Project three, with the proposal, "Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself."

Hinduism | Buddhism | Judaism | Christianity | Islam

The experiential dimension of the project with Judaism is to practice as much or as little as you agree with in the commandments to love God with all your heart and mind and soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. By the first century, it was not uncommon for Jewish teachers to summarize the tradition with these two commandments from the Torah (Deuteronomy 6.4 and Leviticus 19.18). It is clear from Biblical and other Jewish writings that the love in question is morally active and engaged. As always, if you have reason to request an alternative to the assignment, do not hesitate to propose an alternative in conversation with the instructor. During this project, you will be—or imagine—a living prophet. Note: one of the most successful papers from a previous class made no reference to God. However, for this assignment, you must restrict your religious references to Judaism.

Here is the structure of your paper.

I. Report and commentary

1. An account of your experience (at least one page)

2. A commentary on your experience that you construct from a Jewish perspective (two pages). Use several brief quotes from the Hebrew scriptures, with comments explaining their meaning and relating them to your narrative.

II. A Psalm

Write a new psalm of your own. “Sing a new song unto the Lord” (Ps. 149.1). Model your psalm on the psalms in the Bible. Please have it longer than psalm 133 and shorter than psalm 119. This part of the paper should express your depth of experience as oriented to God—if you believe in God—or oriented to the goodness of flourishing human relationships—if you do not believe in God—on the model, perhaps, of psalm 133.

II. A prophetic discourse

Create a prophetic discourse (about two pages). Make it clear what group you are addressing, either in the discourse itself or in a preliminary sentence. In your prophetic message you will select from the variety of modes of prophetic writing that we find in Jewish writing including invigorating exhortation, touching appeal, encouragement in the face of discouraging circumstances, blistering critique, and warning. In your discourse, you may quote brief selections from Jewish writings that you find particularly helpful (using quotation marks, followed by a parenthetical reference). You may also modify your sources, and you may express your thought independently of any text. You are a living prophet for the purpose of this paper, and you are not required to present your message as though you were depending on the authority of your predecessors.

If you are doing the service-learning unit, please write twice the generally assigned length and relate your experience report to your project.

As usual, I will give extra credit for an additional page describing your dialogue with a Jewish person.