One Year Anniversary

This blog is one year old. The three month and six month markers were harder than this one. At this point, the practice of blogging is part of my routine. I started on September 10, 2009. Originally, the readership was limited to students and facebook friends. In mid December, the blog was discovered by several other blogs especially the posts comparing “Catholic Schools and Jewish Day Schools” “Post-Orthodoxy” “The Lubavitcher Rebbe on Transcendental Meditation.” On February 8th and then 25th the blizzard forced homebound East Coaster to look for something to do and they spent their time on blogs and my blog went viral. Popular springtime posts included the Art Green review, the Marryanne Robinson cycle, Rabbi Morgenstern and Meditation, and New writing of Rabbi Kook”

Some of the posts of the first three months that did not get the attention they deserve include:
The first Jewish reference to the Dalai Lama
Levinas’s Jewish Response to Nostra Aetate
Determine Your Rabbinical Age
Modern Orthodoxy- Modern meant Moral Self-transformation

I did a Tishrei cycle that was read but is timely to repost. The posts focused on the 9th to the 12th centuries of Unetaneh Tokef; Pesikta derav Kahana; Avodat Yom Hakippurim; and Geshem on shimini atzeret.

My post of this summer on “Rav Kook and Other Religions and Revelation” should have gotten readers but it received no hits.

I am willing to take suggestions for WordPress improvements-widgets to install or plugins. WordPress changed my theme without asking and erased all widgets this past summer and then reinstalled them a few days after a fashion. So there are some kinks from the summer.

My book “Judaism and Other Religions” came out in March. Despite the list price, the price on Amazon and Barnes & Noble fluctuates weekly between 57-73 dollars. Right now, both Amazon and B & N have it for 57. If you come to my house, then I can give it to you for 47.(No mail or shipping possible). It will jump back to 63, 68, or 73 in a week or two. I don’t have a date for the paperback but expect it around Dec 2011. I am told via the grapevine that the first academic review of my book is scheduled for November. The latest PR for the Book was in the Bergen County Jewish Standard last week.

Teaneck resident Alan Brill’s new book, “Judaism and Other Religions: Models of Understanding” (Palgrave MacMillan), is a sort of post-tolerance manifesto for a post 9/11 world. The humanistic approach to tolerance in today’s Western world treats “the other” as secular without requiring any understanding of the other’s religion, argues Brill…
Jews involved in interfaith dialogue since the 1970s have mostly come from the 1960s “universal, we’re-all-one perspective” that emphasized openness over exclusivism, says Brill. He felt that today’s realities called for a look at how classical Jewish sources could bring an old/new dimension to the discussion.

Read Entire Review Here

My next book Judaism and World Religions: Encountering Christianity, Islam, and Eastern Traditions [Hardcover] is already listed on Barnes and Noble for next March 2011. I have several semi-completed manuscripts for 2-3 more books to be pursued as soon as I am dome with the one on World Religions. So, I will likely be blogging for at least a few more years while I edit, edit, edit.

Blogging takes time and I try not to let it interfere with other projects. However, I take copious notes on books and articles that I read for work so I actually write more posts that get posted because it takes time to edit them for the blog. Once again, I welcome guest posts that fit into this blog. I also wish to remind people that I do not post comments that are Google searches of quotes, which add nothing to the blog and only show off google skills. If you link one of my posts here to Twitter & Facebook, let me know so I know where the traffic is coming from.

I wish everyone a Gemar Tov and Gut Gebentched Yohr