his understanding of and passion for Judaism truly have come to fruition.

To read more of Roni’s writing, visit his website at www.mythicwriting.blogspot.com.

Kaitlin shares her thoughts on The Momentum:

Feeling restless? Alone? Broke? Well, so are a lot of people.  The world is a hard, hard place filled with pain and an incomprehensible sense of confusion and doom. How do all of us muddle through? How do we find a way to untangle the massive headache that is our life and find our place in a world that contains all of our hopes and our fears?  For some, the answer is religion.  They turn to a higher power for comfort and warmth.

Martin Buber struggled with the idea of loving or trusting a God that we cannot define.  In his exploration of the I-Thou relationship, the philosopher explained human existence as series of encounters. Through this vein, Buber probably hoped to parse out the meaning of human nature and the root of human pain and loneliness.

 To the believers of  The Momentum©®, a fictional self help cult, pain is a myth, love is a battlefield, and life doesn’t hold try outs.  It may be a little less fancy than what Buber had written half a century earlier, but CollaborationTown’s The Momentum©®, a play presented at APAP in January 2013 at the Kraine Theater , looks at the same questions: why do we do the things that we do, even though we hurt others and ourselves? If we have all of the answers then why are there still so many problems? How am I meant to exist in a world with so much anger and hurt? How do I go on?

In Judaism, it’s not always so simple. For the members of TheMomentum©®, it’s not that simple either.  It takes work, higher levels of thinking and feeling, and the ability to sift through contrast and paradox.

Watch a teaser for the play here.

Claire Jackson’s realistic portraiture draws inspiration from personal narrative. In this piece, Claire portrays her friend, Ben  Abeles, who is 88 and arrived in England on the Kindertransport. Ben has lived in the United States and Israel as well as other countries.

The surrounding images show part of his story:  the family who were murdered in the extermination camps two months after the wedding shown, Ben’s life as a chef, an airman and then a US scientist who developed a generator that powered the Mars Curiosity, and Ben’s late wife and new wife.

Claire explains that Ben reminds her of her father, who also lived in Czechoslovakia.  The artist lovingly notes that both men were blessed with a wonderful sense of humour, strong Jewish identity and generous nature.

Yona Verwer

Tightrope

10′ x 6′ x 6′

Yona Verwer will be presenting the piece during our upcoming Salon evening, April 21.

Tightrope is about the Jewish community on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Observant Jews cannot carry anything on the street on the Sabbath. The construction of an eruv, often a thin wire stretched on light poles to create a boundary, makes it possible for people to carry keys, push a baby carriage or hold a baby, or bring food to someone’s home.

This artwork explores the impact that the lack of an eruv on the Lower East Side has on families with young children and the infirm. It draws attention to the fact that, for many, not having an eruv significantly detracts from the attractiveness of living in the neighborhood.

It excludes women from fully participating in Jewish life and creates a male-dominated synagogue community. Interested in Eruv? Read about Michael Chabon’s take on it here.

This installation shows details of Lower East Side synagogue interiors, which cannot regularly be seen by many in the community, because there is no eruv. The images are a metaphor for what the women miss out on: a spiritual connection.

Video monitors inside the structure show quotes by LES residents addressing this issue.

To read more about the installation, visit Verwer’s website  here.

The installation is on view at the Y.U. Museum in New York till June 30, 2013 at the exhibit “It’s a Thin Line: The Eruv and Jewish Community in New York & Beyond”.

These are complicated times: On the one hand, most of us have the privilege of escaping the woes of the world, and even our own personal crises to the world of Reality, which could not be further than actual reality. On the other hand, we are privileged to know exactly what is happening in the world, due to the social networks that surround our lives.

Another way that is alive and kicking for generations is culture. Art.

In this case, I am going to focus on the art of film.

Lately, the rollicking and sometimes disconcerting musical “Les Miserables” (based on the French classic novel by Victor Hugo) has returned to movie screens.

This musical alludes to several different kinds of slavery, many of which still exist today. Perhaps some of these types of slavery do not afflict the general population, but they are the plight of the unlucky many who live with fear for their very existence.  These kinds of fears cannot be explained to those who have not experienced  them, no matter how much we try through Pesach cleaning, or eating disgusting food and spending an awkward Seder with family. But there are other types of slavery hiding between the lines in this movie, that afflict the entire human race.

Hugh Jackman stars as Jean Valjean, who steals a loaf of bread for his nephew and finds himself imprisoned. Here we can see complete, painful, merciless slavery. Poverty which leads to crime, slavery that takes an immeasurable toll.  The conditions the prisoner is kept in are cruel, he is subjected to slave labor and everything is colored by the fact that there are those who have and those who do not and in order to survive, one must be enslaved.

Poverty also leads his lover, Fantine, into the clutches of a phenomenon existing in our own society: Human trafficking for prostitution, chillingly portrayed with the heart-wrenching vocals of Anne Hathaway. There could be no clearer example of slavery in society. This creation gives allows us for a few moments to feel the nausea that women feel daily, doing what they can to survive, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of their children. Slavery does not end with the mere act of rape (don’t kid yourselves, it is not consensual, it is rape), but it extends to what happens around her, living with the knowledge that this is happening, and ongoing trauma.

Helena Bonham Carter and Sasha Baron Cohen are well known for filling each movie with a little laughter and silliness, bringing a unique insanity to every character they play. This helps to lighten the mood a little, to alleviate the horror of some of the scenes. But like in every good literary plot, the conmen always win us over, and there is no question that they are conmen, as they “raise” innocent Cosette (Amanda Seyfried) towards the next kind of slavery: The slavery of children. This means employing children under deplorable conditions for pathetic pay, just so they can put food in their mouths.

One might say, okay, but what do I have to do with this? Well, we can make a difference, a few strokes on the keyboard and we are exposed to these stories, reveal them and can affect them. But again, there is no question that if you have not experienced this kind of slavery, you do not know what it is like.

The movie also shows slavery that affects us all: Another type of slavery which is portrayed in the movie and is no less devastating, is how fragmented our society has become. The movie shows the struggle for French Revolution. During a war, the different camps tear the People apart, inhumanity takes over, leading to merciless bloodshed. Even shedding the blood of children.

Daniel Huttlestone is in my opinion the most impressive actor in the movie – a little boy who tells the story of Gavroche and believes in change, speaking up against slavery and murder.

Unrequited love. Samantha Barks plays Eponine who is madly in love with Marius (Eddy Redmayne), but he is unaware of her love, as he is preoccupied with Cosette. Call me naïve, but I believe that all of us have someone or something that we want and cannot have, which takes up valuable time. These things prey on our minds and enslave our hearts until we are consumed with the suffering in their absence. They make us miss out on what we already have.

Lies. The need to hide, to show others that we are someone else so we can fit in, a some point these shackle us, rendering us unrecognizable, enslaving our identity.

I think that if we sit down to the Seder table and think a bit about Les Miserables, we will learn what is not different on this night, and what we can do to change it!

By Kessem Burston, translated by Timna Burston.

This guy

This particular alien is a time lord who’s real name has been lost to history. He is simply known as “The Doctor,” and the television show that bares his name has been on the BBC for decades. Because time lords regenerate, instead of dying, the series has been able to continue with little interruption since 1963 with a parade of different faces.

These faces

To me, the Doctor is the freest being in the Universe for the following reasons: 

1. The Doctor has no family, not even distant cousins. The entire time lord race was wiped out in the last great Time War, when the Doctor made the difficult choice of destroying his own people to save the entire universe from the Daleks.
2. His planet, Gallifrey, was wiped out in the war too. So no more species, no more planet.
3. That blue box from before? That’s a time machine, allowing the Doctor to travel anywhere and any-when. Ever.
4. Also, as previously mentioned, it is really difficult for him to die. Sure, if you get at his hearts (he has two) without giving him time to regenerate, then maybe, but he’s been going this long without that happening and the show has too big of a following to stop now.

So, to recap: He is a basically immortal alien with no family and no home who can go anywhere in time and space.

If you were that free, where would you go? The Eye of Orlon, the most peaceful planet in the universe? Maybe the lovely sand dunes of the Cheetah Planet, or the sapphire waterfalls of Midnight?

The Doctor could go to any of these places. He could build a bungalow on top of a large tree somewhere and swing in a hammock drinking cocktails for eternity. But he doesn’t. He spends his life…. helping people. Specifically the people of earth, saving them from calamity after calamity.

EXTERMINATE!!!

And not only does he save the earth, he does it with incredible kindness. Even to the worst of his enemies he gives a choice, only using force when absolutely necessary. He is feared among those who seek harm and hailed as a hero by the thousands he has saved, all without picking up a gun. In this clip from the first episode featuring the eleventh doctor, he explains to the Atraxi, quite politely, why they should leave earth alone. And they do.

And even though he has no family, the Doctor always finds people to travel with, companions that help him remain kind and keep his power in check. He could be absolutely alone but he seeks others.

Why? Why tie yourself down to other people and spend your time saving planets when you could literally be doing whatever you want? Isn’t that the ultimate freedom? Maybe to some, but not to the Doctor. And not to the ancient Israelites.

God took us out of Egypt from slavery to freedom. But what kind of freedom? In a recent blog on the Huffington Post, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, dean of the Ziegler school of Rabbinic studies (and a close family friend,) distinguishes between “freedom from” and “freedom to:”

A mature freedom is not an escape from responsibilities. It is the acceptance of responsibilities which work l’takken olam b’malkhut Shaddai, to repair the world under the sovereignty of God.

