Seeing, Learning, Doing: My First Few Months as the URJ's Presidential Fellow
I don’t have all of the answers about how to accomplish the challenge of engaging Jewish millennials, but here are three of the insights I have gained from simple conversations with them.
Persecuted at Home, Uighur Muslims Share Chinese Cuisine in Diaspora
Tensions have long persisted between China’s government and the Uighur Muslim population concentrated in China’s western Xinjiang region. Uighur Muslims are ethnically Turkic, practice Islam, and have close cultural ties to Central Asia.
Preparing for a Jewish Funeral: A Checklist
Finding Holiness at the Zoo
If you've ever looked directly at the light emanating from a prism, you know that it is nearly blinding.
Hakol Havel, "Everything Is Breath"
Focal Point
- What has been will be, what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun.
Gifts to Israel: 19 New Citizens Celebrate Yom HaAtzmaut
There's nothing like experiencing something for the very first time. Swimming the length of the Kinneret. A first love. The first whiff of this year's jasmine blossoms in Jerusalem. Taking your very first bite of my homemade bread pudding (trust me).
9 Principles to Help You Engage Jewish Youth
These nine guiding principles to engage youth were developed by numerous congregations and synagogue professionals in our collaborative work with them. We share them with congregations and use them to inform our own ongoing efforts to develop new camps and year-round programming.
Another Miriam Worth Remembering
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States this year, Rabbi Carole Balin, Ph.D., is sharing eight chapters of an "alternative Book of Numbers” designed to tell the stories of Jewish women who combined civic engagement with Jewish values in a 40-year struggle “in the wilderness” to pass the 19th Amendment.
Why I Am a Zionist for Black Lives Matter
As an Israeli citizen and white citizen of the United States, I believe that Black Lives Matter – and that no American of good conscience can simply opt out of engaging with the pervasive issue of racism in America. If we will it, it is no dream.
The Season of December Decisions
As we move into the season of "December Decisions", there are many things that we in the Jewish community can do to help our Christian friends, family, neighbors and co-workers celebrate Christmas.