RJ Blog

The Jewish month of Elul is the perfect time for this symposium, and not just because  synagogues are opening of their religious school doors to young people and their parents for another year of Jewish learning. Elul is the very season of return. This month, in anticipation of the new year, we pause to recommit ourselves, communally and individually, to the enterprise of Jewish life and learning. So it’s the perfect time not only to imagine the future, but also to examine ways to inspire the next generation to discover joy in Jewish learning. Dr. Charles Edelsberg’s recent essay, characteristically, is [...]

In a drash he wrote a couple of weeks ago, Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth has this to say about B’midbar: B’midbar takes up the story as we left it toward the end of Shemot. The people had journeyed from Egypt to Mount Sinai. There they received the Torah. There they made the Golden Calf. There they were forgiven after Moses’ passionate plea, and there they made the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, inaugurated on the first of Nisan, almost a year after the exodus. Now, one month later, on the [...]

In several days time, we will celebrate Shavuot, which commemorates God’s revelation of Torah at Mount Sinai. As part of our commemoration, we will join together as one community, stand again at Mount Sinai and receive the Torah all over again. In her groundbreaking book, Standing Again at Sinai, published more than 30 years ago, Judith Plaskow calls upon Jewish women to reclaim scripture rather than discard it because of its patriarchal nature. Her inspiring words challenge each and every one of us to stand again at Sinai and reclaim Torah for ourselves—regardless of our gender, sexual orientation, or life experiences that [...]

Next Wednesday, May 23, will be a big day for our family. That night, my wife, Dana Gershon, the outgoing president of The Rashi School’s board of trustees, will be honored at the school’s annual dinner. Dana has been president of the board for two years and, with four daughters, all of whom are Rashi students, we spend a lot of time at 8000 Great Meadow Road in Dedham, where we’re all part of the wonderful kehillah that is Rashi. Needless to say, between meetings, classes, sports, parent-teacher conferences, plays, t’filah, and more, it’s very often where our family hangs [...]

About 200 Jewish activists, rabbis, and communal leaders gathered in New York City for the Jewish Organizing Institute and Network for Justice’s (JOIN for Justice) recent National Summit. At the summit, JOIN for Justice honored the URJ’s Senior Vice President Rabbi Jonah Pesner with the Tekiah Social Justice Award. Rabbi Pesner was honored for his work as a pioneer in the field of Jewish organizing and particularly for founding Just Congregations, the URJ’s groundbreaking community organizing effort. During his 20-year career, he has engaged thousands of synagogue congregants to join together in successful campaigns for health care access, affordable housing, [...]

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 [...]