RJ Blog

by Liz Piper-Goldberg This week, I had the honor of attending the General Assembly meeting of the Jewish Federations of North America as a Wexner Graduate Fellow. My fellowship cohort is composed of 20 Jewish leaders from different denominations and career paths. We are rabbinical students attending Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and non-denominational schools; we are Jewish professionals and Ph.D students. We reflect the great diversity and complexity of the Jewish community today. The Federation “GA,” as it’s commonly called, provided a unique backdrop to highlight the pluralistic reality of both my Wexner cohort and the North American Jewish community. As [...]

by Rabbi Marci Bellows Story A: After a long day of work, the woman paid her fare and sat in an empty seat on the bus. As the bus traveled along its route, more and more seats filled up. The bus driver approached the woman and demanded that she move towards the back of the bus so that the people entering the bus could sit. Three passengers near the woman did as they were told and moved back. Yet, this day, the woman was asked, “Why don’t you get up?” She responded. “I don’t think I should have to stand [...]

My colleagues in the Reform Movement reacted harshly to the statement of Israeli Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar that on the High Holidays it would be better for a Jew to pray by himself or herself than with Reform Jews.I understand their furor, but my own response is actually the opposite: I would like to thank Rabbi Amar for helping Israel’s Reform movement and for advancing the cause of religious freedom in the Jewish state.In the first place, he has provided confirmation of what I know but many Jews in the world do not: Reform Judaism is growing and thriving in the State [...]

Ariella Marsden is a hero. This brave 15-year-old girl from the town of Beit Shemesh recently won a landmark court case that shook the ultra-Orthodox world. One day, riding home from school on a public bus, Ariella took a seat in the front of the bus. A few ultra-Orthodox men also boarded the bus and stood next to her. Then the bus driver asked her to move from her seat in the front to the back of the bus where she had to stand for the duration of her journey.  Seeing the sign posted on the bus saying that passengers [...]

by Nechama Namal I’ve never been much of a rebel. Instead, when I feel strongly about something, I do my best to act wisely, sensibly, and sensitively to show my support. I have found that in Israel, opportunities arise frequently for me to advocate for Reform Judaism, social justice, plurality, equality, and respect for all. Today was one of those days to speak my mind without saying a word. My friend Diane (also an olah chadashah who made aliyah with her husband on the same day as my husband and me) had been in touch with the Israel Religious Action [...]

In early March of this year, my husband and I spend two weeks in Israel. Our guide Muki has been a friend for many years and I trust him to recommend learning experiences that will expand my understanding of Israel and Judaism. A week before we left for Israel, he suggested we try a “freedom ride,” a ride on the public bus that travels through Haredi neighborhoods in Jerusalem. These buses, funded by the government and provided for everyone, have been turned into buses with sex-segregated seating, with men in the front and women in the back. Recently, a woman [...]

by Matt Adler I somewhat begrudgingly grabbed my jacket off the seat and allowed the old man to sit down. My momentary inconvenience turned to joy when I heard the man speaking Hebrew on his cell phone. Although I was a bit scared by his ultra-Orthodox garb – the top hat, the beard, the black suit – I tried to put my prejudices aside and practice some Hebrew on my train ride to New York. And so I began with, “Me’eyfo atah?” (“Where are you from?”) And so the conversation continued. It turns out Avraham was from Jerusalem and had [...]

I give up. It is time for me to admit that—with very few exceptions—young men in Israel’s haredi community will not go into Israel’s army. I find it difficult to say this because I have always advocated for political measures to compel their conscription. Their failure to serve is a terrible injustice. Those who give up years of their life to protect Israel from enemies bent on her destruction are infuriated by those who refuse to share this burden. And tragically, this failure to serve is a primary reason why so many non-religious Israelis view Judaism with contempt. If Torah [...]

by Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D. The world is filled with certainties that aren’t – like the myth that religious denominations are dead. We will eventually have three inchoate pools of people, it is said: Orthodox, “Other,” and Unaffiliated. Already Orthodoxy is less a denomination than a way of life rooted in halakhic observance, community consciousness, and synagogue centrality. “Other,” presumably, will feature the very opposite, synagogues as “limited liability communities” that collect dues in exchange for rabbis on call, life-cycle ceremonies, and occasional events like High Holidays. The growth market will be “a pox on both your houses” — [...]

by Rabbi Eric YoffieOriginally posted in The Jerusalem Post When Yaakov Epstein became Chief Rabbi of Haifa in 2052, neither the press nor the public took special notice. True, he was the first Reform rabbi elected to the highest rabbinical position in a major metropolis, but he had already served as Chief Rabbi of Netanya. In fact, six Conservative and four Reform rabbis were then serving as Chief Rabbis of medium-sized Israeli cities. By then, the “Rebellion of 2022″ had been largely forgotten. That was the year when the number of Orthodox men studying rather than working and the number [...]

by Rabbi Eric Yoffie Excerpted from a memo sent by Rabbi Yoffie last Friday, January 21, to the URJ Board of Trustees I have just returned from a brief trip to Israel. While we are accustomed lately to reading grim news from Israel, my experience was the opposite. It was a good week for the Jewish state, and certainly an interesting–although tumultuous–week for me. Four events during my stay were especially encouraging. First, I joined several hundred people for the 25th anniversary celebration of Reform congregation Kol HaNeshama in Jerusalem. A large and successful congregation now developing a second campus, [...]

by Rabbi Eric YoffieOriginally posted on Jpost.com The State of Israel’s most significant long-term problem is not thesecurity situation or the absence of peace. It is not even the loomingthreat posed by a nuclear Iran. More important than any of these mattersis the utter disarray of its educational system. And this for a verysimple reason: none of these other problems can be solved without thesuperior human resources that can be produced only by first-rateschools. Tragically, Israel’s schools are no longer first-rate.   Israel’s education crisis results, in some measure, from thedownturn of the world economy. Israel’s universities are desperatelyshort of funding, and her primary and secondary [...]

by Peter ShapiroRead the review of this book in RJ magazineSee other Significant Jewish Books Homesick: A Novelby Eshkol Nevo If you appreciate the literary style and works of Amos Oz you will enjoy Homesick by Eshkol Nevo. The narrative’s locale is Mevasseret, a suburb of Jerusalem. In 1947 it was abandoned by the Arabs who were fearful of suffering the same fate as the Arabs massacred at Deir Yassin. It was the fall of 1995, Yitzhak Rabin had been assassinated and there were ongoing hostilities in Lebanon. The principal characters all resided in or were in some way connected to [...]

by Larry Kaufman Who would have thought that New Jersey, one of the handful of states that recognizes civil unions and same-sex domestic partnerships, would have made the news twice in just a few days for providing an atmosphere hostile to the LGBT community? The Tyler Clementi suicide has received enough media attention that we need only deplore it here without recapping the details. The more recent flare-up will almost certainly receive less media attention, and thus deserves recounting here, not only for the bad news in the story, but for the good news as well. A week ago, it appears, the [...]