Joshua Stanton's Page

On May 2, 2012, President Barack Obama declared:

...by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 2012 as Jewish American Heritage Month. I call upon all Americans to visit www.JewishHeritageMonth.gov to learn more about the heritage…

Religious communities are never the same once they reach America. In my view, they often become even more remarkable.

As a third-generation American Jew, it is at times even challenging for me to think of Judaism apart from the American experience. In spite of hardships early on for our community, the search for common threads between the disparate Jewish groups that came in droves to America two (and more) generations ago forced us to reexamine and hone our religious beliefs. What…

After the joyful Seders and family gatherings have ended and we have entered more deeply into the Passover holiday, I often feel jarred by the Counting of the Omer.

Traditional Jews mark this time before Shavuot through abstinence: foregoing weddings, cutting one's hair and even listening to music. Instead, they devote themselves to internal work and spiritual preparation for the commemoration of receiving the Torah on Shavuot.

While Talmudic passages attempt to justify this…

This is my recollection of co-Founding the Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue. Central to this effort was my co-Founder, Stephanie Varnon-Hughes. Without her, this project could never have taken shape.

I was sitting in my apartment in Jerusalem, hiding from the world. A war was raging a hundred miles south of me, and another seemed likely to start a hundred miles to the north. I felt…