CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly, Winter 2022 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780881236170)

Philip Graubart sets the perfect tone with his captivating "Notes from the Narrow Place"-revisiting the confinement of the past years with deep and inspiring insight. Our next article- "Sperm Donation and Surrogacy in the Time When the Judges Judged"-may bear the most unexpected and fascinating title in CCAR Journal history; and David Zucker's scholarship and wisdom, as ever, does not disappoint. Although written independently of one another, Judith Schindler's meticulously researched and thought-provoking "Cancel Culture, Billy Graham, and the Jews: Weighing Nearly Forty-Five Years of a Historical Record" and debut Journal author Neil Hirsch's superbly analyzed and earnestly written "On Accountability and T'shuvah: Two Talmudic Stories of Ostracism" are both rooted in history and text-but also guide us as we wrestle with how to draw boundaries, when to exclude, and when-and why, and how-to atone and forgive. Two important articles on the state of Reform Judaism come next. In a much-anticipated follow-up to the fall 2018 CCAR Journal theme issue on the Reform Pay Equity Initiative, Savannah Noray offers an updated data narrative on our Movement's gender wage gap-gratifyingly revealing where our efforts have borne fruit, but also illuminating how much work is left to do. Michael Rosen and David Ellenson also examine the development, progress, and maturation of the Reform Movement in Israel-brilliantly employing as their source the new Israeli Reform/Progressive siddur T'filat HaAdam. Our selection of articles concludes with two meditations on the greatest of issues: our relationship with the Divine and our longing to feel God's presence and grace. Adam D. Fisher beautifully offers spiritual guidance and uplift in "Experiencing God's Care," while Paul Menitoff draws upon scholarship and personal exprience to incorporate Spinoza's pantheism, Kaplan's naturalism, and Buber's existentialism into a new, engaging, and meaningful theology. "Isaac and Iphigenia."