Rare Finds
Featured Rare Find
Why Did You Change Your Mind?
It's an eternal question, and one that is compelling, revealing and worth contemplating. So The Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El in New York is posing it to people within the Jewish community and posting podcast discussions on its website.
"It's an open-ended question and the answers and explanations reflect on who they are and how they became who they are," said Darone Ruskay, managing director of The Skirball Center. "Everyone we ask finds his or her own meaning within that question and we can all find enlightenment and perspective from them."
The podcast series, Why I Changed My Mind, began earlier this year and includes the likes of Mishael Zion, author and teacher of Talmud and Jewish Thought, reflecting on the idea of Lashon Ha'ra, or gossip, to Rabbi Alfredo Borodowski, Skirball's new executive director, speaking on why he changed his mind on the idea of theology after the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, where a close friend perished.
New podcast interviews will be added at regular intervals.
They can be found at http://www.adultjewishlearning.org/podcasts
Torah Education Goes “Hands On” and Online
The People’s Torah project of the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco takes learning about the Five Books of Moses to a innovative, multi-media level. Launched this year online and at the museum, the project invites people around the world to “lend a hand” to create a communal Torah for the digital age.
The net-based rendering transforms images of participants’ hands into individual Hebrew letters of the Torah. Since opening and going online, about 6,000 of the more than 300,000 letters of the Torah have been so formed – with participants from over 55 countries - and in this way the Five Books of Moses are being composed.
Form one of the letters in the People’s Torah by contributing an image of your hand - a symbol of individuality, expression and connection - and advance the composition. For details, go to www.peoplestorah.org.
“By participating, you are creating a community of people from around the world,” says Hillary Leone, one of the artists behind the project. “People’s Torah is a luminous universe of parts, always in a state of becoming whole. Every letter represents a discrete connection between virtual and physical worlds. It is a visual meditation on immanence and transcendence, autonomy and community, figure and ground. It is a communal Torah for the 21st century.”
People’s Torah was commissioned by the Contemporary Jewish Museum as part of As it is Written: Project 304, 805, an exhibition currently examining the Torah as a historical artifact, ritual object, scribal tradition, and contemporary muse. It was created by the New York-based interactive studios, Cabengo and Studio Media.
Must-Read Free eBook Explores the Ideas of Now
Influential blogs and websites are buzzing about What Matters Now, a fascinating collection of essays compiled by widely read author, blogger, marketer, self-empowerment guru and networking advocate Seth Godin. This free, downloadable ebook, a manual of mini-essays and one-page gems by innovative thought leaders offers insight into what's foremost on their minds as 2010 begins with new challenges. And its very method of distribution highlights just how quickly traditional approaches are falling by the wayside in an overpowering digital age. Click the link above to download the book and begin absorbing the wisdom.
Art Meets Education
The Covenant Foundation has long supported the power and nexus of art and education. A truly rare find presented itself on a recent trip to the Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History at 15 West 16th Street in New York City. Two phenomenal exhibits there now, Letters of Conscience: Raphael Lemkin and the Quest to End Genocide, and In the Beginning: Artists Respond to Genesis, are worthy of a personal or group visit.
The Social Media Revolution
http://zyozy.org/blog/2009/08/18/social-media-revolution/
The statistics and trends are stunning and demand attention by any organization with a constituency. So that means all of us. The zyOzy Foundation, mobilizing youth to fight poverty around the world, has produced a short video that makes the case to anyone still doubting this. The bottom line: get on board or be left behind. View the video on the zyOzy website.
Teaching the Parsha
A weekly cartoon about the Torah stories that Jews are reading each week. Every Monday, a new writer tells the parsha in an entertaining and dynamic four-minute animated video. A newsletter and curriculum guide is available for educators.
Jewish Innovation
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/new-teachings
Jerusalem Post correspondent Haviv Rettig Gur takes on the Jewish social innovation boom in a widely circulated opinion piece in ejewishphilanthropy.com. Haviv takes the position that Jewish social entrepreneurship should be more than clever packaging, but rather contain real, sustainable, quality Jewish content. Haviv concludes that there is a responsibility to look beyond the branding, taglines and hype to examine if a project can truly change the world. “Sustainable innovation," he writes, "requires that foundations, federations and donors have a duty to ask innovators and aspiring grantees a fundamental question: What is the educational value of their work? What do they have to teach?”
Educating and Engaging Autistic Children
Let's Cook! uses multimedia (videos, slides, images and text) demonstrating how parents and teachers can help kids with autism build functional skills through enjoyable, everyday activities, such as cooking. The site features structured, predictable activities to help children engage and communicate in a natural social situation.
Lesson Plans on Jewish Ethics, Values and History
www.wateringcanpress.com/html/freeJewishGuides.html
Books from Watering Can Press teach children key lessons about Jewish ethics, values, history, current issues, and themselves. The Watering Can Press website offers valuable lesson plans for these for use in homes, supplementary day schools, day schools, JCCs and other venues. The Covenant Foundation commissioned these education guides to teach Jewish principles while engaging children.
Building Your Professional Communications Skills
http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/reallybad-1.pdf
New media blogger and marketing consultant Seth Godin offers a downloadable e-booklet on making effecting and engaging PowerPoint presentations. This, and a host of other marketing and communications tips and tools are offered by this respected observer and practitioner.
User submitted Rare Finds
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