Comedy Helped My Catholic Family Embrace its Jewish Secret
I was born in 1961, baptized, confirmed and given First Communion. But when I was 9, my father began telling me bedtime stories about his narrow escape from the Nazis in Vienna, his entire family murdered – how my maternal grandmother was assassinated in my mother’s childhood home in Bremen, Germany, on Kristallnacht and how, by a miracle, my mother survived.
Where We Find the Best Stress Relief for Teens
Teens today are coming of age at a time of intense competition. The pressures they feel to be successful at school, in sports, in pursuit of their passions, in their social lives and in romantic relationships, as daughters and sons, and as leaders – are at an all-time high.
Kehilat Shanghai: A Vital Reform Jewish Presence from China to North America
Singer/songwriter Rabbi Larry Milder says it best: “Wherever you go there’s always someone Jewish!” I had no idea how right he is.
The Sound of Shofar: Leading Us to Revelation and Freedom
Count off seven sabbath years — seven times seven years — so that the seven sabbath years amount to a period of forty-nine years. Then have the trumpet sounded everywhere on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the Day of Atonement sound the trumpet throughout your land. Consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you; each of you is to return to your family property and to your own clan. (Leviticus 25:8-10)
In this week's portion, the Jubilee year is established. Called yovel, our parashah explains how every forty-nine years — seven weeks of seven years — in the seventh month, on Yom Kippur, the shofar of freedom is to be sounded throughout the land for all its inhabitants. This iconic verse to proclaim freedom throughout the land is inscribed on the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia.
Is Time Ours or Is It God's?
In Parashat Emor, the verses in Leviticus 23:1-44 name and describe the sacred times of the Jewish calendar: Shabbat, Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, and the Pilgrimage Festivals of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. Time becomes a holy thing, and the "normalcy" of time — of one day being no different than any other — is forever differentiated by the weekly Sabbath and by these special festive days.
Reflecting, Relating and Reforming to Foster Racial Justice in our Country
The Reform Movement’s Racial Justice Campaign starts with ourselves, then turns to the partners and coalitions in our community, and then turns to the systems and structures that govern our society.
Teaching Children about Respect (Kavod)
How I Connected with My Jewish Identity and Became a Better Temple President
My time at the URJ Scheidt Seminar proved useful not only for the validation and nuts-and-bolts advice so necessary to a new congregational president, but also, to my surprise, in connecting aspects of my life, my Jewish identity, and my parents’ tragic histories.
How I Follow the Maccabees' Lead at Hanukkah
What could be a more fitting commemoration of Hanukkah than promoting dialogue about the value of respecting the boundary between religious practice and public life?