by dcc There was a very interesting piece in the New York Times Science section this week about religion. A researcher from the University of Miami found that true believers have better self-control. In keeping with the findings of this study, I will not re-write the article but only give you a taste; I am controlling my bombastic desire to be bearer of news and information.
[The researcher's] interest arose from a desire to understand why religion evolved and why it seems to help so many people. Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that devoutly religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and be generally happier.
by Chaim I have been struggling lately about where I fit in the Jewish world and thought the RJ Blog would be a good place to discuss this. I think the reason I have been struggling is because I seem to sort of float between Orthodox and Reform in my religious practice and understanding of Torah. I basically believe the Torah was given to Moses at Sinai by G-d, but not dictated 'word for word'. But rather the ideas and methods in which to connect to G-d were given to (or discovered by) Moses, passed down through the generations, and eventually written down as the Torah we know today. I believe the Torah to be sort of a 'mystical code' of sorts written in simple language to convey deeper metaphysical ideas and concepts.
"This is the most extensive outreach and listening tour that I've ever seen a new administration take, and that is certainly true of their outreach to the faith community," said Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who has worked with presidential transition teams going back to Jimmy Carter's.
It's a remarkable departure from the Bush administration's approach. As Tanya Clay House, director of public policy for People of the American Way said, "The old administration listened to just one side of the argument."
by Rabbi Elliott A. Kleinman Chief Program Officer, Union for Reform Judaism (First published on the RACblog) When I learned of Rabbi Arnold Wolf's death on Wednesday evening, I was overwhelmed by the loss. Arnold was my rabbi. My parents were founders of Congregation Solel in Highland Park, IL, and Arnold has been a part of every moment of my life. It was Arnold who inspired me to be a rabbi and challenged me to be a Jew, and it was Arnold who taught me how to do both.
Some of my earliest memories are of Arnold berating our congregation or our religious school class or the board of the congregation for not doing enough in the pursuit of justice. What I remember most is that we loved every moment of it. God was real and I "had better pay attention" he would remind us. "I am Adonai your God" was not a promise but a challenged to be lived up to every moment in every action.
by Rabbi Bob Orkand, President of ARZA As we approach the new year we are focused, once again, on the violence in Gaza. We pray for a quick end to the military action launched by Israel against Hamas and we agonize over the death of innocent civilians on both sides of the border.
As usual, Israel's critics are quick to denounce the Jewish state for its actions. How easy it is for critics to ignore what led to the current military action: Population centers in southern Israel have been the target of over 4,000 rockets, as well as thousands of mortar shells, fired by Hamas and other organizations since 2001. The first Grad/Katyusha strike on Ashdod took place on December 28. There had been no formal cease fire between Israel and Hamas, but only an informal six-month tahadiya (lull) during which 215 rockets were launched at Israel. On December 21, Hamas unilaterally announced that the lull had ended.
I've been involved with interfaith dialogue since my first year of college. So when I signed up for Rav Siach, an interdenominational rabbinical student discussion group in Jerusalem, I expected an interesting and smooth experience. The past two months have definitely been interesting, but I could hardly call them smooth!
For the past eight weeks, four fellow HUC rabbinical students and I have been traveling to Melitz, a pluralistic education center in Jerusalem, to meet a handful of our future colleagues from other denominations. There are about a dozen participants with three facilitators, and we come from Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist, "orthodox," and non-denominational backgrounds. Thus, we come to the table not only with our personal perspectives but also with the weight of our "movements" on our shoulders. And all that weight has made for some very heavy conversations. We discuss and debate issues like commandedness, the role of the rabbi, and denominational distinctions, and we strive to keep our minds open while attempting to understand the thoughts of the others. This can be a significant challenge, but our mutual respect gives us the motivation to try our hardest.
By Rabbi Eric Yoffie For the past three weeks, Israel has lived under an increasing barrage of rocket fire from the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. More than 80 missiles landed on a single day. Israel's first responsibility, like that of any nation, is to protect her citizens. The military action that Israel launched Saturday morning was clearly intended to do just that.
