RJ Blog

Israel’s Religious Services Ministry announced today that state-employed neighborhood rabbis may be phased out and funds would be given to communities for rabbis of their own choice, including non-Orthodox rabbis. The ministry plan also calls for the designation of the term “rabbi” to be used by the government to refer to non-Orthodox and female religious leaders. Learn more from JTA. Upon learning of this news, URJ President Rabbi Rick Jacobs made the following statement: “We are reading this decision with great interest and are encouraged by the conclusion that the current system is broken. We believe that there should be [...]

Still not clear on the details of the ongoing dispute regarding women’s prayer at the Western Wall in Israel? Been following along so closely that you want to know even more about it? Last week, Rabbi Jacqueline Koch Ellenson, director of the Women’s Rabbinic Network, was interviewed by Timothy Michael Law, founder, publisher, and editor-in-chief of The Marginalia Review of Books. The Women’s Rabbinic Network is the international support and advocacy organization for women in the Reform rabbinate. Just before Rabbi Ellenson’s scheduled appearance with Marginalia, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that recent detention of members of Women of the Wall members [...]

Leaders of the Reform Movement issued a statement today about a recent ruling from the Jerusalem District Court that determined that recent detention of Women of the Wall members for their activities at the Western Wall was unjustified and for denying local police requests for restraining orders against the group. Haaretz has more on the ruling and its implications. URJ President Rabbi Rick Jacobs said of the ruling, We were especially pleased to hear the judge state that the Law of Holy Places, which gives visitors to the Kotel the opportunity to pray according to ‘local custom,’ does not mandate [...]

by Rob Goldsmith The Reform congregation in Dothan, AL, is deeply concerned about the continued verbal and physical harassment experienced by Israel’s Women of the Wall, most recently Anat Hoffman’s arrest on October 16th. Anat was arrested while conducting a Rosh Chodesh prayer service at The Wall, with 250+ women, in honor of Hadassah’s centennial birthday. Anat was handcuffed, denied contact with her attorney, strip searched, and ordered to lay on a bare floor in a tiny jail cell. On the occasion of Rosh Chodesh November 15th, men and women of Dothan’s Temple Emanu-El prayed together, wearing tallit, reciting the [...]

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 Menachem Z. Rosensaft Israel’s Declaration of Independence provides that “The State of Israel…will uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex” and “will guarantee full freedom of conscience, worship, education and culture.” Last week, officials of the Jerusalem police violated Anat Hoffman’s most basic civil and human rights by subjecting her to crude misogynistic and demeaning mistreatment that crossed all boundaries of decency. Hoffman is the executive director of the Reform Movement’s Israel Religious Action Center. On Tuesday evening, October 16, she was arrested for leading a group of [...]

Last Tuesday I was arrested when I took a group of over two hundred women to the Western Wall to pray together in the women’s section. I was arrested for disturbing the peace and endangering the public good by wearing my tallit and saying the Shema out loud. It was a traumatic experience. I was pulled along the ground by my wrists, strip-searched, shackled by the hands and feet and left to sleep on the floor of a jail cell with nothing to keep me warm but my tallit. The treatment I received was designed to make women scared of [...]

Add your name to a petition urging the Israeli government to ensure that oversight of the Kotel includes a range of Jewish views and voices and protects gender equality. The Western Wall in Jerusalem, in the words and Yiddish accent of Issac Bashevis Singer, is “like any other Veilin Vall (wailing wall).” It is the only distinct and concrete holy place for the Jewish people. The site of the Western Wall is run by an ultra-Orthodox group of bureaucrats and rabbis who are dictating the life choices of all who enter. Pope Benedict XVI was lucky in 2009, to be allowed [...]

Two nights ago, police intervened as women, including Anat Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and chairwoman of Women of the Wall, prayed at the Western Wall in celebration of the beginning of the Jewish month of Cheshvan and the 100th anniversary of Hadassah. Hoffman was arrested and charged with the “offense” of wearing a prayer shawl and disturbing public order. She vividly described excessive use of force and mistreatment by the police. Two other women were detained the next morning. Leaders of the Reform Jewish Movement have spoken to Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to express great [...]

Editor’s Note: The following post was issued as a press release this afternoon following the news today that Rabbi Miri Gold would become the first non-orthodox Rabbi to be paid by the State of Israel. Israeli Reform Rabbi Miri Gold will be the first non-orthodox Rabbi to be paid by the State of Israel, under a ruling today by the Israel Attorney General. Rabbi Gold, who first heard the news on the radio said, “This is a big step for religious pluralism and democracy in Israel.  Israeli Jews want religious alternatives and with this decision the State is starting to [...]

We won! The attorney general has just released his consent to recognize Rabbi Miri Gold as the first Rabbi of a non-Orthodox congregation in the history of the Israel. Drink L’Chayim. Congratulate every rabbi in our movement. Sound the shofar. Say She’hecheyanu. We won recognition for the first Reform rabbi in Israel. Over seven years you have played an invaluable part in this struggle. You stood with Miri every step of the way and we would not have reached this joyous day without your pressure from all corners of the Jewish world. The Israeli Attorney General accepted the request of [...]

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 Marc Rosenstein(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary) Order Now! No thunder sounded. No lightening struck. -Judith Kaplan Eisenstein, recalling her bat mitzvah, March 18, 1922 – the first bat mitzvah in North America at which a girl read from the Torah. She was the daughter of Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan, founder of Reconstructionism. Shorashim was founded in the early 80s by a group of young couples with roots in NFTY, USY, Ramah, and Young Judea, with a few returning Israelis who had discovered liberal Judaism while living abroad.  By the time we arrived in 1990, it [...]

By Daphne Lazar-Price(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah) On the Shabbat before Purim, many congregations will read Parshat Zachor (Deuteronomy 25:17 – 20). In the three short verses of this parshah, we are commanded not once but twice to recall a dangerous attack on our people: we are told to remember (Zachor) what the Amalekites did to the Israelites after they left Egypt and not to forget (Lo Tishkach). Further, we are commanded to blot out the memory of Amalek. What was the sin of the Amalekites? They attacked the Israelites as they fled Egypt, specifically targeting the weak [...]