How We Can Include Everyone in the Days of Awe
As congregational leaders, our task is not to get people nominally in the doors of our sanctuary but to help them through the gates of repentance.
Rabbi Rick Jacobs Pays His Respects to President Shimon Peres
May President Peres's memory continue to be for a blessing for the State of Israel, for the entire Jewish people, and, indeed, for the whole world.
Where is the Conscience of the World?
As I prepare to welcome in the Jewish New Year on Sunday night, I am plagued by the plight of the Syrian people. I am deeply concerned by the silence of the world.
Reflections from the 71st United Nations General Assembly
September has been a busy month for me as one of the URJ’s representatives to the United Nations as part of the Department of Public Information/Non-Governmental Organizations (DPI/NGO), program.
Rounding Up of Some of the Best High Holiday Videos of the Year
We love when congregations make hilarious videos like these, and we wanted to put them in one place to help you get in the chag spirit.
Escaping Danzig with Help from a Box of Chocolate
In the summer of 1937, my great-uncle George and his wife, Margaret, together with my grandmother, Toni Prinz, and my father, Ray, boarded a ship for Copenhagen. Great-aunt Selma and her husband, Mor, escorted them to the ship to wave goodbye and at the very last minute “gifted” them with a small box of chocolate produced by MIX Konfect, a local company.
Hidden under the chocolates were gold coins Uncle George had packed in the box in anticipation of the trip. George and Margaret carefully accepted the box with its concealed $10,000. My father, just 12 at the time, had about $3000 worth of gold pieces sewn into his suitcase and his coat hem. The mishpucha (family), ostensibly on vacation, traveled overnight to Copenhagen where they visited Tivoli Gardens and after a couple of days, returned to Danzig. While in Copenhagen, Toni and Ray wired their money to Union Bank in Los Angeles, California, where a few family members already lived. George and Margaret similarly wired funds to other places in North America.
A Dybbuk Strikes Again in a Spooky New Polish Film
Based on the 2008 play Adherence by Piotr Rowicki, the new film Demon plays on the Jewish folktale of the dybbuk, an evil spirit that possesses a living person, often during a wedding, when the bride and groom are particularly vulnerable (which is why they traditionally wear white).
How I Found My Spiritual Home - and More - in Judaism
For many years, I felt inhibited to knock on the door of a synagogue. Simultaneously, my heart and gut knew where I belonged. There is in fact Jewish ancestry on my father’s side – contested by some relatives; strong enough to reinforce my feelings of visceral kinship.