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If it’s your custom to attend Friday night services, here’s how you can seek out a Reform congregation when you’re on the road, whether for business or pleasure.
How does one locate and contact a Progressive/Reform/Liberal congregation when travelling outside of North America?
Rosh HaShanah in Bali, and I was sitting in the rain watching the Ramayana, a traditional dance, after a dinner of lamb kabobs. Could this be kosher?
Tel Aviv dazzles in many ways - its beaches, nightlife, restaurants. Less known is its young, daring, innovative fashion industry.
Unique and innovative, Israeli cuisine draws from the culinary traditions of Jewish immigrants from 80+ countries, and spices them with Middle Eastern and Asian accents. Here's just a sampling of...
No matter how many times you visit Israel, you will always be able to find inventive museums waiting for you to explore and experience.
A Camera You Can Swallow: Doctors in 60+ countries use the PillCam, a smooth capsule the size of a pill that patients can swallow, to determine best treatment protocols. Developed by Given...
Israel is now a world leader in green innovation, conservation, and environmental sustainability-and many of the initiatives are open to all of us to see and experience
In Rio, the biggest congregation is Reform, the 900-family Associação Religiosa Israelita (ARI). Founded by German Jews in 1942, it now attracts Jews of all kinds drawn to modernity, egalitarianism...
Harry A. and Barbara Tasch Ezratty are both past presidents of Temple Beth Shalom. Harry is also author of 500 Years in the Jewish Caribbean; Barbara is a food writer and book publisher.
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Rabbi Leonid Bimbat is rabbi of Congregation Le-Dor va-Dor in Moscow.
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In 2010 the new Hungarian government enacted hundreds of new laws, one of which abolished the religious status of hundreds of congregations, including Budapest’s two Progressive communities.
Rabbi Lennard Thal, senior vice president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism, has served as visiting rabbi of United Hebrew Congregation in Singapore for the past 20 years.
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Now 80 years old, Progressive Judaism has a credible record here. It reached a seeming high point about mid-way along that timeline; the period since the violent Soweto student uprising in 1976 has...
While I thought I had an awareness of my purpose, a new one was revealed to me this past summer when my two daughters, Alexis, 28, and Shaina, 25, and I visited Vienna, the city where my father...
Being Jewish in Russia is still a difficult choice, and being a Progressive Jew even more so. Although the fall of the Soviet Union freed its citizens to practice religion, the vast majority are...
Travel abroad and you’ll witness, as I have, the wonders of Jewish rebirth and resilience in places where Judaism was once on the edge of extinction—and now is on the ascent!When I visited Poland...
The Gardens are a recreational site and an attraction for Israelis and tourists alike.
Israelis love fairs, festivals, ‘festigals’ and the ever-popular ‘heppening.’
10 Best Bets Under $20
Naomi Cohn-Zentner, a music instructor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, Jerusalem, was interviewed by the RJ editors on how Israeli music has captured the changing...
I have avoided Germany for almost 15 years. My last visit was a business trip in 1985 when I was asked by my studio to help promote a Star Trek film, my first feature film as a director. The visit...
So there we were, a rabbi and several dozen Eskimos, all struggling valiantly with an ancient Aramaic prayer. The people of Kotzebue were struggling because they didn't know the language and still...
Seventeen years ago, I discovered the horrible fate that had befallen twenty-six of my relatives. On July 10, 1941, just days after Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union and took over northeastern...
Jedwabne, Poland-July 10, 2001. The market square is like a movie set. A makeshift stage awaits the principal actor in this historic drama--Aleksander Kwasniewski, president of the Polish Republic....
Did you ever imagine that you might one day serve as rabbi in Warsaw?Actually, for years I had entertained the fantasy of serving in Poland, the land of my family's roots. In the mid-1970s, my...
Emma Peabody of Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple in New Brunswick, New Jersey is enthusiastic about her courses in “Biblical Theology” and “Women in Israel” at the University of Haifa, part of the...
There is nothing Israel needs now more than a strong, significant, authentic, Liberal voice of Reform Jews from North America, especially as Israelis begin to look in earnest for more meaningful...
As our minivan approached the ruins of the Crusader castle that once defended Caesarea, our guide pointed to a delicate white wildflower at the side of the road. "The Havatselet Hasharon," Ikey...
The Dead Sea has been a source of fascination for thousands of years.
A warm wind blew in from Egypt and across the sands of the Negev desert as the sun began to set. Unleavened bread and bitter herbs lay in front of each person reclining on mats and pillows on the...
Art lovers: here's your guide to discover Israel's art treasures.
Thirty years ago, no one would have predicted that one day Israel would produce a generation of talented, innovative, and remarkably creative chefs
To attract the younger generation, who do not have the same motivation as their grandparents to be members of a synagogue, we have to think beyond our comfort zone.
Tamara Ruben, the education director of Temple Emanu-El in Westfield, New Jersey, was born in Iraq in June 1950, only two weeks before her family, along with thousands of other Iraqi Jews, fled...
Baghdad, June 22, 2004. Just days before the Coalition Provisional Authority is scheduled to return power to Iraqi control, four Iraqi Jews--two in their forties, two elderly--inconspicuously board...
Revolution. Everything in Iran changed on February 1, 1979, the day Ayatollah Khomeini returned to our country a few days after the departure of the Shah. Suddenly, millions were demanding an end...
The director of publications at the Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, Dr. Houman Sarshar is the editor of three volumes of The History of Contemporary Iranian Jews and, most recently, ...
Some 40,000-50,000 Israelis travel to India each year (many of them "unwinding" in the country after completing military service), and are a very visible presence in the country. In some outlying...
Thousands of Germans are documenting, restoring, and perpetuating the memory of Jewish life and culture before the Nazis took power.In the early 1930s, about two hundred Jews lived in Siegen, a...
They told me that trying to open the largest archive of inaccessible Holocaust-related documents would be like tilting at windmills….Too much resistance, too little compassion.
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The Holocaust horror stories my parents told me as a young child forced me to shoulder a heavy emotional load. First I contemplated revenge against the Nazis. Later I tried escape into normalcy by...
Liberal Judaism in France, which just marked its 100th anniversary, is more vibrant than ever before. France's 14 synagogues are all full for Shabbat services, rent large concert halls to...
This discussion and study guide to The Arabic Lesson contains an article summary, Big Ideas to consider, questions for discussion, a bibliography, and more.A. Overview The Hebrew word shalom,...
The following is adapted from the journal Rabbi Ruth Sohn kept during her family's stay in Cairo, Egypt from January to July 2006. She (a Jewish studies faculty member at Milken Community High...
In December 1896, Rabbi Solomon Schechter stepped into the attic of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo, Egypt-and found the largest treasure trove of ancient and medieval manuscripts ever discovered:...
This past summer I served as a chaperone for the North American Federation of Temple Youth (NFTY)'s Dor L'Dor ("generation to generation") program, which in 2011 brought 378 high school students to...
Last June, we returned to the enchanting city where, almost 30 years ago, we stood together under an outdoor chuppah. Our sightseeing began at Vancouver's renovated international airport, which...
Nova Scotia has much to offer the Jewish traveler. Our weeklong journey began in the port city of Halifax, known as the gateway to Canada—where, from 1928 to 1971, more than one million immigrants...
Does Canadian Jewry have a unique character as opposed to American Jewry?
