Cultivating “Belonging” in our Synagogues

Rabbi Julia Appel 0 Comments

Synagogue staff and volunteers are busy preparing to welcome hundreds, sometimes thousands, of congregants over the course of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The most attended synagogue days of the year, the High Holidays are a time when congregants who are otherwise infrequent participants make a special effort to show up. Cultivating a deeper sense of belonging will help these congregants connect more with our synagogue communities while they are with us. 

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How do you ‘hospice’ a synagogue?

Rabbi Uri Allen 0 Comments

It’s a strange question, isn’t it? Why would anyone want to hospice a synagogue? The rabbi’s sermons can’t be that bad, right? Yet at this moment in American Jewish life, it is a question that needs to be asked. Across the country, synagogue communities are facing similar realities of lower affiliation rates and economic concerns about the cost of Jewish living. Many congregations have an aging membership, and the synagogue facilities they built decades ago when membership was younger and growing are in desperate need of repair and maintenance.

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Ten Steps to Increasing Community Connection

Rhonda Abrams 0 Comments

When I tell you that our fast-growing 11-year old Jewish spiritual community in Chicago already has 11 small group gatherings planned with 11 different members hosting (and no staff presence) with over 90 participants thus far, all in the first quarter of the year, I promise that it’s not too good to be true. Oh, and these events cost us $0 in supplies and only several hours a week of one staff person’s time.

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Judaism and Psychedelics

Rabbi Aura Ahuvia 0 Comments

Psychedelics have become a regular news item, to the delight of the initiated. In Jewish circles, interest is also intensifying, as evidenced by events like the 2021 Jewish Psychedelic Summit, and by newly-emerging organizations such as Shefa, a non-profit dedicated to Jewish psychedelic support.

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In Defense of the Congregational Rabbinate

Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso 0 Comments

Congregational rabbis walk through the life cycle with families, know generational joys and sorrows and help people, with whom they celebrate and mourn, sanctify the everyday. Congregational rabbis nourish souls and accompany us through the seasons of life. Congregations, unlike associations of like-minded individuals, are heterogeneous communities that connect to the larger community in which they reside. Rabbis who lead them do more than create powerful moments — they create enduring relationships.

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