Jain Digest Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

Om Shri Veetragay Namah

Jai Jinendra,

On behalf of the Jain Digest Editorial Staff, I wish you a very Happy New Year! Wish you all a healthy, peaceful, prosperous and a spiritually uplifting 2023!

With blessing of Bhagwan, our Jain Digest family continues to grow with new writers and staff members. In this February 2023 issue, we have articles by 13 new authors, including three youngsters from Jain Society of Greater Detroit! We thank them for their contributions, which help us bring you varied and enriched content.

We are very happy to announce that Payal Seth from Delhi has joined our editorial staff as of November 2022. Payal is a PhD Scholar at Bennett University and an Economics researcher with Tata-Cornell Institute, Cornell University. She has published extensively in leading national and international newspapers. Please join us in welcoming Payal to the Jain Digest family!

After the publication of the October 2022 issue, we asked our advisors and well-wishers to suggest any improvements we can make to the magazine’s content. We are implementing two of those suggestions starting with this issue. One suggestion to include essays written by Pathshala students came from our advisor Hema Pokharna. With help from our section editor Sanjay Bhandari and Hemesh Shah from Jain Society of Greater Detroit, we have included three mature, thought-provoking essays written by their pathshala students in the past few years. Our plan for the future issues of Jain Digest is to approach one of the Jain Centers from North America and have their students contribute winning entries from their past essay competitions.

The second suggestion to include “Letters to Editor” in the magazine came from Prakash Mody. In this issue, we are including a few of these letters as a sample. Starting from the June 2023 issue, we will share select letters that we receive during the two months after a new issue of the magazine is published. For this February issue, please send your candid feedback to jaindigestpublication@gmail.com before March 31,2023. The Editorial team will contact the people whose letters are selected and request to send their picture to be published along with the letter. We hope that this will encourage you to tell us what you liked in the magazine, your ideas for improvement and your suggestions for content that will help us all in our spiritual advancement.

On December 3, 2022, my wife Sushama and I were invited to a reception at the Fowler Museum at UCLA which included a gallery preview of the Chhod Patas exhibition. As we entered the gallery, we were surprised to see several of the chhod patas displayed on the walls with wonderful lighting that highlighted the beauty of the velvet and satin tapestry lavishly embroidered with gold and silver-gilt thread. Just like most of you, I had seen these chhods several times in temples & upashrayas in India and knew that they depicted pilgrimage sites and stories from Jain mythology. However, I never thought of them as symbols of devotion. It was an incredible feeling when I learned that the exhibition was titled “Visualizing Devotion. ” How appropriate!

During the event, we met many of our friends from Jain Center of Southern California, including former president Dr. Jayesh Shah, who had been working hard with the UCLA staff and many others over several months to make the exhibition a reality. We met with Amy Landau and Francesca Albrezzi of UCLA and Lynna Dhanani of UC Davis and asked them if they would be willing to write an article for us. They enthusiastically said “yes” and over the next two weeks we received two articles. Lynna’s article is included in the Devotion section as it focuses on the exhibition itself and explains the story depicted on one of the chhods. My hope is that after reading that description, all of us will be encouraged to observe such tapestries closely and get a better appreciation of the details the artists have captured. Amy and Francesca’s article is included in the Information section since it provides overview of the “Engaging Lived Religion” program which includes three spheres of activities: exhibitions, public programs, and digital learning. We are grateful to Amy, Francesca, and Lynna for working with us on the articles.

In addition to what I have covered above, there are many engaging articles in this issue that you will find educational and inspiring. My sincere thanks to all the writers and editors for their contribution and hard work. And thanks to all of you for your support.

If you would like to join our editorial team or write an article for our next issue to be published in June 2023, please write to us at: jaindigestpublication@gmail.com or call or send a message at 310-721-5947. Stay safe. Stay healthy.

In Seva, Dilip Parekh