Rabbi Gabe's New Book

I just picked this book up off the "To Be Reviewed" shelf at Tikkun and it made me really happy. This is the book that Gabe Greenberg, my old counselor and close friend, co-wrote when he was a senior at Wesleyan. Not only is this an amazing achievement for Gabe, but it's also a really important topic at the moment, and it's getting a good amount of press. It was reviewed in the most recent issue of New Voices with an awesome interview with Gabe, and the Amazon site is getting a lot of hits (although, one of the "suggested reading" on that page is The Israel Lobby).
I started reading it so that I can write the review for the next issue of Tikkun, and I'm really enjoying it so far. It's partly a historical analysis of the Western world's relation to Islam, and it's partly a book about how Arabs are conceived in the media, (similar to my last post) focusing on political cartoons and how they represent American society and its anxiety towards Islam.

I can't wait to talk to Gabe about this book, he's a really great guy. He worked at Adamah (which I hope to do someday), then he went to Israel and studied at Hamivtar for a little while, now he's at camp doing an organic farming elective for the kids, and soon he'll be going to rabbinical school.
Kol hakavod, Gabe! Hope that your book becomes standard reading material for classes in Arabs in the Media and Middle East Studies.

Add One to the List!

At some point I'm going to actually compile a list of my favorite rabbis that, in my opinion, are bringing Judaism into the new millennium in a progressive way that is in line with halachic Judaism.
Today's new addition is Rabbi Steven Greenberg AKA the first gay Orthodox rabbi.
When I came home from school, I found his book, Wrestling With G-d and Men, on my kitchen countertop. My sister had been writing a paper for school on homosexuality in the Jewish tradition. She got it from the Gann Academy library, her high school and my alma mater, which is the type of library that would likely carry that book. It's a pluralistic, liberal Jewish high school, that tries to teach the students every aspect of Judaism so that they can decide for themselves how they want to practice. It's partially responsible for my apostasy from Conservative Judaism into whatever I am now (Orthodox?). I'm not really sure what I consider myself. Labels are for jars.
In the first 15 pages of the book he's mentioned almost every organization that I love and that are on my "links" tab (on the left). He started off by talking about how he became Orthodox (which sounded somewhat similar to my experiences) and how he became interested in the liberal, more modern aspects of it which include egalitarianism (which literally means equal leadership), ahavat olam and ahavat yisrael: respect and dignity for all people no matter what they do, and what it means to change halacha. I recommend this book to anyone reading this blog, because if you find me interesting, you'll find him interesting.