RJ Blog

As the frigid temperatures that have gripped much of thecountry this winter ebb into the warmth of spring, it is finally time to getexcited about Passover. For me, every year Passover is about an Exodus: from my home to what my parents have long thought to be the Promised Land – LosAngeles. It is also about strict family tradition. For millions of Jews in North America, Passover is “the”home holiday.  We all eat the same foods, plus or minus something new fromsome magazine. We stuff our familyand friends into a space built for about a third of the people who [...]

by Jonathan Lam, Sean Thibault, Scott Hertz, and Jill PeltzmanURJ web team members Several of us on the URJ web team joined a few thousand other like-minded geeks in Washington, DC recently to attend NTC, the Nonprofit Technology Conference held by the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN). For three days, we immersed ourselves in learning about the myriad of ways that technology can be used for doing good. We were inspired by the conference itself, but an added benefit was spending an intensive amount of time with each other away from the office, networking, talking and thinking about what we do, [...]

by Brett Lubarsky(Originally published in Brett’s Blog and NFTY Convention Live!) Today was the traditional “catch-up on all the sleep I missed” day upon returning home from an amazing and reJEWvinating five days in Dallas for NFTY Convention and Youth Workers Conference. Here are just a few of the thoughts that have been on my mind: The NFTY and URJ Staff who helped make everything happen this week deserve to be commended for successfully incorporating some incredible technology into the mainstream programming for participants and staff alike. From text-based surveys to Visual T’filah, cell phones were used as tools to enhance programming and [...]

by Natalie MillerURJ Congregational Technology Specialist The Union is currently accepting submissions for The URJ Techies, a social media and technology contest set up to recognize member congregations that are successfully utilizing and embracing social networks and technology. It will also inspire others to seek innovative ways to enrich their communities by engaging members online. Social networking and technology are extremely important tools to increase awareness about the work congregations do within a community. These tools can help leaders connect with members outside congregation walls and can create an online community that can supplement and enrich the offline community, offering [...]

by Rabbi Paul KipnesOriginally posted on Or Am I? This weekend, though consumed with the celebration of life – a wedding, two B’nai Mitzvah, the bris of a baby – my heart was breaking as I tried to comprehend the deadly harassment that led to the death of Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi. His roommate taped a private sexual encounter, publicized it on Twitter and put the video up on the internet. Humiliated and bullied, Tyler jumped off a bridge to his death. I am horrified and embarrassed that such acts continue to happen. It is enough that our young [...]

by Amy R. Perlin(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah) “If every Jew does whatever s/he wants, wherever s/he wants, Judaism won’t survive another generation.” You can imagine this as a Twitter entry (a tweet), the beginning of a scholarly article on Jewish survival, as an ad on the side of a bus in Jerusalem, or as the opening line to a High Holy Day sermon given by your rabbi a month from now. Yet, the idea is nothing new. For as long as there have been Jews, we have struggled with personal practice (or [...]

Proving that social media really is changing the way we interact, advocate and raise awareness, the United Nations and the Anne Frank Center USA are honoring Yom Ha’Shoah in a very new way – using Twitter. Last week, the two organizations launched a Twitter campaign for students in memory of Anne Frank, one of the Holocaust’s most recognized victims, whose compelling World War II diary is still widely used as reading and educational material. The thrust of the campaign is this: Students are asked to “travel back in time” and write to Anne through 140-character tweets, essentially pretending to communicate [...]

by JanetheWriter A little over a year ago, I was big into Twitter and wrote this post about what it is and some of the folks using it in the Jewish blogosphere. But then graduate school, the Union’s Biennial convention and a few other things got in the way, and sadly, I gave up tweeting. This week, I came back. No, not to tweet myself, but to follow those who started to Tweet the Exodus (@TweetTheExodus). Yes, you heard me correctly: “Tweet the Exodus.” An incredibly creative group of rabbis has convened a complete cast of characters in the “tweetosphere” and [...]

by Mark PelavinAssociate Director, RAC(Originally posted on RACblog) Here’s an interesting idea. 31 of them actually. Daniel Sieradski, who might best be thought as a Jewish communal techo-provacteur (is that OK Daniel?), has a fascinating project going on this month. Over at 31 Days, 31 Ideas he is posting a new idea for the Jewish community every day for the month of January. In his explanation of the project, he notes that What I hope to achieve in doing so is to attract collaborators, executors, funders and general community support for these ideas so that wherever interest lies, we, collectively, [...]

Rabbi Phyllis Sommer, who blogs at Ima on (and off) the Bima, was a presenter today at the URJ Biennial learning session “Intro to Social Media: Facebook and Flickrand Twitter, Oh My.” This post is reprinted with permission. I’m in the Toronto airport waiting for the flight that will carry me home to Chicago. I’ve been, for the last two days, a participant in the Union for Reform Judaism’s Biennial convention. Every other year, Reform Jews get together to celebrate Jewish life, to learn from each other and share music, worship, and companionship. It’s a really wonderrful experience, with some [...]

by dcc I like to use Twitter. I tweet about what is going in my life, a funny joke, some political ranting and even about dumplings. But Twitter often is a bit over whelming and has some serious limitations. Outside of the brevity of the commentary, tweeting often leaves me feeling somewhat removed from what it is that I am either tweeting about or reading about via Twitter. It creates a disconnect between what is actually happening and figuring out how to truncate the story into short 140 character descriptions. Recently I have been reading and hearing more about trying [...]

by JanetheWriterA while back, several of my 20- and 30-something colleagues (who also happen to be friends) urged me to sign onto Facebook. And so I did. Today I’m a “Facebook monster,” with more than 200 “friends,” some of whom I haven’t seen since high school or college, and have reconnected with only in recent weeks.  One, a member of a large family that lived up the street and went to the local Catholic school for many of our growing-up years, now lives in the Poconos.  In an email last week, she told me:  “I read your blog and felt [...]