RJ Blog

There’s always a lot to get done to prepare for the holiday of Pesach. Not only do we have to get our homes ready for the week of leaven-free dining, there’s an important spiritual aspect to preparing ourselves for the experience of the Exodus. Luckily, there are a couple of weeks prior to Passover in which to get ready!

by Brett Lubarsky(Originally published in Brett’s Blog and NFTY Convention Live!) Today was the traditional “catch-up on all the sleep I missed” day upon returning home from an amazing and reJEWvinating five days in Dallas for NFTY Convention and Youth Workers Conference. Here are just a few of the thoughts that have been on my mind: The NFTY and URJ Staff who helped make everything happen this week deserve to be commended for successfully incorporating some incredible technology into the mainstream programming for participants and staff alike. From text-based surveys to Visual T’filah, cell phones were used as tools to enhance programming and [...]

by Natalie MillerURJ Congregational Technology Specialist The Union is currently accepting submissions for The URJ Techies, a social media and technology contest set up to recognize member congregations that are successfully utilizing and embracing social networks and technology. It will also inspire others to seek innovative ways to enrich their communities by engaging members online. Social networking and technology are extremely important tools to increase awareness about the work congregations do within a community. These tools can help leaders connect with members outside congregation walls and can create an online community that can supplement and enrich the offline community, offering [...]

by JanetheWriter(Also published on JanetheWriter Writes) Rather than bore you with details about food and beverage fiascos at the Union’s recent Biennial convention in Toronto, let me tell you about the other side — the hugs, the smiles, the reconnects and the new friends who previously existed only on Facebook and in cyberspace. A few in particular come to mind: Early on, I met Rachel Turry Roth, managing director of the American Conference of Cantors in Chicago. We’d had numerous email and Facebook exchanges in recent months, but hadn’t ever met face-to-face. That happened on Sunday (or was it Monday?) [...]

by Rabbi Eric Yoffie Michael Jackson was a musician of immense talent and arguably the greatest Pop singer of our era. He reinvented pop music and produced the world’s bestselling album. He was also a man of stupendous wealth who, by his own admission, used his celebrity to entice children to visit his estate and share a bed with him. While he was never convicted of a crime, his trial for child abuse and its aftermath revealed a pattern of utterly reprehensible conduct toward his own children and the children of others entrusted to his care. In our celebrity-obsessed age, [...]

by Kate BigamPress Secretary at the Religious Action Center(First posted on RACblog) Thirty young Jewish adults took off for New Orleans, Louisiana this morning to help rebuild the city’s 9th Ward, still damaged from 2005′s Hurricane Katrina. These volunteers are participating in the Union for Reform Judaism’s Tzevet Mitzvot: Young Adult Mitzvah Corps program, which combines five days of social action, worship and fun in the Big Easy.

By Larry Kaufman Among my meshugassen (which I’ll euphemistically translate as idiosyncrasies) is the tendency to “count the house,” and to analyze the count. One day I decided to apply my meshugass to this blog. The statistics that follow represent a snapshot in time, but my sues is that doing the same exercise today – or tomorrow – would yield similar results. How many people do you suppose are involved in the discussion here at www.rj.org – as posters, as commenters, or both? Take a minute to make your own guesstimate, before you proceed to my findings.