Hartman Fellow Noam Zion in San Francisco, 14 March 2010, on Pesach

He will be at Temple Emanu-El in the evening. Here is the title of his talk: “The Art, Psychology and Politics of the Four Children.” Click here for details. The synagogue’s website says registration is full. But maybe, if you tell them you read about the event on the Hartman Institute blog they will squeeze you in.

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Pesach’s over – did you enjoy it?

OK, Pesach is over for us here in Israel; it’s still happening if you keep to the second day of chag in ch”ool (chootz la’aretz – outside “the land,” i.e., Israel). So, this is still relevant – if only as something to think about for next year – the Shalom Hartman Institute’s A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah, authored by Noam Zion and David Dishon. I can’t tell you how many people I know use it – as well as the all-Hebrew version (slightly different) developed recently by Zion and his son Meshael.

Marc Aronson of School Library Journal made a point of mentioning the Family haggadah in his recent post, “Passover and History: The Many Meanings of Past and Present.” Aronson wrote: “I love it because it offers so many pathways through the holiday, so many ways of thinking about it and doing it.”

Southern New Jersey newspaper, Jewish Community Voice, also mentions the haggadah in its Pesach editorial, “Passover reminds us that freedom brings responsibility.”

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Pesach is (almost) here: Time to read up on it from a different view

So, have you cleaned your house yet? Scrubbed the oven? If you have, then take a few moments to read up on the deeper meaning of Pesach – and to ponder a few additional questions beyond the hoary four you ask every year by looking at the Hartman Institute special section on Pesach now on our website.

Being the Hartman Institute, we ask more questions than we answer, but by doing so we hope to prod you to ask more questions at your Pesach seder, and to discuss the ones we’ve posed, as well. Here is a guide to just some of what we have on site in store for you:

Questions old and new

• Four daughters: New archetypes, new questions – Einat Ramon
• Freedom is ability to conceive of alternative possibilities – Noam Zion
• Adults contending with contradictions – Noam Zion
• Encouraging a culture of questions – Noam Zion
• Pesach’s many questions: Threatening a sense of order – Noam Zion
• What are we celebrating on Pesach? – Barry Gelman

Freedom and Identity

• Pesach defines who is a Jew – Donniel Hartman
• Pesach not just freedom from constraints but freedom to reach potential – Donniel Hartman
• Sinai and Exodus: Choosing life in midst of uncertainty, Part 1 – David Hartman
• Sinai and Exodus: Choosing life in midst of uncertainty, Part 2 – David Hartman
• Return to Israel remembers Egypt and Sinai – David Hartman

And don’t miss the videos from Donniel Hartman and David Hartman.

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Pesach video preview – for blog readers only

Avid readers of our blog have already received a preview of this year’s Pesach video by Rabbi Dr. Donniel Hartman. It went up yesterday when we posted it online, even though it is not yet being promoted on the main Hartman Institute website. You can also see a Pesach video recorded last year by Rabbi Prof. David Hartman.

If you haven’t seen David Hartman’s video  yet (it’s 8 minutes long), I urge you to do so. In it he talks about the continuing threats facing the Jewish people. As it was then and as it is this year, this is a timely matter.

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Hartman Institute documents exclusively on Scribd

What’s that? In a word, Scribd is YouTube for documents. That’s actually three words (four if you don’t consider You Tube to be two words).

So far, we have posted a great deal of fascinating material on our Scribd channel, including:

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Israeli education needs Jewish kick in pants

Well, Rabbi Dr. Ariel Picard, director of Shalom Hartman Institute’s Center for Education, wouldn’t say it quite that way. In fact, he said it far more eloquently in his recent posting on the Institute’s website:

Here in Israel we are privileged to have the Jewish language as the common cultural language of Israelis….This is the big victory of Zionism: the state of Israel is not only a shelter for Jews, but it is really a place where Jewish life is flourishing in a broad, pluralistic way.

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