Reform Judaism

"Buy the Boat!"
September 2, 2010

by Rabbi Marla Feldman
Director of Development, URJ

Several months ago, I received a panicked email from our contact at the International Medical Corps, one of the URJ's grant recipients from our Haiti Relief Fund. The URJ, along with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), had funded a clinic in the underserved coastal region around Petit Goave, west of Port-au-Prince, as well as a mobile clinic - a boat - that provided medical services to nearby coastal villages that have been inaccessible since the earthquake. As the hurricane season approached and the seas became rougher, their boat was no longer sea-worthy. They had a lead on a used boat that could serve their purpose, but only if they acted quickly. The cost was $12,000. "Buy the boat!" I said. We already had authorization from our allocations committee for this project and ample funds remained within the designated allocation. Two days later, just as I was heading to Shabbat services, I received another urgent message - the used boat would not work out, but they found a new boat that could serve their needs. The cost was a bit more -- $19,000. Could they purchase the boat? "Buy the boat!" I said again in my final text before turning off my PDA for Shabbat.

Filed Under: Social Action

Congregational Life
September 1, 2010 (6 Comments)

by dcc

I was recently asked by someone I very much respect to address "the" question. So I started to write the answer in a post...about five times without any luck. The "Why does a 20-something join a Reform Congregation" question. I have no kids and am Jewishly connected in my life, so why join a congregation? Some may say it is a legitimate question. I say you are missing the point of congregational life.

The myth that young Reform Jews are not joining a temple because they don't find it useful or meaningful is bunk. The real issue is that Reform Jews as a whole aren't joining congregations because they don't find something useful or meaningful within membership. In many communities within our Movement, synagogues have become bar and bat mitzvah factories. We are, in fact, in great danger of becoming what our more conservative and closed-minded co-religionists call "Judaism Lite." If we challenge our communities to learn, grow and take responsibility, my bet is we will see some more folks filling the seats on Shabbat.

I originally joined Temple Shaaray Tefila in New York City for three reasons. 1) I needed a place for the High Holy Days and my sister couldn't get me into Hillel services at Columbia anymore. 2) The location is three blocks from my apartment. 3) The congregation values young people making a commitment to the community so much that they set membership costs for people in their 20s at only $18 a year. (For a few years...)

But that isn't why I stayed.

Filed Under: Community

Why Talk About Christmas in Fall?
August 31, 2010

by Arlene Chernow
Outreach Specialist, Union for Reform Judaism

Ah, the memories! The smells, the food, the cookies, the craft projects, the family decorating together, the company coming over to celebrate, the smell of freshly cut tree branches while building the sukkah!

Wait. Did you say 'building the sukkah?' Weren't we talking about Christmas?

When adults share childhood holiday memories, the stories are similar regardless of which holidays they are recalling. The warm memories are about time: Time spent with family members, time spent making meals or cookies, time spent sharing a family meal.

Sukkot offers Jewish families an opportunity to create all of the warm family memories that are often associated with Christmas, Easter and other family holidays.

Consider the following ways to create great Sukkot memories:

Filed Under: Holidays | Outreach | Youth and Family Life

Hurricane Katrina and Jacobs Camp
August 31, 2010

by Jonathan "J.C." Cohen
Director, URJ Henry S. Jacobs Camp
Originally posted on the Jacobs Camp blog

For more info, see Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans 5 Years Later

With the five year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina upon us, so many memories from that time have come flooding back - and I know all of you who were close to that experience are also taking time to reflect.

I continue to be tremendously proud of the work that Jacobs Camp did. We were really out there making a difference in a time of tremendous need. We were blessed by the opportunity to provide shelter for more than 250 people in the days and weeks following the storm, and doubly-blessed by the opportunity to launch the Jacobs' Ladder Relief Project that brought 4 Million pounds of relief supplies, and hundreds of volunteers into the region - and helped shine the spotlight of the Reform Movement and the organized Jewish community on the Gulf Coast Region.

