RJ Blog

by Rabbi Carole B. Balin, Ph.D. This year marks a double simcha for American Jews. It is the 40th anniversary of the ordination of the first woman rabbi and the 90th anniversary of the first girl to become a bat mitzvah during a worship service. I wonder whether Judith Kaplan – who pioneered the bat mitzvah at her father Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan’s synagogue in 1922, two years after women got the vote – could have imagined that the President of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion would ordain Sally Priesand 50 years later? Could the young Judith have dreamed that, [...]

We’ve been talking about the Campaign for Youth Engagement since the URJ’s 71st Biennial Convention last December. In the four and a half months since, we’re been working on hammering out the details of this exciting and important campaign, and we want to be sure we’re communicating those details effectively along the way. So what is it? Quite simply, the Campaign for Youth Engagement is a focused, strategic effort to leverage the full strength and talent of every corner of the Reform Movement to engage and retain the majority of our youth by the year 2020. Here are a few [...]

by Melissa Stoller I started planting the seeds of an intergenerational visit to Israel several years before my oldest daughter, Zoe, became a bat mitzvah. By the time I finished, my husband and I and our three girls, Zoe (13), Jessie (10), and Madeleine (4), together with my mother and in-laws, all were on board for our first trip to Israel, a special post-bat mitzvah journey to make connections in our family and to connect us, both spiritually and physically, to the land that we had read about and studied for years.

In this week’s Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh, Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the URJ’s Senior Vice President, lays out the ideas behind the Reform Movement’s new Campaign for Youth Engagement, a major effort to bring young Jews (back) into the fold. [Rabbi Pesner] said 80 percent of the Reform Jewish b’nai mitzva fall away from Jewish life by the eighth grade. “The crisis is most of those kids will disappear by 12th grade, and they will bring their families out the exit [of the synagogue],” Pesner told the Chronicle in an exclusive interview. “So somehow the bar and bat mitzva has become [...]

So What Is Prayer? It doesn’t have to be services or words, though it can be both. It can be a feeling that God is present. It doesn’t have to include asking for anything. It can be just awe or wonder, or a wave of affection breaking over you. It can be like plugging into an electric current. It can change while you’re praying. It can be surprise. It can be… Fill in the rest from your own experience. — Rabbi Lionel Blue and Rabbi Jonathan Magonet On Monday, I taught a lesson on tefilah to the students in our [...]

by Dana Rosenbloom, M.S. Ed. We ask children approaching this milestone to consider their pasts: past actions, past decisions, past choices. We ask that they use these experiences to inform the lives they will lead going forward, as they become b’nai mitzvah and are responsible for their actions. So too does Early Childhood Educators of Reform Judaism, as we enter our 13th year. We are truly coming of age and solidifying our identity. Launched by the thought provoking text from Rabbi Meir, “Do not look at the jug, but what is in it” the board of the Early Childhood Educators [...]

by Stuart Goldsmith The time:  Saturday morning March 4, 1961 The place:  An orthodox congregation in Washington Heights, New York This was the culmination of a wonderful, hectic family week.  On Wednesday, my parents celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary.  Yesterday my dad turned 50 and today it was my turn.  There I was, a 13 year old standing on the bimah with a complexion of various shades of green chanting the brachot and the required three verses of parashat Ki Tissa, followed by the third longest Haftorahin the liturgy -  all 39 verses.  It was my bar mitzvah.  After services [...]

After I posted my first entry, a reader asked if the continued process of grieving for Mitch would form the substance of this blog. I reminded of my intention to post about my personal spiritual journey and contemplations. And though losing Mitch has been for the past year the defining reality of my/my family’s life, I am grateful to be able to share a more recent, similarly defining moment in that journey. This weekend, our youngest son, Nate, celebrated becoming Bar Mitzvah. To paraphrase Garrison Keillor, I have often said when asked, “We have three children, all of whom are [...]

by Paula Krone and Michael Faber Like most parents, from the time we gave birth to our son, we had many hopes and dreams for him. We wanted him to have a good education, have friends and grow up to live a happy and prosperous life. We also had dreams of our child being brought up in the Jewish religion, and we hoped our child would embrace all that Judaism has to offer. Of course, we had hoped that he would pass some part of ourselves, including our Jewish heritage, to his children. It wasn’t long after Benjamin Avi was [...]

I received a message recently about a parent of a child with special needs.  It seems that this parent was unsure that the special needs child could ever become a Bar Mitzvah.  Here’s my response to the parent: Recently, Cantor Doug Cotler and I officiated at two different B’nai Mitzvah services of children with special needs. In each case, the parents were sure that their child would never read from Torah, lead the service or become a Bar Mitzvah. Like the few dozen other such families who thought the same, they were overwhelmed and blown away when their child led [...]