Rabbis and Immigration Justice
In January 2023, President Biden ventured down to the southern border of the United States. While in El Paso, President Biden met with Bishop Mark Seitz, who gave him a note from a migrant child waiting to be reunited with her family. In part, the message read, ”Lord, I ask you to get me out of here soon. Help me with my case. I want to be with my mommy and my sister soon.” During the Trump Administration, the media covered the sounds and images of US Border Patrol personnel ripping babies from their mother’s arms. While that may not be the current practice under the Biden Administration, US immigration policies do continue to separate families. US immigration policy continues to be a disaster, with […]
Jews in the Woods
I had only known urban or suburban living until I moved to Vermont. Having grown up in Montreal in the suburban shtetl that is ironically called Cote-Saint-Luc, I moved to the west coast, then New York City, and finally, to Boston for rabbinical school at Hebrew College. Rural living was as foreign to me as a New York bagel (I am a Montrealer after all, and we know our bagels are the best in the world), but almost 10 years later, there’s just no going back to urban life. While pollsters and their analysts may bemoan the crumbling of Jewish life across North America, I can tell you that, in rural Vermont, Jewish living is thriving with great potential for more meaningful engagement. It is […]
Re-Thinking “Spiritual” Communities—Jewish Cohousing
Jews love community. We pray in groups (minyanim). We study in pairs (chevruta). We eat and celebrate together in joyous gatherings (smachot). Historically, Jews also typically lived in community. We stayed together as a people through persecution in Biblical times and dispersion in diaspora by living connectedly in Jewish villages, neighborhoods, and yes, even shtetls. We returned from exile and established kibbutzim and moshavim, close-knit Israeli communities where neighbors did all manner of things together, from draining swamps and farming to eating meals and raising kids. We came to the U.S. and created a thriving Jewish village on the Lower East Side. Community has sustained us; it is in our bones. But today, most Jews don’t live in community. Our lives, in particular our Jewish […]
Rethinking “spiritual” communities—Jewish women’s wisdom circles
In 2018, after a fall full of Jewish holidays, six women sat around a kitchen table in Washington, D.C. to answer two questions: What are Jewish women* missing and needing in a communal setting most urgently in this moment? And how do we ensure that the structure of “Jewish community” is operating as a tool to empower individual women by coming together as a collective? These two questions formed the backbone of SVIVAH, and inform our programming to this day. We gathered women from across the greater Washington DC area and centered the conversations between the people in the room, using our fantastic educators as connectors and facilitators, rather than as centerpieces. We decided that one of SVIVAH’s pillars needed to be a commitment to […]
Rethinking ‘spiritual’ communities — a Jewish eco-village
The Living Tree Alliance (LTA) is a Jewish cohousing village in central Vermont that weaves together a residential community with a working homestead and a nonprofit educational center. The idea took shape in 1997 when, on our second date, my future husband Craig and I realized that we shared a dream of living in an intentional community, intimately connected to ecology and spirituality. For the next 10 years, Craig and I nourished our vision for LTA, developing practical skills while following our hearts. After apprenticing on an organic CSA with an affordable housing initiative on the West Coast, we made our way back to the Northeast to be closer to family. We were fortunate to meet the Davises, an experienced farming couple with three beautiful […]
Creativity as a Window Into All That Can Be
Recently, my three-year-old began the splendid quest to understand the world around him, with the word “why” now the most commonly spoken word and question in our house. I will admit, it can be exhausting, the seemingly endless echo of this one-word question. There are times when I feel like I’ve run out of answers, that I don’t know enough, and that I don’t have the energy to dig into the questions with him. But ultimately, I continue to find myself in awe and inspired at Netta’s shameless and persistent curiosity; at his humble admission that he does not know and at his yearning to be filled with new knowing. In one of the infamous dreams in Torah, Jacob sees a stairway extending from the […]
Between the Pulpit and the Stage
As rabbinic school enrollment has dropped dramatically over the past number of years, it seems that fewer and fewer young people are looking to make a career in Jewish spiritual leadership. While some have posited that the non-denominational rabbinical schools are faring better than the others, there is still an overall decrease in those currently training as rabbis, which raises the question of what this will mean for the future of Jewish communal institutions. Several solutions have been offered, including lowering tuition for rabbinical schools as well as urging more experienced rabbis to mentor young people toward a career in the rabbinate. Something that is often missing from this discourse is an acknowledgment of the sacrifices we often ask of rabbis and other clergy who […]
Experiencing Shiva with A Sacred Fire
Growing up in an observant Jewish community, attending a shiva gathering was not an unusual occurrence. When I first became a congregational rabbi, I discovered that many people in my community had no experience attending a shiva minyan. We began educating people about the power of this gathering following the funeral of a close loved one. What we discovered was that every time someone had a significant loss and experienced the soul comfort of a shivagathering, they became committed to and strong advocates for shiva gatherings for others. Now, thirty years later, my community understands the sacredness and the power of this essential communal support. And still, I often feel that once the evening prayer service portion of the shiva is concluded – and this […]
Mishkan Chicago: The Growing Pains of a Synagogue Start-Up
One of the climactic moments of the Torah comes at the end of the book of Exodus when, after a long process of assembling the materials for and constructing the mishkan, the presence of God comes to fill this sacred meeting place that the Israelites have created in the center of their camp. One could make a compelling case that we should end the story here. From the middle of Genesis to the closing chapters of Exodus, our ancestors have transitioned from a small, extended family to a relatively large, multi-ethnic people – a “mixed multitude” that has journeyed from slavery, to redemption, to revelation. It’s a good (and happy) ending. Yet the Torah contains another three books, whose narrative arc will carry us through […]