The best Jewish engagement program out there

Okay, I'm a little biased (my wife is a program director of this initiative) but in my professional opinion this is the most cost-effective, most strategic program out there for engaging Jewish families. The story speaks for itself.

AskBigQuestions convergence: What do you say no to? And what are you thankful for?

My biggest project of this academic year has been launching and developing an initiative AskBigQuestions (and its website, www.askbigquestions.com). ABQ attempts to fill a void on Northwestern's campus, one which exists on many other university campuses too: We don't talk about life's Big Questions, the questions of ultimate concern with which all human beings are ultimately concerned. Who am I? Where do I come from? What's my story? What will be my vocation? Who will be my partners? What will be my legacy? These are the questions that make life worth living.

Among the many faith and philosophical traditions that address these questions, Judaism and Jewish life is a world class culture of unparalleled thickness. And by presenting a Judaism that answers the most important questions of human life, students who are rooted in the narrative of universal humanism can find a Jewish voice that feels real and that resonates.

In addition to the website, ABQ regularly sponsors salons with popular NU professors in a coffee shop. The format is usually that they will offer some perspectives on the question, I will respond with some Jewish resonances, and then the students, the prof and I engage in a lively give-and-take.

This column by Roger Cohen in today's New York Times brings together two of the Big Questions we've addressed this fall: "What do you say no to?" and "What are you thankful for?" Check out the story at the end:

"When Stanley Cohen, the friend and attorney to the artist Alexander Calder, moved to Paris in the 1960s, he ordered The Sunday New York Times. It would arrive the following Wednesday. He would take the paper and store it unread until Saturday night. Then he would place it outside his door so that, on Sunday morning, he had the illusion of finding his beloved paper waiting.

"I like that story. It’s a reminder of how not to be a slave to time, of the need to be imaginative and humble in our thankfulness, and of the fact that news can wait a week. A day off to read it is dandy. Turn off, tune out, drop in. And a decent-sized turkey takes five hours to cook."

Cohen reminds us that Thanksgiving attempts to be a version of Shabbat: A day to say no to the small stuff so that we can say yes, say thanks, and give blessing, to the big stuff. Saying thank you requires turning off a lot of the stuff that chains us to work, chains us to thin relationships, in order that we can say yes to our families, to other human beings.

Andrew Sullivan Endorses Obama (!)

This is pretty amazing. Sullivan, a conservative, argues that Obama is the right man for the times. He has two primary points:

1. Obama would be, in his words, the best weapon the U.S. could possibly deploy to change the calculus of the "War on Terror":

"Consider this hypothetical. It’s November 2008. A young Pakistani Muslim is watching television and sees that this man—Barack Hussein Obama—is the new face of America. In one simple image, America’s soft power has been ratcheted up not a notch, but a logarithm. A brown-skinned man whose father was an African, who grew up in Indonesia and Hawaii, who attended a majority-Muslim school as a boy, is now the alleged enemy. If you wanted the crudest but most effective weapon against the demonization of America that fuels Islamist ideology, Obama’s face gets close."

2. Obama is the only candidate who can transcend another round of Baby Boomer cultural warfare, which would be the inevitable result of a Clinton-Guilani/Romney (though not necessarily McCain) matchup, and in so doing provide a way out of Iraq and a host of other problems:

"The man who opposed the war for the right reasons is for that reason the potential president with the most flexibility in dealing with it. Clinton is hemmed in by her past and her generation. If she pulls out too quickly, she will fall prey to the usual browbeating from the right—the same theme that has played relentlessly since 1968. If she stays in too long, the antiwar base of her own party, already suspicious of her, will pounce. The Boomer legacy imprisons her—and so it may continue to imprison us. The debate about the war in the next four years needs to be about the practical and difficult choices ahead of us—not about the symbolism or whether it’s a second Vietnam."

As Sullivan goes on to discuss, Obama's generational stance--post-Boomer, that is--enables him to move beyond the divides of religion and race and culture that have been played out in every election since at least 1988 (not to mention 1968 and 1972). The notes on religion jibe with a post I wrote in this space earlier this year: Obama offers a third way, beyond the either/or choice of belief or science, and instead points the way to a "both/and" approach--science is true, and so is faith.

As I have already written to friends, I am on the Obama bandwagon. And after this piece from Sullivan, I am even more committed. Friends, his time has come.