RJ Blog

Since we started reading Vayikra, I’ve been waiting for a chance to argue with my friend and teacher, Rabbi Billy Dreskin. We’ve worked together for years, and we often disagree. But we always learn from each other. His recent d’var torah is a perfect example. Billy is absolutely right in saying that many of us are looking for a closer relationship with God, and that there are only two prayers for closeness in the entire Siddur. But he’s also wrong. This past year, as a result of some difficult times in my life, I’ve started davening two or three mornings [...]

The URJ’s iWorship listserv is a forum where laity and clergy hold online discussions on matters of worship, ritual, liturgy, and the governance issues and administrivia that pertain to life in the synagogue sanctuary. Truth be told, we sometimes digress and find ourselves cluttering our colleagues’ inboxes with subject matter that is off-topic, until one of our cadre of relevance vigilantes reminds us that this latest subject matter, whatever it may be, is not part of our job description.

I am a Jew by choice. And before you ask – both my parents are Jewish. One of my earliest memories is of being with my grandfather, sheltered by his tallit, as he gave the benediction to his congregation on Rosh HaShanah. We celebrated the major Jewish holidays – Rosh HaShanah, Yom Kippur, Chanukah, and Pesach, anything else being an esoteric holdover of a bygone age – mainly with a meal. Occasionally, we even made it to synagogue.

by Rabbi Jordi Schuster Battis My heart is in the east and I in the uttermost west – Yehudah Halevi (c. 1141) In this way all Israel will be turning their hearts towards one place. – Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot 30a In talking about Jewish prayer, we often follow in the steps of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and make a distinction between keva, the fixed and routine aspects of liturgy, and kavanah, the intention and directionality we put behind our words. We can use this dichotomy in thinking about the spaces in which we pray, as well: the keva of the [...]

By The iWorship Listserv Community As the agent provocateur on the iWorship listserv, Larry Kaufman posed a question to his colleagues on Passover Sunday: “How many of you, in this one-day-yom tov Reform movement, participated in a second seder?” He did not ask his usual follow-up question (“If you did, what was your reason, as a Reform Jew, for doing so?), but many of the list-mates supplied reasons anyway, along with a variety of interesting perspectives on seder observance. Though we can’t draw any reliable statistical inferences from the information collected, we’re interpreting the data to suggest three main reasons [...]

by Billy Dreskin A rabbi is invited to spend a weekend at a synagogue he’d served years earlier. Running into Goldberg, who’d been on the synagogue’s board of trustees back then, the rabbi was surprised to learn that his old friend wasn’t spending much time at temple anymore: He asked, “Goldberg, what happened? You used to be there when the doors opened!” “Ach! Years back, the temple went in a direction I didn’t like. Some of us got together and made a new synagogue,” Goldberg replied. “Is that where you worship now?” asked the rabbi. “I’m afraid not. A few [...]

Recent seasonal discussion on the URJ’s iWorship list-serv has centered, naturally, on Passover rituals, and certainly for no other holiday do we give so much ritual attention to food Bob Korngold got the conversation started with his reminiscences of a seder he conducted in Japan when he was in the military, for which the Jewish Welfare Board supplied gefilte fish, matzo, and charoset (plus Haggadahs).  That stimulated Mike Rankin to ask if any other family besides his had a Pesach tradition of serving beet preserves with matzo brei or matzo pancakes, like his great aunt Jennie made, from a recipe she [...]

by Ilana DeBare Earlier this year, I took part in a Shabbat service where women from Temple Sinai wrote personal, modern versions of the traditional prayers. Sinai member Karen Marker wrote a version of the Mi Chamocha (Who is like you?), the prayer where we praise God for parting the Red Sea and taking us to freedom. It struck me as a wonderful reading to incorporate into a Passover seder. And so, since we are at the time of year when some of us start preparing haggadot for Passover, here it is.

When the founders of modern Zionism hoped that having a country of their own would make Jews like all other nations, they didn’t think that the Jews would adopt any of the despicable traits of the anti-Semites among whom they lived in dispersion. The aim of Zionism was not only to liberate the Jews from their perilous existence as pariahs but also to enable them to live by the highest ideals of their tradition. Yet more than six decades after the establishment of the State of Israel that has indeed afforded Jews who settled here freedom from persecution  – and [...]

by Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler This morning I received a text message from my Aunt Linda saying, “I am doing well… love being home after three weeks in the hospital and rehab.” I almost replied, as if on rabbi auto-pilot, “I’ve been praying for your recovery” but instead wrote, “I’ve been thinking of you a lot!  You’re so strong!” Some might argue that my aunt was able to recover from the infection in her hip replacement, surgeries to remove the new hip and clean the prosthesis, and to begin rehabilitation all over again because God heard the prayers of the [...]