RJ Blog

by Micah Lapidus Jewish day school sustainability is about more than survival. It’s about maintaining a diverse, vibrant, dynamic, healthy, growing school community. The best way to achieve day school sustainability is by ensuring that we’re fully engaging our human resources.  What does it look like to fully engage our human resources? Here’s a case study. My school, The Alfred and Adele Davis Academy, Atlanta’s Reform Jewish Day School, is a school that loves Jewish music. Jewish singing permeates our school, most noticeably at holiday celebrations and at our weekly Kabbalat Shabbat gatherings. When I came to Davis five years [...]

The entire American Jewish world, it seems, is focused on how to engage or reengage the younger generations of Jews. Foundations are funding, denominations are discussing, and Federations and synagogues are searching for the latest and greatest strategies to engaging these lost generations. Our own Union for Reform Judaism kicked off its Campaign for Youth Engagement, on the theory that unless we engage young people in their early years, we surely will lose them in their later high school years and beyond. While the solution to this contemporary challenge necessarily needs to be multi-pronged and multi-focal, at Congregation Or Ami [...]

Who travels to Miami in the coldest, rainiest week that Florida has seen this winter? I do. My excuse? I was one of 40 or so composers whose pieces (you can listen to mine here) were selected for presentation at the Fifth International Festival held by Shalshelet, the Foundation for New Jewish Liturgical Music – and I was one of only a few composers there who are not professional musicians. Needless to say, it was humbling to be included in such lofty company. As part of the festival, I got to sing in ensembles and perform the works of other [...]

by Cantor Rosalie Boxt Man, I’ve been talking a lot. Hours and hours! More than usual, even (In grade school, I was called Ms. Butt-insky for chatting so much.) I don’t love talking on the phone and do not keep up by phone with as many friends as I should, but in the past three weeks, I’ve had a dozen or more hours of conversations, and all about the same thing: prayer and worship. In all aspects of my life these days, I’m talking to people about what makes “good worship” – at a cantors’ convention, at Reform Movement events, [...]

My teenage son recently attended NFTY Convention in Los Angeles and one of his text messages home told us he wanted to re-string mom’s guitar. Looking at the video from the convention, it is evident why the music was so inspiring. Teens were playing guitar and the Dan Nichols concert looked more exciting than The Boss at Madison Square Garden! This got me thinking about music and what an integral part it is of how we worship and involve our congregants at Temple B’nai Torah: we have a band and a youth, teen, and adult choirs; a congregant plays violin [...]

At home, we sometimes used to struggle to feed balanced meals to our three teenagers. Imagine trying to feed 1,000 as these Jewish teens sat together to for Shabbat dinner. And that was only the beginning. We are gathered at a hotel in Los Angeles for the NFTY Convention, perhaps the largest Jewish teen gathering around. NFTY, of which our synagogue’s kids are third-generation members, has brought together teens from all over the US and Canada (and also, I heard, teens from Israel and a half dozen other countries) for five days of fun, socializing, Jewish learning, energetic music, teen [...]

Recently, Congregation Or Ami sponsored two teens – 10th graders Sophie Barnes and Josh Gellerman – to attend the NFTY NASHIR Songleading Weekend in Seattle, Washington. As Cantor Doug Cotler has made it a priority to nurture new Jewish songleaders, musicians, composers and singers, we were excited to send these musical teens for training. Both Josh and Sophie recently reflected on their experiences. Sophie writes: In early January, I attended a NFTY NASHIR Song leading weekend with about 30 teenagers from all over the country and Canada. We learned all about being a song leader in a Jewish community and [...]

by Cantor Ellen Dreskin Not many of us stop to think about the role of storytelling in our lives. Everything that happens to us is sifted through our own filters, our own history, our own set of circumstances, and settles in our hearts and our brains as a story – our story. If Torah or liturgy or Jewish tales speak to us, it is probably because we feel the truth in these Jewish sources as it intersects with our own experience. How many of us remember our desire to hear the same bedtime stories again and again and again, and [...]

I thought I knew the work of Debbie Friedman.  Debbie, whose second yahrzeit we observed this week, was a beloved and familiar presence at URJ Biennials, in our congregations, and at our camps.  I know that many of the melodies we sing, the songs that, as much as anything, bind us together as a Movement, are Debbie’s.  But last night I attended a moving tribute to her held at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York, and I learned that however large I thought Debbie’s shadow loomed over us, I was not even close. The tribute was not [...]

by Karen Humphrey It was January 9, 2011. I was sitting at my computer, shocked and saddened, as I read the announcement that Debbie Friedman had died.  Like many, I felt as if I’d lost a friend and the world was a little darker. I joined with a virtual multitude that night as I tuned in for a healing-service-turned-memorial that was broadcast online from the JCC in Manhattan. I joined with another virtual multitude just two days later when her funeral was also broadcast online.  My heart ached and I mourned for the passing of someone whom I’d never met, [...]

In this recently posted video from Temple Israel of West Bloomfield, MI, teenager Anna Brooks performs a breathtaking new Shema she wrote herself (with a little help from Deuteronomy, of course). The video was created by members of the Reform congregation’s filmmaking class; some of Anna’s classmates appear in the video along with her. The lyrics go: I won’t tell you, that He loves me, I won’t tell you that He saved my life But I can say as loud and clear, as I can sing from my lips to your ears, that there’s One of our God, in every [...]

Is it the stars in the sky? Or is it these dancing Jews? Well, who cares, baby, I think we’re livin’ in a booth Sukkot began on Sunday evening, so by now, you’ve likely erected a sukkah and eaten a meal or two inside it. But what about dancing inside it, too? This parody by the Ein Prat Fountainheads, set to the tune of Bruno Mars’ “Marry You,” is a fun, peppy Sukkot pick-me-up. And while you’ve got Sukkot on the brain, don’t forget to post a picture of your sukkah to our Facebook page to share with Reform Jews [...]

What is the origin of the Kol Nidre melody?
The melody that stirs the heart of Ashkenazic Jews is of unknown origin, but is part of a body of music known as “MiSinai melodies” that emerged in Germany between the 11th and 15th centuries. “MiSinai” literally means “from Sinai.” Of course, we know that none of these tunes came from anywhere in the Middle East, but the hold they have had on Ashkenazic Jews has made them as venerated as if they “came down from the mountain.”

Every moment of Shabbat, all the way through Havdallah, is special and memorable. On Shabbat, we dress differently, we live on different time, we come together as a community at times that we generally are separated into age groupings. We eat together, pray together, sing together, and dance together with a spirit that is felt most on erev Shabbat. Dressed in white, we welcome the Sabbath bride into our midst with arms open wide. We rejoice in her presence and enjoy the time apart from the rest of the week. In camper reflections over the course of the summer and [...]