The book is published!!!
Deep thanks to Dahlia Lithwick and Jane Taubenfeld Cohen for their humbling blurbs (pasted below) and to my very precious Ariel Creditor for the cover artwork!
Intense Beginnings is a collection of essays on Spirituality, Israel, Jewish History, and Justice that poured out during an especially tumultuous year of my life. Rereading them, I have found myself transported back into moments I wish had never been, knowing that these crucible encounters also opened my eyes and transformed my life for the better. They were each, in a very real sense, intense beginnings. Those essential moments sparked these words and have added great meaning to my in-process, examined life.
I am grateful for it all.
Enjoy!
Menachem
Menachem
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Blurbs:
“Menachem Creditor's writing shows us the gift of Judaism Now, perhaps more than ever, we need our faith leaders to step forward and speak out bravely about the deep connections between our religious moral values and social justice. Rabbi Creditor has modeled for years the kind of fierce ethical commitment to justice — for women, for the poor, for victims of gun violence, for communities of color, for our cousins in Israel — that lies at the heart of Jewish teaching and scholarship. The essays collected here offer a roadmap into difficult conversations. You may not always agree with his conclusions but Creditor’s courage in marrying law to faith to social justice in these pages stands as an intense beginning to a dialogue; an invitation to speak out boldly about how the work of tikkun olam must proceed.”
- Dahlia Lithwick, Senior Supreme Court correspondent, Slate
“This is not the first time that I’ve read the essays included in Intense Beginnings. But it is the first time I have read them together. And the power of Menachem Creditor’s words is more than what is on the paper. It is the voice he gives to what usually lives inside, not expressed so openly and directly. Each page is filled with emotion that uncovers the feelings we have inside of us through our lens as Jews, as parents, as Jewish professionals, as people. The love, the joy, the anger are ways for us to enter or reenter our own moments of connection and disconnection. I love that I can be reading one essay and feel politically charged and another, feel personally understood. I look forward to reading these essays again and again to see what is unleashed.”
- Jane Taubenfeld Cohen, Vice President of School Services, Prizmah Center for Jewish Day Schools