What Prayer Means to Me
Becoming Friends with Prayer When I was in first grade, I received my…
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Prayer & Humanity
What makes us human? As our technologies become ever more sophisticated, some of the lines drawn between human and other grow blurred as well, leading us to ask increasingly important questions about what truly makes humans human. For instance: Can robots pray? While this question initially seems funny, it reflects deeply rooted beliefs that we…
- Essays
- Essays
We Live in a World of Words and Letters
Excerpted and adapted from Birth of the Spoken Word, by Dovid’l Weinberg. March…
- Essays
Toward a Jewish Theology of Consciousness
The mystery of consciousness has long vexed philosophers and scientists alike. Attempting to…
Prayer & Humanity
Samuel Lebens: The Hard Problem of Prayer
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Samuel Lebens—a philosophy professor, rabbi, and Jewish educator—about the nature of consciousness.
podcast
Samuel Lebens: The Hard Problem of Prayer
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Samuel Lebens—a philosophy professor, rabbi, and Jewish educator—about…
podcast
Dovid’l Weinberg: The Song of Prayer
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Dovid’l Weinberg—a rabbi, educator, musician, poet, and author—about…
podcast
Moshe Koppel: Artificial Intelligence and Torah
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to returning guest Moshe Koppel—a computer scientist and Talmud…
podcast
Debbie Stone: Can Prayer Be Taught?
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Dr. Debbie Stone, an educator of young people,…
podcast
Dov Singer: Living a Prayerful Life
In this episode of the 18Forty Podcast, we talk to Dov Singer, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Mekor Chaim…
book
Birth of the Spoken Word
Birth of the Spoken Word is a master class on the art of prayer and the prayerful relationship. BOTSW presents a textured analysis of five key passages from the opening chapters of Genesis, placing prayer at the heart of the creation story. Integrating Jewish scholarship with spiritual reflection, Rav Dovid’l Weinberg considers the relationship between themes of objectivity, subjectivity, the personal, and the divine in prayer encounters in Jewish thought. With deep and thoughtful analysis of well-known and lesser-known sources, this work is right for you if you enjoy thinking about the meaning of prayer in the many streams of the Jewish tradition.
book
Prepare My Prayer
By one of Israel’s most popular spiritual educators, Prepare My Prayer is a “cookbook of prayer,” a unique attempt to develop a dedicated language for the worship of the heart, the language of prayer. This volume offers a variety of concise and practical ‘recipes’ for prayer by a creative and original thinker is a poetic volume aimed at opening the heart in a non-traditional way. For a more sustained analysis of Jewish prayer, pair this work with Rabbi Ezra Bick’s Shemoneh Esrei: Exploring the Fundamentals of Faith through the Amida Prayer. This work looks at the underappreciated depths of the Amida, paying close attention to the words of the Amida and tracing their sources in the Bible to consider the heart of Jewish prayer.
book
God, Human, Animal, Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning
For much of human history, the world was felt to be an enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our control or understanding, or so the story goes. The rise of scientific thinking and mind-body divisions ultimately became a dominating paradigm, in the process leading to a disenchantment with the world as we know it. In God, Human, Animal, Machine, O’Gieblyn tackles the spread of digital metaphor and the rise of technology as forces that elide our understanding, reconsidering the nature of consciousness in thought-provoking ways. All by a former believer, haunted still by questions of her faith. Pair this with Phillip Goff’s Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness for a truly deep dive into consciousness, science, and what we might be finding out about the brain.