RJ Blog

I recently had occasion to extract from my bookshelf a well-used and falling apart 1977 paperback edition of Elie Weisel’s Messengers of God.  The book was inscribed as a holiday gift to the teachers of the religious school where my wife has been teaching for decades (not the congregation to which we belong). Then, as it happened, this past Sunday was Teacher Appreciation Day and following lunch (kosher barbecue, with a vegetarian option), each teacher received as a gift a hardbound, beautifully crafted book (list price  $29.95), Kosher Revolution: New Techniques and Great Recipes for Unlimited Kosher Cooking, by Geila [...]

A highlight of my trips to Kiev has been visiting the Progressive synagogue, Congregation Hatikvah. It was hardly necessary for Rabbi Alex Duchovny to explain their hope (Hatikvah): upgrade their small, shabby facilities, to help make Progressive Judaism attractive as a religious force in Ukraine, where Orthodox institutions, even if not Orthodox lifestyles, are dominant. Well, the good news is that today a new, modern, Progressive synagogue in Kiev is in process, thanks to the hopes and dreams of Rabbi Alex and his congregation and the generosity of the Beutel, Klau, and Molloy-Posner families. As Oscar Hammerstein taught, “You gotta [...]

The New York Times published an interesting story this week on late NYC Mayor Ed Koch, a Jew. Apparently the mayor’s rabbi, Arthur Schneier of Park East Synagogue (Modern Orthodox), tried to take His Honor cemetery shopping, but Koch was bound and determined to be buried in Manhattan, and so he will spend eternity in Trinity Cemetery, surrounded by Episcopalians. Although the Times implies that Park East was where the mayor davened – when he davened – it also clearly states that he identified as a Conservative Jew. Not that he lived as one; he neither kept kosher nor was [...]

Our parashah the last week of the secular year was Va-y’chi, whose major components are Jacob’s blessings, first of Manasseh and Ephraim, and then of his own sons, but especially the concerns of both Joseph and Jacob that they not be buried in Egypt. This preoccupation with the place of burial particularly haunted me, because of an unhappy juxtaposition with circumstances in my own life. In recent weeks, my family dedicated a monument at the grave of my 100- year-old mother-in-law, and less than a month later, we were back at the cemetery, selecting a gravesite for my son Aaron, [...]

We have reached the last Shabbat of the secular year, reading the last parashah of the Book of Genesis. To add to that double harbinger of finality, we also read, first of the death of Jacob, and then of the death of Joseph. Ironic, but not unique in Torah, Va-y’chi, “And he lived,” is mostly about death. Chayei Sarah, “the life of Sarah,” also deals not with Sarah’s life but with her death and burial, in the Cave of Machpelah, where Jacob now insists to his sons, he, too, is to be buried. But there is more to Va-y’chi than [...]

I read Herman Wouk’s new novel about Moses in a single sitting, a tribute both to his skill as a storyteller and the absence of any need to give much thought to the substance of the tale. I guess that, deep in his nineties, Wouk is entitled to the privilege of self-indulgence, but certainly The Lawgiver tells us much more about Wouk than it does about Moses, its purported protagonist. Ingeniously constructed as an assemblage of letters, emails, Skype transcripts, and diary entries as Wouk, who makes himself a leading character in his novel, juxtaposes his role as a consultant [...]

What will the Reform Movement remember former URJ board member Dan Schechter for? In the category of “What have you done for me lately?” I suppose it will be for his role in the generation of Mishkan T’filah, the siddur he facilitated from its early idea stage, including securing the research grant from the Lilly Foundation and the Cummings Foundations to fund a three-year research study on Lay Involvement in Liturgical Change that guided the development of the trail-blazing prayer book. I never had the opportunity to discuss Mishkan T’filah with Dan at any length, but I feel sure that he [...]

It was the tradition in the congregation of which I was once president to begin Erev Rosh HaShanah services with a few words of welcome from the congregation’s president. I suspect that the tradition had its origin when one of my long-ago predecessors had a desire for the spotlight. But our great sage, Elijah, the Gaon of Vilna, taught that Judaism does not require that desires be eradicated, rather that they be purified, sanctified. It seemed important to me to call on the principle inherent in the genius of Reform Judaism that we can reject the original self-serving meaning of [...]

Arguably, the most important step the Reformers took in bringing Judaism into modernity was the institution of egalitarianism, never reckoning with the grave damage they were inflicting on our greatest treasure, the Shabbat. By creating the expectation that women would join their husbands at Shabbat services, the focus of celebrating Shabbat moved from the home into the synagogue, including even the lighting of candles.

Confirmation and b’nai mitzvah have been front and center on this blog for the past few weeks, what with Rabbi Carole Balin’s post on the 90th anniversary of the first bat mitzvah, Barry Shainker’s appreciation of the role of confirmation in Reform Judaism, and then the thoughtful comments on Shainker’s post by rabbis Fred Guttman, Andy Koren, and Joel Abraham. As I commented on Rabbi Balin’s post, the early Reformers deserve high marks for the institution of confirmation as a replacement for bar mitzvah, even though over the long haul their innovation did not “take.” Mr. Shainker pointed out confirmation [...]

The URJ’s iWorship listserv is a forum where laity and clergy hold online discussions on matters of worship, ritual, liturgy, and the governance issues and administrivia that pertain to life in the synagogue sanctuary. Truth be told, we sometimes digress and find ourselves cluttering our colleagues’ inboxes with subject matter that is off-topic, until one of our cadre of relevance vigilantes reminds us that this latest subject matter, whatever it may be, is not part of our job description.

I’ve purposely waited until the Haggadot have been put away for the year to comment on issues that emerged in the discussion of the highly touted New American Haggadah (NEH) produced for Pesach 5772 by the wunderkinder editor Jonathan Safran Foer and translator Nathan Englander. I have seen NEH, which is not truly a new Haggadah, but a new presentation of the inherited liturgy; however, I haven’t actually studied it.  The blogosphere analyses and dissections were enough to put me back on my soapbox about translation of classic texts. Leaving aside some “notice me, notice me” eccentricities in Englander’s English [...]

Recent seasonal discussion on the URJ’s iWorship list-serv has centered, naturally, on Passover rituals, and certainly for no other holiday do we give so much ritual attention to food Bob Korngold got the conversation started with his reminiscences of a seder he conducted in Japan when he was in the military, for which the Jewish Welfare Board supplied gefilte fish, matzo, and charoset (plus Haggadahs).  That stimulated Mike Rankin to ask if any other family besides his had a Pesach tradition of serving beet preserves with matzo brei or matzo pancakes, like his great aunt Jennie made, from a recipe she [...]

The first temple, in Jerusalem, was built by King Solomon, after God deemed his father, King David, unworthy of the task. Nonetheless, a dozen member congregations of the Union for Reform Judaism have deemed King David worthy enough to name their temples after him (although none explains on its website the reason for their choice). But among contemporary URJ temples, only one bears the name Solomon. You could readily surmise that the Jews of that congregation wanted to honor the great builder and wise man who is credited with writing Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs.  (Daddy only has [...]