We felt the storm's wrath in other ways, too.

So many of our camp families experienced tremendous losses -- and some of them are still recovering. Thanks to the Foundation for Jewish Camp, the Habayita Fund was set up to help kids return to Jacobs in the summers of 2006 and 2007; but, between the families who took major financial hits, and the others who found relocating the only way to move forward, our camper registration took a hit. Our registration has recovered -- this summer we served the most campers we ever have &mdash but who knows when our New Orleans numbers will rebound to pre-Katrina levels.

Filed Under: Social Action | Youth and Family Life

Galilee Diary: Summer holiday II
August 31, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Marc Rosenstein
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Galilee Diary)

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...Zebulun did not dispossess the inhabitants of Kitron or the inhabitants of Nahalol; so the Canaanites dwelt in their midst, but they were subjected to forced labor. Asher did not dispossess the inhabitants of Acco or the inhabitants of Sidon, Ahlab, Achzib, Helbah, Aphik, and Rehob. So the Asherites dwelt in the midst of the Canaanites, the inhabitants of the land, for they did not dispossess them...
-Judges 1:30-32

Prague: We're not really into goulash, dumplings, and beer, but the feast for our other senses was satiating: cathedrals and synagogues, castles and bridges, monuments and art exhibits; you get a stiff neck walking around looking up at all the amazing buildings. To a layman, keeping track of all those dynasties and their machinations - and trying to keep straight all the different architectural styles in their chronology - can be quite daunting.

Filed Under: Israel | Jewish History

Remembering Katrina: A Reflection
August 30, 2010 by Leslie G. Woods
Representative for Domestic Poverty & Environmental Issues in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Office of Public Witness in Washington, D.C.
Originally posted on the RACBlog

[Editor's Note: for more on the Reform Movement's Gulf response efforts in the five years since Hurricane Katrina, visit our Katrina & New Orleans: 5 years later resource page.]

I arrived in the faith-based advocacy community in Washington, DC, fresh out of divinity school. I had moved to Washington to take an internship in the Public Life and Social Policy Office of the United Church of Christ - a public policy ministry that I was excited to join after three years of study and preparation. I had been told that I would be working on issues of domestic poverty and economic justice. My first day in the office was August 29, 2005.

The first day of a new job is always nerve-wracking, but this day was also tinged with the collective sadness of watching a tragedy unfold. The 24-hour news cycle blared the news of recent and impending hurricane landfalls and of inadequate evacuation plans. I remember sitting with my new colleagues that morning discussing the domestic poverty policy agenda for the coming session of Congress, when Hurricane Katrina came up. In that Monday morning meeting, a collective intake of breath seemed to still the room as we all contemplated what was happening at that very moment. read MORE

Filed Under: Social Action

Davar Acher: Is That the Best You Can Do?
August 29, 2010

by Yair Robinson
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

There is a story told by Winston Lord of a speech he wrote for Henry Kissinger. "[Kissinger] called me in the next day and said, 'Is this the best you can do?' . . . this went on eight times, eight drafts; each time he said, 'Is this the best you can do?' So I went in there with a ninth draft, and when he . . . asked me that same question . . . I said, 'Henry, I've beaten my brains out . . . I know it's the best I can do. . . ..' He then looked at me and said, '. . . now I'll read it.'" ¹

Doing one's best has come to be a cop out: something we might say, mealy-mouthed, to avoid improving ourselves. But as this story illustrates, it's actually a challenge--to commit one's faculties and abilities fully to the task at hand.

But what happens when our best isn't enough? At some point, we will say the wrong or hurtful word, we will duck our responsibility to others, we will be overwhelmed by the task before us. What then?

