It's Labor Day, the final holiday weekend of this surreal summer. The 7th of September -- and the 18th of Elul, our Hebrew month, and a traditional time of reflection and reckoning ahead of the high holidays.
So take a break from news. From politics. Delve with us instead into the divine.
Over the last few weeks, we've been publishing a special series by our contributing writer Abigail Pogrebin, whose 2017 book "My Jewish Year," in which she explored every single holiday on our calendar with different communities, also started as a Forward series. This time, Abby went beyond ritual and practice to the often-tougher issues of faith and theology.
These are things many Jews rarely talk about -- even in shul or religious school. These are questions we are sometimes afraid to ask each other, and ourselves.
Does God's gender matter? Is God less visible today than in biblical times? Is the word 'God' the hurdle people can't get past?
Abby used two of her best journalistic assets -- deep and diverse connections across our communities; an endlessly empathetic inquisitiveness -- to frame the project, Still Small Voice: 18 questions about God. She asked 18 thinkers from across all perspectives to engage one question using one text. The resulting conversations are intimate and illuminating, personal and profound, surprising and resonant.
When we launched at the beginning of Elul, we sent you a special newsletter with the introductory essay and the first four interviews. Here are six more. We'll publish the rest in the next two weeks; you can find the whole collection here.
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