PREAMBLE TO THE 2011 EDITION OF RABBI RONALD.COM

Since relocating here five years ago to the deep South, sometimes referred to as the "Bible Belt", I have enjoyed the opportunity to be exposed to a population for whom religion is not a sometimes thing. Typically, when one meets a new person in Florence, South Carolina, natives will inquire, "So, where do you go to church?" In no other place in this country — and I have lived all over — is the directness of the question quite so fresh.

When I founded LANDS OF THE COVENANT nearly nine years ago, between the trauma of 9/11 and the trauma of the Iraq War, I sensed — intuitively more than consciously — that religion, its power and its potential misuses, lay at the heart of the Age of Terror.

As an ordained rabbi in the Reform tradition, I hoped that my perspective as an American rabbi would enrich the discussion which has the entire world exercised in the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks. More to the point, as someone committed to the Jewish ideal of tikkun olam, I frankly anguish over the prospect that the value of biblical faith in the market-place of ideas will be reduced to junk bond status: scriptural creeds which have outlived their usefulness as moral shapers of the human spirit.

For those of you who are well-acquainted with Ronald and his approach to the classical texts of Judaism, as well as his devotion to comparative religion as a vital and necessary public enterprise in the new millennium, I invite you to peruse this blog to learn if you find something unanticipated. For new readers, my ambition is to find that common ground in the inter-religious terrain, especially between those Abrahamic faiths which originate in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity and Islam, the interpretation of whose sacred texts could either deliver humanity or else doom the human enterprise entirely.

Rabbi J. N. Ronald
Florence, SC
Nissan 5771  April 2011

l'ma'an tziyon, lo ehesheh, u-l'ma'an yerushalayim lo eshtok.
"For Zion's sake, I will not be silent,
and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be quiet." (Is. 62:1)

LOX vs. LUTEFISK

In an effort to bring inter-faith understanding between Jews and Christians who study the biblical text, each from our respective traditions, we have renewed our partnership with Pastor Dale Banke of Salem Lutheran Church in Glendale, California. Rabbi Ronald spoke to the ELCA church’s Bible study group on the subject of "Letting the Bible Speak for the Bible".