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

D'var Torah: Nitzavim/Vayeilech: The "Close to You" Mystery
August 29, 2010 (2 Comments)

by Amy R. Perlin
(Originally published in Ten Minutes of Torah and Reform Voices of Torah)

All the Jewish endings come together every year. Here we are at the last Shabbat of 5770. We are almost at the end of the Torah, with just five chapters left to go. The old year is coming to an end. In just a few days, we will come into the synagogue for Rosh Hashanah seeking guidance and direction as we embark on a new year. If, as I proposed when I began writing these passages on Deuteronomy months ago, the Torah is our GPS for life, where is this week's portion taking us? How many options are we given for this last leg of our journey?

The answer in Deuteronomy 30:11-14 is that we do not have to travel by plane or spacecraft, nor do we need to book a cruise. The blueprint for a new year is closer than we think:

Surely, this Instruction [mitzvah] which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond your reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, "Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" Neither is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who among us can cross to the other side of the sea and get if for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?" No, the thing is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to observe it.

I love that phrase, "the thing is very close to you."But, I ask myself, "What does it mean for something to be close to us?"

Filed Under: Holidays | Torah

A Call For A Moratorium On Shabbat Weddings
August 26, 2010 (3 Comments)

by Rabbi Leon A. Morris
Temple Adas Israel, Sag Harbor, NY
(Originally posted on The Jewish Week)

The recent wedding of Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky has triggered a spate of articles about interfaith marriage, rabbinic officiation, co-officiation with Christian clergy and the like. Considerably less attention has been focused on the fact that the wedding took place on a Saturday before nightfall. Perhaps this was deemed less newsworthy because it has become so commonplace. I'm asking myself whether the most publicized Shabbat wedding in American Jewish history might have the unintended consequence of questioning anew the propriety of performing weddings on the Sabbath.

The need for Shabbat is greater now than ever before. Folks from widely divergent population segments are beginning to reclaim the Sabbath in a variety of ways. There are the hundreds of secular Israelis gathering at the Tel Aviv port to welcome Shabbat with prayer, poetry and song. There are the innovative hipsters of the Shabbat Manifesto declaring a "national day of unplugging," inspiring thousands of individuals to "put down their cell phones, stop their status updates on Facebook, shut down Twitter, sign out of e-mail and relax." A best-selling book on the Sabbath was published this past spring that prompted several stories in The New York Times about the reconsideration of the Sabbath. Families are looking for ways to connect with each other, and to re-institute the family dinner at least once each week. The time is ripe for us to be more strident in our embrace of Shabbat, particularly in the public domain.

In addition, our increasing environmental awareness reminds us of our own place in the larger universe. Deciding to officiate at Saturday weddings after 6 p.m. is not only arbitrary but represents a kind of environmental hubris in which human beings think that they have the power to make the stars appear earlier. With all of our human knowledge and advancement, we still cannot cause the sun to set. We experience awe of the cosmos when we make ourselves subject to time that lies beyond our control.

Filed Under: Lifecycle | Shabbat

Receiving Torah
August 26, 2010 (1 Comment)

by Virginia Avniel Spatz
Member of Temple Micah, Washington, DC

How does one receive the Torah? Not in a mystical, Standing-at-Sinai sense or even in an educational sense. In a physical sense: What is a Jew to do when the Torah scroll is in physical proximity?

This topic was raised recently by Larry Kaufman's post, "Going Round in Circles," and it arises frequently on Shabbat mornings. During the hakafah [procession circling the congregation before and/or after the reading], some worshippers in our congregation actively approach the scroll to touch it, and some visibly draw back. On the bima, some participants comfortably handle the sefer Torah [the scroll], while some cringe through awkward moments of access. Our temple's Hebrew poetry group recently discussed, in the context of a Yehuda Amichai poem about childhood synagogue experiences, the concept of the scroll being "dressed" and "naked."

I recalled one week when a young person -- in the regular bar/bat mitzvah pre-reading hakafah -- held the scroll at a strange angle, so the cover was dangling off, leaving the parchment exposed. My seat was at the end of the procession, so I had to watch as a "naked" scroll was carried through the congregation before I could reach out to tuck in the cover and then touch the "dressed" scroll with my tzitzit [fringe of the prayer shawl].

Filed Under: Community | Jewish Living