It's Elul: 6 Ways to Get Ready for the High Holidays
Reform Movement Adopts Three New Resolutions
This week, the URJ's North American Board adopted three new resolutions, concluding the consultative and inclusive process that began before the Biennial. These resolutions add to the canon of hundreds of URJ resolutions that outline its values and priorities.
If Anne Frank Had a Gun
I am often asked why Jews went like sheep to the slaughter during the Holocaust. The question falsely assumes it was possible to resist, but Jews failed to do so.
Interfaith Programming, Community Outreach, and How We Bring Judaism to Senior Citizens
A few years ago, Temple Shalom’s sisterhood decided to start a community outreach program that would enable a unique sisterhood from a unique temple to reach out to the unique Central Florida Tri-County community.
My First Time Praying at the Kotel's Egalitarian Prayer Plaza
In the spring of 2014, while studying in Haifa, I traveled down to Jerusalem to meet up with my mother and other members of our congregation who were visiting Israel.
God as Matchmaker: A Reflection on Adoption
Holy Fertile Ground: Creating Compassionate Spaces for People on a Family-Building Journey
Were Shakespeare's Plays Actually Written By a Jewish Woman?
William Shakespeare's name appears on many of play, but no evidence demonstrates that he actually wrote them. Could they have actually been written by Aemelia Bassano?
On the Outside Looking In: Approaching Conversion
Next week at this time, I’ll be stepping into the mikveh, the Jewish ritual bath. It’s been a yearlong journey that will lead me to that holy space, one I’ll enter as a former Catholic/not-quite-Jew and exit as a Jewish woman – no longer an outsider.
My Father’s Journey on a Freedom Ride Bus
Jewish activism in the 1960s civil rights movement gained momentum when four Reform rabbis participated in the first Interfaith Freedom Ride on a Greyhound bus traveling from Washington, DC, through South Carolina, to Tallahassee from June 13-16, 1961. Freedom rides tested interstate public transportation hubs for racial segregation. The rabbis, Israel Dresner, Martin Freedman, Allan Levine, and my father Walter H. Plaut, were joined by eight white Protestant ministers, including prominent theologian Robert McAfee Brown, and six AME black ministers and NAACP activists.