Who Should Teach About Hanukkah and What Should They Be Teaching?
Now that my daughter is in preschool, I've come to realize that hearing about cultural and religious practices directly from the practitioners only emphasizes our otherness.
How Religious Diversity Can Strengthen Your Community
With the winter holidays approaching, many Jewish parents – in our community and others – face the annual task of reminding our children’s teachers that not all students celebrate Christmas.
How and Why I Became a Freedom Rider - And What Happened When I Did
In 1961, I asked my rabbi if he thought I should join the Freedom Riders, who challenged segregated seating in the south. He said, “If I were in your shoes, I would go.”
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.
8 Ideas for Celebrating Hanukkah with Teens
A Hanukkah Tradition From My Christian Mother-in-Law
Sometimes we create our own traditions, sometimes we carry on a tradition we inherit, and sometimes a tradition can come from unexpected places.
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.