RJ Blog

Aloh Na’aleh-Let’s Get Going to that Better TomorrowURJ Presidency Acceptance Speech as delivered by Rabbi Richard Jacobson June 12, 2011–10 Sivan 5771 Letme begin by expressing my deep gratitude to Peter Weidhorn, Bob Heller,the Presidential Search Committee, and the entire Union for ReformJudaism Board of Trustees. What an exceptional honor and enormousresponsibility you have bestowed upon me.   You have called meto lead this great Union for Reform Judaism and I am honored andhumbled.  Honored by the confidence you have shown in me, and trulyhumbled by the towering examples of those who have served before me: Rabbis Yoffie, Schindler and Eisendrath. [...]

Some of you may know that the URJ, HUC-JIR and the CCAR have been exploring the idea of creating a Reform Jewish Center in New York bringing together all three institutions as well as other constituents of the Reform Movement under one roof. Plans are moving forward to determine the feasibility of creating this Center – evaluating where it could be located, how it would function, and how the three institutions can integrate administratively and programatically to take advantage of their collective strengths. At a recent meeting of the URJ Board, an extensive presentation on the proposed Center was presented [...]

Welcome to our board meeting.  This meeting, as you can seefrom the schedule, is radically different from any board meeting that we haveever held.  We are breaking out of our old patterns and doing things as a boardin different ways.  We are moving ahead on the reorganization of the Union.  Weare spending some time thinking and dreaming about the future of Jewish life. And we are taking on some of the great and troubling issues that we all face, inthe Reform Movement, in Israel, and in the broader community.   With this in mind, I have done some thinking ahead of [...]

Remarks by Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie to the URJ Executive Committee on March 15, 2010 Last week a Reform Movement breakfast was held at the CCAR Convention in San Francisco, cosponsored by the CCAR, HUC-JIR, and the URJ. I was asked to speak about the institutional future of the Reform Movement and about my broad vision of the Jewish future–and to do this in six minutes. What I said was this: I am optimistic about the future of our Movement and its institutions. No institution, of course, is inherently valuable. The Union, the College, the Conference, and the synagogue itself [...]

by Larry Kaufman Twenty-four hours and four meetings after arrival, and the pace is accelerating.  So far, we’ve admitted two congregations to their first membership in the Union, and re-admitted two that had dropped out and realized what they’ve been missing. We’ve also heard reports on the progress of the URJ re-structuring.   But most important, we heard Rabbi Eric Yoffie report to the Board of Trustees on his much-talked about appearance at the J-Street Conference. He called special attention to the valuable role of J-Street as a place where those of us who care deeply about Israel can talk about issues, [...]

By JanetheWriterLast night, a colleague shared with me a newsletter she’d picked up in the lobby of the Pittsburgh hotel where the Union’s North American Board of Trustees is meeting this weekend, the Omni William Penn, a “grande dame” hotel that dates to 1916.  As I read through the article, written in 1991 on the occasion of the hotel’s 75th anniversary and detailing its long and colorful history, I started to make some connections or as might be said in a slightly different context, “to play a little Jewish geography.” As it turns out, while some of these connections may be [...]