Israel's action is as tragic as it is necessary and predictable. While we mourn the loss of life, no democratic nation in the world would permit a hostile force on its border to target its civilian centers with constant missile attacks. Israel has demonstrated extraordinary restraint as nearly 8000 rockets have been launched at Israel's cities in the last 8 years. When Israel withdrew every civilian and soldier from Gaza in 2005, the attacks did not stop for a single day.
Chanukah is my favorite holiday. I know that involved, intellectual Jews like myself are supposed to declar that Pesach is their favorite or something, but I think that we do Chanukah a disservice these days. Undoubtedly, Chanukah's proximity to Christmas has made it a more major holiday in recent decades as American Jews have sought to include themselves in winter holiday festivities, but I'd argue that Chanukah's popularity cannot be reduced to such a disdainable cause.
If Yom Kippur or even Simchat Torah came at this season, we would not have been able to seize upon them and say, "Yes, goyim! We are just like you! We too have an uplifting winter holiday!" Chanukah is a great holiday all on its own and I'm here to tell you why.
by Rabbi Paul J. Kipnes A Story (learned from Rabbi Cheryl Peretz) There is wonderful Hasidic story, told of a conversation between the rabbi and a member of his community. The man once asked: "Rabbi, what is a Jew's task in this world?" The rabbi answered: "A Jew is a lamp-lighter on the streets of the world. In olden days, there was a person in every town who would light the gas street lamps with a light he carried on the end of a long pole. On the street corners, the lamps sat, ready to be lit. A lamp-lighter has a pole with a flame supplied by the town. He knows that the fire is not his own and he goes around lighting the lamps on his route." The man then asked: "But what if the lamp is in a desolate wilderness?" The rabbi responded: "Then, too, one must light it. Let it be noted that there is a wilderness and let the wilderness be shamed by the light." Not satisfied, the man asked: "But what if the lamp is in the middle of the sea?" The rabbi responded: "Then one must take off one's clothes, jump into the water, and light it there!"
by Jim Ball To talk about my relationship with Shabbat, I must speak about this week's Torah portion, Vayislach.
It's a portion has a special meaning for me. Twenty-five years ago, I became a Jew, and took the Hebrew name Ya'akov. Like the place that Jacob visited in last week's Torah portion, Beth El, I was a member of Congregation Beth El in Sudbury, MA , and my Beth El, like Jacob's, was and still is, a holy place for me.
This week Jacob, returning to his birthplace and homeland, prepares to meet Esau again, something which leaves him with some trepidation. In fact, he is terrified. He and his retinue come to the River Jabbok and must cross. Having to ford this river is, of course, highly symbolic to the task of having to cross through his own fears and reluctance to meet Esau.
By Rabbi Norman Roman (First posted at RACblog)
Rabbi Norman Roman is the rabbi at Temple Kol Ami in West Bloomfield, MI. This post is adapted from Rabbi Roman's message in the January 2009 Kol Ami bulletin.
Early in December, I was invited by Cardinal Adam Maida to attend a small gathering of Detroit area religious leaders, an urgent interfaith response to the economic crisis and the auto industry's needs. It was good for the 14 of us to be together (14 is, of course, a 'yad' - a helping hand, in Hebrew!), the news media reported on our meeting, some ideas were shared of what our various communities were doing in Churches, Mosques, and Synagogues to assist our members, and personal connections were made for future participation in "prayer, political action, and programming."
Several insights from this crisis are very clear to me, and others have been suggested for me (and you) to consider:
By Marge Eiseman
I haven't yet seen the movie "Yes Man" (and I probably won't, since Jim Carrey's energy is a bit much for me!), but it got me thinking about how we present ourselves to the world, and what factors into our essential nature.
I know people who are ruled by fear, who worry about things beyond their control and don't expect the best in any situation. Their default setting is "No!" They don't seek new experiences, and they don't see life as a blessing, or have a sense of how they could bring blessing into the world.
by Rabbi Paul Kipnes Congregation Or Ami Question: What do you get when you take four most thoughtful, compassionate, committed Jewish teens, with whom I have studied Judaism for eight to twelve years, and put them together up on the bimah at Erev Shabbat services?
Answer: A very moving Confirmation Class service.
