God as Matchmaker: A Reflection on Adoption
11 Ways to Celebrate Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month in Your Synagogue
In honor of Jewish Disability Awareness, Acceptance, and Inclusion Month, we offer a few suggestions to help congregations adopt further awareness and understanding of disabilities.
Honoring Your Parents as You Empty Their House
Jews have blessings for almost every occasion. I recommend we recite one before emptying the contents of our parents’ home after they die.
Why the Ten Commandments Are Just What America Needs
Stricter adherence to the Ten Commandments might be just what America needs to restore trust in government and civility in political discourse.
Give Peace a Chance: Why All of Us Must Be Part of the Process
Israel’s peace process is frustrating, but if we are to survive here, it must be the one place where identity politics cannot shred our democracy.
What We Need to Know About Welcoming the Stranger
Like those Abraham welcomed into his tent, many in today’s world are without homes. Our Torah doesn’t allow us to pretend they are not our problem.
Save the Bald Eagles, Save the World
On the first day of my internship, I found out that one of the issues I’d be working on was the Endangered Species Act. There was one problem: when it comes to social justice, I’m in it for the people. Not so much the bald eagles.
Early Childhood Education Centers Are Revolutionizing Jewish Engagement
We’re working to create a shared vision for excellence in early childhood Jewish education and to ensure our ECE centers will thrive in the future. For the past two years, we have worked as part of a team in the greater Denver/ Boulder Jewish community to enhance our early childhood education centers.
What Will It Take for the World to Offer Women Full Equality?
Nearly 40 years ago, I stood on the bimah as a bat mitzvah, the first young woman in my family to celebrate my Jewish coming of age. Its significance was totally lost on me, however. Having been raised to believe that both boys and girls could pretty much do anything they wanted, what was the big deal, I wondered.
How to Craft a New Worship Style in Brazil
The daily mincha/ma’ariv service at CIP was being led by the congregation’s cantor, Alexandre Edelstein, who also was my host and colleague during my four-day visit in June to Brazil as part of LaShir B’Nefesh, a program that brings together soloists, musicians, and cantors of Brazilian, and occasionally Argentinian, Reform communities to share repertoire, network, and support one another in their work. I was in Sao Paulo to present a master class on strategies to engage the congregational voice – something the Latin American communities, both leaders and worshipers, are interested in developing.