by Sonia Isard

What's the Impact of Praying in Public?

Forward editor Jane Eisner’s incisive commentary on Occupy Judaism: She says Kol Nidre at OWS marked “a small but significant turning point for both Jews and progressive causes, a sign of arrival for Jews and a return to the historic place that religion played in the public face of progressive activism.” I’m also interested in (and more ambivalent about) the public face of progressive Judaism —  how does the meaning of Jewish practice change when the deeply moving yet sort of raw and untamed Kol Nidre liturgy rings out across Zuccotti Park?