I’m Religious, Not Spiritual: The Nuances of Obligation
May 2, 2025
The value of a community is how its existence serves and sanctifies within itself and beyond itself.
Rabbi Joshua Boettiger is Jewish chaplain and visiting assistant professor of humanities at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. He is the current rosh yeshiva for the Center for Contemporary Mussar and for the last decade directed the Mussar program at Temple Emek Shalom in Ashland, Ore. Joshua also teaches Jewish meditation and co-leads silent retreats. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Pacific University, and his poetry has appeared in the Missouri Review, the Southern Review, B O D Y and elsewhere.
The value of a community is how its existence serves and sanctifies within itself and beyond itself.
Things we can do as we live in the end of the world as we know it.
What if all these rules about how to read Torah are skills that also apply to the person sitting across from us?
Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement
Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis
Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues
Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives
