Topic: Literature and the Arts
Best-selling writer and journalist Sara Davidson says she felt completely unprepared for the reality of dying. Then she met Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. Their weekly conversations about facing mortality led to their book, “The December Project.” “When you feel you’re coming to the end of your tour of duty, what is the spiritual work of that time,” asks Reb Zalman, “and how do we prepare for the mystery?” More
The haggadah is the book that guides Jews through the ritual of the Passover Seder, the meal commemorating their ancestors’ exodus from slavery in Egypt. The Sarajevo Haggadah is famous for its artistically illustrated manuscript pages. Created 600 years ago, “It went through so many different cultures,” observes composer Merima Kljuco, “and so many different people took the care of the book and helped it survive.” More
“The central moment in Passover is the use of the material—the use of the tools we have with us in the world to bring us to another place.” More
Hollywood is releasing several stories from the Bible this year, to varying reactions. “We’re talking about sacred characters and sacred stories,” says San Diego State University history professor Edward Blum, “and so it’s not just Noah on screen talking to some powerful force. It’s Noah talking to God.” More
“To treat [Noah’s Ark] as something that’s not poetic and mythical is a mistake….we have goodness and wickedness inside of us, and we have a second chance now to take care of creation and each other. That’s a beautiful, poetic, inspiring idea to learn from and to inspire us to do better.” More
“We made [Son of God] for this generation [so] that the teenagers would watch it. It’s a story of our time. It’s the story of our God, and we wanted to make it as well as we could.” More
“Hollywood, I think, approaches the Bible as public domain, as something that is owned by the culture at large, and they have discovered that some segments of the Christian community look at it as private property.” More
Historian Simon Schama explores 3,000 years of Jewish history and culture in a five-part documentary series and companion book. “The problem of the Jews,” Schama says, “was that they were a nation without a home.” More
The movie “Philomena” is up for four Oscars, including Best Picture, at the Academy Awards on Sunday, March 2. It tells the true story of an Irish Catholic girl forced by nuns to give up her son for adoption and her search for him decades later. More
Watch our audio slideshow of “The Expanse of Eternity,” a concert held on January 17 when the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. had emptied the nave of all its chairs. More
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