Essays
Full Service Renewal?
Reuven Goldfrab, in a letter to his colleagues reflects on the question of how the renewal community should respond to the changing - often radically changing - needs of its members.
Essays
The Aquarian Minyan at the Rainbow Gathering
Reuven Goldfarb shares his experiences from the Rainbow Gathering
Poems
Sitting Down at My Computer on Motzaei Shabbat
Parashat VaYishlach Icons on my desktop look like tombstones as I back away from more stories about the latest Jerusalem bus bombing. My townspeople go about their tasks with fallen faces, still absorbing the Read more…
Essays
Your Portion in the Torah: Hebrew Birthdates as a Tool for Awareness and Insight
Reuven Goldfarb shares his ideas about the existence of a significant link between one's date of birth and the weekly portion.
Essays
Open Forms & Closed Forms: Poetry, Liturgy, & Nusach
Reuven Goldfarb believes that the emergence of a Jewish renewal orthodoxy is not an oxymoron because just as in poetry, or in any of the arts, new forms can become static and imitative of past experiences, rather than creatively transforming them.
Audio
Walking to the Kotel
Reuven Goldfarb feels that the place where he stands to pray supports him well as he climbs to the peak of his soul.
Audio
My Platoon
Reuven Goldfarb feels that we're like a platoon, a unit in an army. and that we besiege the fortress of heaven with prayer. The poem is set on his former college campus that then segues into a synagogue quorum for prayer.
Essays
Masculine Reticence
Reuven Goldfarb chronicles much his growth in Judaism, from renewal to traditional observance, triggered, as is often the case, by a death in the family.
Essays
Reb Zalman Among the Sufis
Reuven Goldfarb with the assistance of Eliyahu (Khaled) McLean transcribes the experience of Rabbis Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Reuven Goldfarb and Chaim Cohen with the Sufis in Hebron.
Essays
Names (Shmot)
Reuven Goldfarb compares various versions of people who leave their legacies on walls.