Celebrating the Reform Movement's Summer Opportunities
You can have your summer destinations of Nantucket, the Hamptons, or Lake Michigan. I’ll take Kunkletown, Zionsville, and Oconomowoc! Some head to the beaches or the mountains; I head to camp.
More than 14,000 young people are leaving home this summer, immersing themselves in new environments and connecting to Jewish community in a URJ summer program. The midrash tells us that if we can open ourselves up to new experiences, we can discover inner clarity. These young people are discovering themselves – what motivates them, what matters to them, what challenges them. They return home – and to our congregations – with a new sense of identity and purpose.
The Good Book: Writers Reflect on Favorite Bible Passages
The Bible continues to be the best-selling book in history, perhaps because each reader can identify with some aspect of its ancient text. It is this notion that informs the essays of the 24 novelists, poets, scholars, and journalists who answered Andrew Blauner’s call to write an essay centered on a Biblical book or passage with personal meaning to them.
Why Every Depression-Era Jewish Boy Wanted to Be a Boxer
Renowned boxing historian Mike Silver revives the glorious era of boxing, when from the early 1900s to the late 1930s, Jewish fighters were a dominant force with 29 world champions and nearly 200 title contenders. Encyclopedic in scope, the volume is richly illustrated with 255 photos, some of them lost for years.
Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story
Matti Friedman was conscripted into the Israeli Defense Forces at 20, along with 19 other young recruits, and sent to a border outpost in Lebanon called Pumpkin Hill, which he describes as “a forgotten little corner of a forgotten little war.” Israeli casualties of Hezbollah guerilla attacks were code-named “flowers,” hence the title of his new book, Pumpkinflowers A Soldier’s Story (Algonquin Books, 2016).
What Got Jews in the Pews to Sing?
Synagogue music experienced a radical transformation in the late 1960s, as sing-along tunes that originated in youth group and camp settings replaced the earlier performance-oriented style. The duo, Kol B’Seder, made up of Rabbi Daniel Freelander, then a voice major at the Hartt School of Music, and Cantor Jeff Klepper, then a Kutz Camp-trained song leader, helped usher in the new era of Jewish liturgical folk music. Their 1973 setting of “Shalom Rav,” like Debbie Friedman’s “Mi Shebeirach,” have since become so ubiquitous worldwide as to be considered traditional.
I asked Rabbi Freelander, who is now executive director of the World Union for Progressive Judaism, how a small cadre of camp-based singer-songwriters launched a revolution that got Reform Jews singing in the pews.
Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon
The Periodic Table, by Primo Levi
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