Congregation Or Ami's service last night was deeply meaningful. Our Confirmands - Alex Krasnoff, Ross Meyer, Jonny Wixen, and Sarah Wolfson - led the prayers and in between, offered their reflections on a series of questions:
If asked by a non-Jewish person what you cherish about Judaism, what would you say?
What do you believe or think about God?
Having studied Judaism for 10-13 years, what ideas or parts of Judaism are most significant or meaningful for you?
What has Judaism taught you that will help you later in life?
How do you feel connected to Israel?
When have you felt the most Jewish and why?
Some of their responses, a picture of the diversity within our Reform Movement, include:
Here, in an exclusive interview for RJ.org, Michelle sits down with Molly Kane, a rabbinical student at HUC-JIR to discuss Michelle's new Chanukah video sensation "Pass the Candle", her involvement in Reform Judaism, and more. Click below to listen in, and watch the video after the jump.
Thirty young Jewish adults took off for New Orleans, Louisiana this morning to help rebuild the city's 9th Ward, still damaged from 2005's Hurricane Katrina. These volunteers are participating in the Union for Reform Judaism's Tzevet Mitzvot: Young Adult Mitzvah Corps program, which combines five days of social action, worship and fun in the Big Easy.
By JanetheWriter For as long as I can remember I've been fascinated by colors and the words that bring them to life. Even today, among my most treasured possessions in a storage box high on a closet shelf is my childhood box of 64 Crayola crayons (circa 1967). Included in that well worn green and yellow cardboard holder with the flip top and the built-in sharpener are equally well worn sticks of colored wax, each with a name to go with it--"magenta" (my personal favorite), "cornflower," "yellow green" and "green yellow," as well as the most un-PC and now-retired "flesh" and "Indian red." Back then who knew from "wild blue yonder," "outrageous orange" or "razzle dazzle rose?"
Not surprisingly, the children's book Hailstones and Halibut Bones: Adventures in Color, the literary equivalent of that box of Crayolas was my favorite in that same era. Like the crayons, the book--with its worn binding and weathered pages, one of which is affixed with an upside-down bookplate on which I'd neatly printed my name--remains among my most treasured possessions. On each two-page spread, author Mary O'Neill and artist Leonard Weisgard query readers about a particular color before providing a poetic and wonderfully illustrated answer that, even in a young child, evoked deep emotion. On page 15 we read: "What is Gold? Gold is a metal/Gold is a ring/Gold is a most beautiful thing./Gold is the sunshine/Light and thin/Warm as a muffin/On your skin..." First published in 1961, the words and pictures represent a simpler time: "What is Brown? Brown is the color of a country road/Back of a turtle/Back of a toad./Brown is cinnamon/And morning toast/And the good smell of The Sunday roast. What is Purple What is Orange? What is Red? What is White? And so on...
Over the past few weeks, I have had the pleasure of meeting over 500 high school students from across the country at the Religious Action Center's Bernard and Audre Rapoport L'Taken social justice seminars. Each four-day intensive learning program brings students from across the country to D.C. to learn about social justice and Jewish values (read what some of the participants had to say about their experience). The program culminates with a visit to Capitol Hill, where students meet with their Senators, Representatives and their staff to discuss the issues that matter most to them. As my fellow RAC staff and I led the participants past the Capitol and Supreme Court to their meetings, I got several interesting questions about my experiences on the Hill: "Oh, you must be here all the time, what's your favorite place to go eat?; Who is the most famous Senator/Member of Congress you have ever met?; Do you ever see the President??"
by Marge Eiseman I guess it always matters where we start telling our stories - does my personal story begin at my conception? Birth? First memory?
Last night, I called one of my best friends, and I was hoping that I would reach her 17 year old daughter. I just wanted to check in with her, because, in addition to the normal stress of high school seniors who are waiting to see where they will be accepted for next year, we are all dealing with her mom's new diagnosis of breast cancer.
Technically, it is true that Chanukah is a "minor holiday," in the sense that it does not contain a yom tov, a day on which work is forbidden. However, this reflects the fact that Chanukah is post-Biblical more than its importance or lack of importance.
