We are not a gym Like many rabbis and congregational lay leaders, I am watching the trends of synagogue member involvement very closely. It is no surprise to any reader that what used to work is no longer working. But is it even fair to say that it “used to work”? We built buildings that […]
Note: This essay was originally crafted in preparation for a national gathering of Kenissa: Communities of Meaning Network that took place in March of 2020. It was a response to Rabbi Sid Schwarz’ opening chapter in his book, Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future. I found the last of the four […]
Working with interfaith couples is one of the great joys of my rabbinate. Each conversation with an interfaith couple–and at this point, I’ve probably worked with well over a thousand–reminds me that Judaism should be a proactive, spiritually growthful, human-oriented practice, and not just the flotsam and jetsam of family history and communal memory. Even […]
“There is no moral distance … between the facts of life in San Francisco and the facts of life in Birmingham. -James Baldwin, Take This Hammer (1965) ‘…After that, you shall be called City of Righteousness, Faithful City…’ -Isaiah 1:26 Every Friday morning, a group of volunteers from The Kitchen (a congregation founded […]
What’s the price point at which quitting the temple becomes unnecessary or nearly impossible?” So asked a business leader in our synagogue. “Figure out that price point and our synagogue will grow organically instead of continuing to shrink. During a fascinating lunchtime conversation with this trusted congregant, the search for answers to challenging questions about […]
Editor’s Note: While this article is fully rooted in a Christian context, the analysis of the “nones” and “dones” aptly describes a phenomenon widespread in the next Gen Jewish world. And the prescriptions for how to draw such disaffected people back into spiritual community is completely relevant to synagogues that hope to be relevant today. […]
Pesach was the holiday that I think most informed and continues to inform why I’m still Jewish and why I chose to go to rabbinical school. “Care for the stranger”, zecher l’tziat mitzrayim, the commandment to remember that the very reason that we were taken out of the narrows of Egypt was so that we […]
In the late fall of 2016, I was making plans for the next phase of my rabbinical career. As fate would have it, the morning after Election Night, as Donald Trump crossed the 270-vote threshold in the electoral college, I was preparing to board a plane from my then-home in Oakland, California to the East […]
“I’m not that interested in ‘mass’ communications. I’m much more interested in what happens between this person and the one person watching. The space between the television set and that person who’s watching is very holy ground.” -Fred Rogers[1] When I was a child growing up in a largely secular Jewish home, I took tremendous […]
Editor’s Note: A version of this article first appeared in eJewishPhilanthropy last fall. Given how many congregations are needing to pivot to deal with the upsurge in the Covid/Delta variant, many planning a mix of on-line and in-person services for the coming holidays, we thought the spirit of innovation represented by this article was worth […]
