A New Moment to Come Together Against Islamophobia
This week, the Jewish community celebrates Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, a holy day that continues through today.* While we in the Jewish community are celebrating a new month, the Muslim community is observing Eid al-Fitr, one of two Muslim festival holidays commemorating the end of the holy month of Ramadan and the beginning of the month of Shawwal.
This confluence of celebrations is bound to happen because both Judaism and Islam follow a lunar calendar. But even the fundamental fact that both faith traditions follow a lunar calendar is an important reminder that we have more in common than what makes us different. The coinciding holidays remind us to celebrate the similarities of our faith traditions, exploring the values, teachings, or practices that unite us.
Marching in Capital Pride as a Reform Jew
Jewish Men's Groups Agree to an Unprecedented Collaboration
Men of Reform Judaism overwhelmingly approved a “memorandum of understanding” between MRJ and the Federation of Jewish Men’s Clubs (FJMC), the umbrella organization of men’s clubs in United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism congregations. Here's what that entails.
We Can Make an Impact for Immigration Reform
In the Machon Kaplan (MK) program, I have received a total crash course in Jewish social justice in Washington, D.C.
How Jewish Communities Can Help One Another After a Suicide
Adolescent suicide is on the rise in the United States, and data indicates that suicide is a communicable disease, with one spurring others. No community is exempt: Suicide impacts our congregations, our clergy, and our camps.
Communal Aid: How to Ensure No One Falls Through the Cracks
When we made aliyah in 1990, arriving at Shorashim, the community was a moshav sheetufi, a commune of 30 families. The economy was similar to a kibbutz – all salaries, whether from communal businesses or from work “outside,” went to the common bank account; each family received a house to live in and a monthly allowance based on family size. But not anymore.
Why Shabbat Is the Opposite of Busy, and Five Ways to Get in on It
"Busy." It’s a word that rolls off my tongue with such ease that it scares me. Being busy – overscheduled and overcommitted while deeply resenting this state of being – takes a great toll on my physical, psychological, and spiritual wellness. And I'm not alone. Busy has become emblematic of success in our 21st-century society -- and yet, more than ever, people are exhausted, burned out, and desperately seeking refuge from their everyday existence.
Red and Blue and White: Being an American and a Jew
I know from conversations I have had with Israelis, they find it difficult, if not impossible, to understand how Jews can feel so at home, so safe, so self-assured in the United States. For so many of our co-religionists—those who were forced to flee from oppressive regimes in the former Soviet Union, or Ethiopia, or those whose parents and grandparents fled from or grew up in the ashes of state-sanctioned hatred—they cannot possibly understand how we can live so calmly and unafraid in this nation. They can’t quite understand what it means to be an American and a Jew.
7 Jewish Books to Tackle This Summer
Whether you're lucky enough to be lazing on a beach or packed in like a pickled herring on a subway car, take some time to retreat into a good, Jewishy book. Here are seven fresh reads on the lighter side — because it’s too hot out there to get too heavy.
Jewish, Asian, American: Welcoming a New Demographic
As a married couple researching families like ours, we shaour new book shares red our findings about how households that combine Jewish and Asian traditions seem to have vibrant religious, cultural, and intellectual Judaism within them, even when both parents may not be Jewish.