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“And you shall order schnitzel…”
By Bradley Egel
People frequently talk about generational leadership. The Hebrew phrase, l’dor vador, literally means “from generation to generation,” and is most often applied to the handing down of leadership from one generation to the next. If a person is lucky enough to be present at a bar or bat mitzvah, they likely will see the symbolic “handing of the Torah” from one generation to the next. It is an ideal. It is a wonderful hope: that the next generation of Jewish leaders will take the skills and talents their mentors have passed onto them, and in turn, nourish and enrich themselves enough to continue this leadership chain as they go through life’s journey.
Saying YES to Youth
by Rosanne Selfon
Over 100 years ago, 156 American women representing 5,000 women in 51 sisterhoods gathered to found the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS), renamed Women of Reform Judaism (WRJ) in 1993.
A New Sound for a New Generation: NFTY’s Music in the 2000s
by Caryn Roman
There was a time when the term “Jewish Rock” might have been considered an oxymoron.
In my own NFTY and camp days in the mid-to-late 90s, most of the music in services and song sessions reflected the Movement’s folk roots and didn’t sound much like what we listened to on the radio or our Sony Discmen. Sure, we all loved Debbie Friedman’s prayer settings and Bob Dylan’s protest songs, but we didn’t have any Jewish music comparable to Green Day or even Dave Matthews. Unlike the generations before us, rabbis and cantors playing guitar and singing ‘camp’ songs on the bimah were common occurrences. But just like our predecessors, we sought a new sound around which to build a Jewish youth community.
Twenty Becomes One: Seeing Our Congregations as Family, Especially During Hardship
In the fall of 2008, I was the executive director of a 1,000-household synagogue. We had recently finished a major sanctuary renovation, and our membership numbers were on an encouraging upward trend. Our finances were sound, and we had big plans for the year ahead. The new president of our board was writing her first Yom Kippur appeal as I was busily taking care of the last details of our High Holiday preparation.
Then, two weeks before Rosh HaShanah, Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, after which the bank loan market crashed. Banks large and small suffered huge losses, and during the first week of October, the stock market experienced a sharp downward spiral. That week was was Kol Nidre, and our president ascended the bimah (pulpit) to deliver an appeal for donations on the very day on which many in our congregation had lost a significant amount of money – money they were counting on for homes, for retirement, for food.
The president delivered a masterful appeal that evening, and even on that worst of economic days, we collected Yom Kippur appeal monies in excess of what we had collected the previous year. The next day, on Yom Kippur, the stock market fell 700 points, sending the entire country into a recession that, some would argue, continues to this day.
Repentance and Forgiveness More Than One Day a Year
Our tradition teaches us that on Rosh Hashanah, each person is judged based on their actions of the past year and on Yom Kippur, after an opportunity to reflect and repent, that judgment is sealed for the next year. Therefore, during the High Holiday season, Jews reflect on the year that has passed, confess our sins, make amends with each other and seek forgiveness from God. Our Yom Kippur service will focus on the themes of our personal repentance, confessions and sins. Yet this Yom Kippur, while we pray, fast and seek to be inscribed in the book of life, I encourage you to also reflect on our criminal justice system and the ways in which we allow those convicted of crimes to reflect, repent, and seek forgiveness.
Just What is ISIS, and Why Should We Care?
Like many self-styled foreign policy wonks, I’ve found myself incredibly disturbed by the extremist group known as ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. There’s no shortage of news these days on ISIS, from what we should call them to what life is like under ISIS control to why the U.S. should attack them to why the U.S. shouldn’t attack them to wondering whether all of this is legal.
Our Decades-Long Fight for LGBT Equality
This week marks the beginning of LGBT History month, dedicated to celebrating the history of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals and the LGBT Equal Rights Movement. Although the LGBT Equality Movement’s most significant victories have occurred in the past decade and a half (sodomy laws which criminalized same-sex sexual conduct were only declared unconstitutional in 2003!), the Reform Movement has a long and rich history of fighting for LGBT Equality. In fact, our Movement was advocating for LGBT equality long before it became a mainstream equality movement.
Channeling Moral Outrage Into Action To End Domestic Violence
If you’ve turned on the television or even glanced at a newspaper over the past several weeks, you’ve likely seen coverage of Ray Rice, the Baltimore Ravens running back who punched his then-fiancée Janay in an elevator. The renewed conversation about Rice’s actions and about the NFL’s reaction is a disheartening, if timely introduction to Domestic Violence Awareness Month, which we observe in October to boost anti-violence efforts and to draw critical attention to a problem far too often swept under the rug.
With greater public attention being paid to incidences of sexual violence and violence against women – in the NFL and on college campuses are two examples that come to mind first – what can we learn about how our culture at large understands domestic violence? It echoes harmful myths that, until not so long ago, relegated domestic violence to the private sphere: domestic violence was a personal, private matter between spouses rather than an issue of national concern for gender equality and fundamental respect for all people. Beginning the 1980s, advocates against domestic violence were able to bring the issue to national attention for the first time, initiating cultural shift that eventually brought about passage of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), which for the first time made domestic and sexual violence a crime under federal law.
Join Our Rabbis and Take Action on Critical Deportation Case
By Rabbi Peter Berg
The New Year has given us a new chance to promote justice throughout the world, and a new chance to help in the holy work being done by Rabbis Organizing Rabbis (ROR), who have been hard at work to save a father from deportation. This new year, start off 5775 justly by taking 10 minutes to show that Reform rabbis stand up for justice.
I am the Walrus
There are 35,000 walruses stranded right now on the beaches of northwest Alaska. Walruses, which rely on sea ice to rest periodically, are having a harder and harder time finding it in the Bering Sea due to ice sheets melting from rising global temperatures. Scientists, including those at the Walrus Research Center in Anchorage Alaska, have serious concerns over whether walruses will be able to adapt to shrinking sea ice levels. They may very well become one of the wide array of species that we can expect to go extinct as climate disruption ravages our planet.