None the less, there is indeed ambivalence about the importance of Chanukah in Jewish tradition. On one hand Chanukah is traditionally viewed as a critical event in Jewish history. But on the other hand, our tradition hasn't wanted to talk too much about it.
by Gardening Grandma I'm at Union's board of trustees meeting, where they've just passed unanimously a resolution urging all Reform Jews to sign the petition to have Rabbi Miri Gold, the rabbi of Birkat Shalom in Kibbutz Gezar, recognized as a rabbi by the State of Israel. Please, show your support now by signing it now! www.irac.org
We'll be sharing more information from the board meeting soon....
by dcc (and az) First some background: Once upon a time, in a magical land known as Newton, Massachusetts a boy named Andy Cutler fell in love with a "feminist in law school" named Olivia Cohen. After years of courtship and these two high school sweethearts tied the knot at Temple Ohabei Shalom in June of 1977. Like in all fairy tales, the two lived happily ever after in a wonder-world of pluralism and progress as Andy and Olivia Cohen-Cutler. These two tradition bashing creating newlyweds went on to bring Donnie and his very smart and funny sister Sally into the world with this new family title. Thus the Cohen-Cutler family was created.
Jump to present day.
As you may remember from other posts, I am about to get married to a very lovely woman. We met at URJ Greene Family Camp. We both worked for the Reform Movement. We both are very liberal politically, socially and religiously. But when it comes to figuring out what to do with our last name we are having difficulty dealing with the progress from the previous generation. So in this post we are asking the Reform Jewish community for help. We have spoken to our families, to our rabbis and now we are opening the appeal to the Reform Movement at large.
by Sybil Schwartz Member of Congregation Beth Emeth, Wilmington, DE Rabbi Bloom's article "What God Can Learn From Us" published in the Winter Edition of Reform Judaism seems to take the approach of considering God's relationship to humans and our relationship to God as evolutionary in development. Intellectually we know that we are but a complicated composite of simple atoms all interconnected in a mortal body with a mind that can learn, conceptualize, create and feel. We have the capacity to master many tasks-the hardest may be the formulation of a mature relationship with God.
Maybe for each person our relationship with God is more like a blind date in which the parties try to determine if there is even a connection beyond their first exploratory encounter. And from that first momentary encounter of our ancestors reaching out to the God, we continue to explore that relationship-one that seems to be shrouded in awe and mystery so much of the time.
by Andi Rosenthal This article was originally published on InterfaithFamily.com In the midst of packing up the apartment where I've lived for the past seven years, I found them right where I knew they would be, in a box at the very back of the hall closet.
Sighing, I opened it. There they were, bells and angels, stars and glass balls, shimmering in every color of the rainbow, shining out of the depths of the cardboard darkness. My Christmas ornaments, every single one with its own story, its own memory. I picked one up--a goofy orange ceramic lobster my sister had brought from Maine--and gazed at it, remembering my final Christmas tree in 2001, the year before I converted.
"Throw them out," said my friend Chrissy, as she folded up the clothes I would be donating to a local charity. "It's not like you're going to use them ever again."
"No," I replied, a note of stubbornness coming into my voice. "I want to keep them."
(First posted at RACblog) by Micaela Hellman-Tincher Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism Over Chanukah, we all look for thoughtful, useful and interesting gifts for our family and friends. Amid the ads for watches, sweaters and digital cameras this winter, you might notice an ad for another kind of gift. A bed net. As part of our goal to deliver 50,000 nets abroad, the Union for Reform Judaism will be advertising Nothing But Nets in Jewish media around the country this winter.
While you may not know anyone who wants their bed covered in insecticide-treated mesh, there are people abroad to whom this gift won't simply be nice and thoughtful, but life-saving. A child dies from malaria every 30 seconds, and the use of a bed net can reduce disease transmission by up to 90%. The bed nets donated through the Union for Reform Judaism's Nothing But Nets initiative will go straight to refugees of conflict in Africa-one of the populations most vulnerable to malaria. It takes only $10 to send a net.
By dcc
Sound-out the title; it makes sense. But what doesn't make sense is the latest edition of movie-star outrage over California enshrining oppression in the State Constitution. A group of Hollywood illuminati got together to make Prop 8: The Musical. It is laugh out loud funny, well made and absolutely irrelevant.
