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Jewish Wedding Practices: Surprising Origins and Reform Innovations
Reform Judaism has changed some aspects of the wedding ceremony, in great part to reflect the equal status of women.
Self-Inflicted Violence: What it is and How to Help
One of the most common reasons for self destructive and self injuring behavior is to get relief from intense and unsettling emotions.
Interfaith Families: Reform Judaism Sees You, Welcomes You, is You!
Reform Judaism has made a commitment to welcoming interfaith couples and their children into congregations, and offering support and education for their extended families.
Origins of the B'nai Mitzvah (Bar/Bat Mitzvah)
The bar mitzvah ceremony was developed as a public recognition of a legal and religious status, attained with or without the ritual.
The Tranquil Home
In the introduction to his Laws of Marriage, the great medieval codifier R. Yehiel b. Asher compiled a series of talmudic and midrashic teachings relating to the value of marriage. He concluded: "Any man who lives without a wife lives without goodness and without blessing . . .
The Jewish Way of Divorce
Judaism has always viewed marriage and the rearing of children as essential for personal gratification, the fulfillment of one's communal obligations, and as a religious obligation. Still, Jewish tradition entertained no illusions about the possibility of strife within marriage. Therefore, divorce, while not encouraged, is not deemed sinful or forbidden, but rather a sad, occasionally necessary solution to an unhappy marital relationship.
Mourning a Marriage
" When a man divorces the wife of his youth, even the altar of God sheds tears." (Gittin 90b)
Tali Tadmor Stages "Ella Fitzgeraldberg"
Recounting the woman’s glamorous days of old, "Ella Fitzgeraldberg" examines some of the dilemmas inherent in one of the 20th century’s more interesting eras in Jewish life: the cultural assimilation of pre- and post-war American Jewry.