RJ Blog

by Ruby Macsai-Goren As a typical teenager, I do a lot of extra-curricular and academic activities, attend high school, and spend lots of time with my family and friends. However, I spend minimal to no time learning about Israel. I know very little about Israel; my knowledge is extended to what I have learned from my years in Hebrew school and what I know from my Middle Eastern History class. While I have had the limited opportunity to learn about Israeli politics, I have no idea what the culture and land itself is like. I am incredibly excited to travel [...]

As we all know (I hope!), our thirteen Reform camps offer the most inspiring Judaism our children can experience. More than 10,000 youngsters had a taste of a Reform Jewish summer in 2011, and this year’s registration numbers are even better. I have the pleasure of serving as the Chair of the URJ Camp Harlam Council. Harlam is our camp located in the Pocono Mountains, northeast of Philadelphia. We serve nearly 1,000 campers and 225 staff each summer. Additionally, I am honored to be a Vice-Chair of the NAC, our Reform North American camping organization that has oversight for the [...]

We’ve been talking about the Campaign for Youth Engagement since the URJ’s 71st Biennial Convention last December. In the four and a half months since, we’re been working on hammering out the details of this exciting and important campaign, and we want to be sure we’re communicating those details effectively along the way. So what is it? Quite simply, the Campaign for Youth Engagement is a focused, strategic effort to leverage the full strength and talent of every corner of the Reform Movement to engage and retain the majority of our youth by the year 2020. Here are a few [...]

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 [...]

I have just returned from eight days touring the sites of Judaism in Central Europe with six teenagers and one soon-to-be HUC student. When I first interviewed at my current congregation, I was asked, “Rabbi, what do you think about our Confirmation trip to Europe?” As I had looked at the synagogue website before the interview and noticed that it highlighted two things – the Confirmation trip and the Adult Education program – I knew that this was an important question. I started with, “I’m not sure why the trip doesn’t go to Israel…” When a murmur ran around the [...]

by Hope Chernak, MARE, RJE Temple Shaaray Tefila has taken another step toward strengthening our congregation’s ties to the land and people of Israel. We have a new partnership with Kehilat Ohel Avraham, a Reform congregation in Haifa that is closely associated with the Leo Baeck Education Center. So, what is a partnership? According to Wikipedia, a partnership is an arrangement where parties agree to cooperate to advance their mutual interests. If you asked our two teen leaders who were part of our delegation that went to Haifa this past December about it, they would respond with, “our partnership is like [...]

by Louise Van Schaack “Who is Elijah?” five-year-old Hannah asked me when she arrived at pre-school a few weeks ago. She’d recently received a copy of The Little Red Hen and the Passover Matzah by Leslie Kimmelman from the PJ Library, and the book had piqued her interest.  She wanted to know more.

by  Jocelyn Sontag For the past few years, I served on the Membership Initiative Task Force at Westchester Reform Temple (WRT) in Scarsdale, New York.  Many of our meetings were spent discussing, among other things, how best to engage families with young children.  Specifically, we talked about engaging the families in our Early Childhood Center (ECC), as these are families that chose to send their children to a synagogue preschool (as opposed to a secular one down the street), so their desire for an early Jewish education was apparent.  We heard a constant message from the ECC liaisons that these [...]

By Melissa Frey Bully, the movie, which is to open on March 30, is a stark portrayal of bullying that crosses ethnic, socio-economic, and gender lines. It is a documentary that followed the lives of several pre-teens and teens who had been victims of bullying from 2009-2010. There has been interesting dialogue relative to the movie’s age-appropriate rating. There is controversy because of strong language and parts of the storyline focusing on teen suicide. While an R rating would preclude the majority of the target audience from seeing the film, ideally we would want adults to see this movie with [...]

by Deborah Greene Two great things you can give your children: one is roots, the other is wings. (Hodding Carter) It is said that, “All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” (Havelock Ellis) It is, to be sure, a balancing act for every parent. We wish to give our children the opportunities to grow, to become more independent and forge out their own path in this world. Yet, we want to protect them, keep them safe and shield them from harm, hurt & the inevitable disappointments that life will bring them. [...]