By JanetheWriter
Last Friday evening, my longtime friend, Jeanne, arrived at Penn Station for an overnight visit with me. Before we could poke around in SoHo, though, or begin to catch up on each other's lives, we headed uptown for Shabbat dinner with her son, Jeremy, a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Along the way, Jeanne told me that JTS students are required to be shomer shabbos. Before we entered the building on Broadway, therefore, I shut off my cell phone.
Once inside, we climbed two flights to Jeremy's living space and, after a quick tour, climbed an additional flight to the Rabbinical Students' Lounge, where a long table had been set for nine, and a number of his friends had gathered. After brief introductions all around and blessings over wine and challah, we enjoyed a traditional Shabbat dinner -- chicken, rice, vegetables and salad, all prepared by Jeremy, following his Friday classes. Over dinner and beyond, the students -- some in the rabbinic program, others in the graduate program -- engaged in lively discussion and debate prompted by two particular teachers, Dr. Neil Gillman and Rabbi Joel Roth.
By Gardening Grandma I sometimes suspect the urge to make the world a better place is part of the DNA of every Jew, yet I recognize that it runs in the veins of people of all persuasions, often when they're not even aware of their actions.
An obit of "H.M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac," appears on the front page of this morning's New York Times. After experimental brain surgery in 1953 to correct uncontrollable seizures, he lost the ability to form new memories. And, because he and his family were willing to be the object of intensive study, the world of modern neuroscience was born.
For 55 years, each time H.M. met a friend, each time he ate a meal,
each time he walked in the woods, it was as if for the first time.
God's world was created anew each day for him.
By Jeff Oakley
(First posted on the RACblog) Jeff Oakley is an Eisendrath Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center.
The Commission on the Prevention of WMD Proliferation and Terrorism, led by former Sens. Bob Graham of Florida and Jim Talent of Missouri, announced at a press conference earlier today the findings of their bipartisan panel. In a stark warning to the United States and the world, the commission found that "unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013."
By Marge Eiseman I have been dwelling in Parashat VaYetsei this week, in preparation for leading a D'var Torah at the Harry & Rose Samson JCC in Milwaukee on Wednesday night. I read through it, line by line, and when I got to the end, I realized that by now, with years of Torah study under my belt, I had already read and "knew" every single part of the story.
I knew about Jacob leaving Beer-Sheva traveling towards Harran, and resting for the night in the certain place -- HaMakom. I knew he put his head on a stone pillow and dreamt the dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. I remembered the promise that God made to him in that dream, and what he said on awakening.
by Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz Ph.D. Congregation B'nai Israel, Bridgeport, CA Excerpted from Dr. Gurevitz's keynote address at the Union's Shabbat Symposium, January 2007 I have realized that there are a number of things that I bring to my work or the things that I hope to do in my work as a rabbi that have been in direct response to negative experiences that I had as a lay member of a community sometime in the past. And Shabbat is actually one of those things.
I want to start off with a little bit of that lay experience: Back in 1996, I was a member of a Reform synagogue in London. I wrote a two-sided proposal that I sent to both rabbis. It was called Yom Shabbat. And what I was highlighting was that I was conscious as a young adult, single, that congregants would come to services--in the UK, more Reform congregants do come for a community service on Shabbat morning, and that is partly because we have a different history. The bar/bat mitzvah never sort of took over the service in the same way that it has done here.
But we would come to services and then that would be it and people would go their separate ways. Nothing else happened at the synagogue, and I had no idea whether or not other people did Shabbat things, whether the rabbis did Shabbat-related things--I had no idea. I just knew that I was basically by myself.
It's a portion has a special meaning for me. Twenty-five years ago, I became a Jew, and took the Hebrew name Ya'akov. Like the place that Jacob visited in last week's Torah portion, Beth El, I was a member of 
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Thirty young Jewish adults took off for New Orleans, Louisiana this morning to help rebuild the city's 9th Ward, still damaged from 2005's Hurricane Katrina. These volunteers are participating in the Union for Reform Judaism's 
by Rachel Cohen
