Nothing But the Truth? Balancing an Embrace of Tradition with Personal Integrity

A virtual event presentation by Rabbi Leon Morris

Event Co-Hosted by Hebrew Education Alliance 

 

About The Event:

Many of us are drawn to Jewish texts and tradition, and at the same time bring commitments and perspectives that are part and parcel of who we are. How do we balance our own sense of truth with the inherited claims of Jewish tradition to which we are drawn? What is the place of “personal integrity” in religious life? What do we do when our own experience of the world seems so different from those who shaped Jewish law and tradition? Discover a surprising radical text from the Babylonian Talmud (Tractate Yoma 69b) that reveals how the early Rabbis themselves struggled with these same questions. Pair that text with a contemporary Israeli pop song that mines these issues in a decidedly 21st-century way. How can our Jewish lives be both “ours” and “Jewish”?

 

About The Speaker:

Rabbi Leon Morris is the President of Pardes. Leon made aliyah with his wife Dasee Berkowitz and their three children in June 2014, after serving as the rabbi of Temple Adas Israel in Sag Harbor, NY. He was the founding director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El (now the Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center) in Manhattan. Before coming to Pardes, Leon served as a Vice President for Israel Programs at the Shalom Hartman Institute and was a faculty member at Hebrew Union College.

Ordained from Hebrew Union College in 1997 where he was a Wexner Graduate Fellow, he has worked extensively with the Jewish community of India, beginning in 1990 when he served as a Jewish Service Corps volunteer for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. He was also a Mandel Jerusalem Fellow. Leon has taught at Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform institutions and is a regular contributor to the Jewish, US, and Israeli press. He is an editor of the new Reform High Holy Day machzor, Mishkan HaNefesh, and is a contributor to Jewish Theology in Our Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations and Future of Jewish Belief (edited by Elliot Cosgrove, Jewish Lights, 2010).