This is the freedom to help, to save, to love, to give. Our freedom becomes our responsibility, not a burden, but a holy task. Coupled with this is our duty to empathize with the stranger, to take care of those in need. In Leviticus 19:34, God reminds us to “love the stranger as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”Artson writes, “Drawing on the memory of having been slaves, we Jews have a special obligation to empathize with any group who are outcasts, oppressed or dehumanized. We, who experienced suffering, must always train ourselves to identify with those who suffer.”

We could just take care of our own, our own family, ourselves. We could go with a more “American” version of freedom, meaning “I can do whatever I darn well want.” Or, we could choose the freedom of the Torah, the true freedom of the Exodus, the responsibility to live a life of duty and empathy. This is the freedom of the Doctor.

It is because of his freedom, not in spite of it, that the Doctor dedicates his life to others. He protects the innocent and gives invaders a choice because he is the last of his kind. The Doctor has incredible empathy, even for his enemies, because he understands that pain, that loneliness.  That is why he seeks companions, and saves planets. Because he is the last, it has become his responsibility.

Amy’s speech

This Pesach, may we understand what true freedom means. May we use our past pain to become more kind, and to grow in our empathy. Even the Doctor knows that we can’t just all stay in our own little blue boxes forever. How will you use your freedom to? Because you may not have two hearts, but you do have one. And one is all you need.

I’m in rabbinical school, and I’ve been spending a lot of time this year with Exodus, and the Passover narrative. One thing that has really struck me is how awful the God of the Bible is to the Egyptians. From hardening Pharaoh’s heart to provide an excuse for ever more horrible plagues, to wiping out the entire Egyptian military, the Exodus story is no less gratuitous than my favorite Tarantino flick in its repeated humiliation of Pharaoh and the Egyptian people.

Our people has many stories; the creation of the world, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the conquering of Eretz Yisrael. And yet our central myth, the one story that more Jews know than any other, is essentially vengeance porn. We triumph and come to freedom, but at the expense of tremendous suffering of another group of people. And the text often relishes that suffering. My question is, why is this our central story?

We must remember that in the days when this story was written, Pharaoh was seen as a god. And Israel was a small nation constantly mistreated at the hands of Egypt’s vast empire. They were required to pay tribute, and never knew when Egypt might disregard their promises and invade Israel on their way to the Assyrian or Babylonian empire in the north. Based on best evidence, this is the protest story of a country terrified of losing its national sovereignty, and using literature to triumph over one of its great enemies. In other words, Egypt may have the greater political power, but our God is superior to your god!

And yet, the version of the story we tell today does not dwell on the bloodthirsty aspects, and seems deeply uncomfortable with them. From rabbinic times on, we have injected sympathy for Egyptian deaths into the narrative. In the most famous example (from Masechet Megillah) God comments to the angels “My creatures are drowning in the sea and you want to sing songs?”

Instead, we focus on the power of Exodus to incite compassion. When we tell the story, we focus not on God’s power in defeating power, but in God’s power of liberating a people who had been slaves for hundreds of years. This is the story that speaks to us today, and it is a story that we are compelled to remember, so that we can turn in our own time and give a helping hand to those who are coming out of their own metaphorical Egypts. If there is any reason that we as Jews are so disproportionately likely to participate in social justice causes, I think it is because we have been able to find compassion and liberation in our founding myth.

So to, someday, with the Holocaust. It is a deep and recent trauma, and my generation is still coping with its aftershocks. Which means that it is my generation that must take our story and transform it from a story of victimization into a story that will give us power. At times, I worry that we as a people use the tragedy of the Holocaust as a justification for our worst cultural tendencies, from cultural chauvenism to Israeli militarism (which is, to my mind, distinct from Israeli self-defense). This is one way that we can use this narrative.

But the Holocaust is also a wake-up call to the danger of living in a world without allies. The Jews had suffered from centuries of anti-Semitism, and so had tremendous difficulty finding any country that would identify with and interfere in their plight. There was little more that we could have done at the time; there was no “Bear Jew” to attack Nazi battalions with a baseball bat, and Hitler was not assassinated. However, today we as a people are in a position of power to create a different outcome for people in similar situations. We can stand in testament to the horrors that we suffered, and we can stand in solidarity and friendship to those suffering today from governments that despise them. Our call of “never again” can rise alongside of “avadim hayinu” as calls to justice for oppressed people all over the globe.

We Jews have suffered more than our share of catastrophes. And we are a storytelling people; we use words to deal with our trauma. Because of this, we are a people that does not forget easily, and our collective future is deeply informed by our collective past. But we have the tools that we need to frame those traumas; we need not be victims of our circumstances. We have turned a revenge story of national theological oppression into a powerful cry for economic and social justice that speaks to people in every age, across national, religious, and racial divides. This year, as we descend back into Egypt and march back out again, may we bring our other stories with us, and may they have equal power to promote a more just and equitable world.

Marley is a first year rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She spends most of her time thinking about pedagogy, feminism, queer theory, and how all of these things relate to Bible and Midrash. She blogs at youshallpursue.wordpress.com