Re-Imagining Synagogues and Communities, Part 1

rabbi rachel weiss 0 Comments

In the 450-household congregation that I serve, the Jewish Reconstructionist Congregation (JRC) of Evanston, IL, some of our members have been part of our community since 1964. Having broken away from an urban Conservative synagogue in search of a more intellectually honest liturgy and grassroots leadership, they created a congregation in suburban living rooms and middle school cafeterias, eventually constructing a building that embodies the green values of the environmental movement. They sought a community that would be a blend of their spiritual, intellectual, social and political needs. Some of our members under 35 grew up in this synagogue, having reaped the fruit of the first generation’s seeds. They are seeking a more spiritually engaged yet still intellectually honest liturgy. They are drawn more to […]

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A New Jewish World, Yearning to be Born

Rishe Groner 0 Comments

One recent Friday evening, I received many varied invitations. I could walk thirty minutes to Clinton Hill, to a Shabbat dinner at the home of Rabbi Sara Luria, mentor and friend, who runs an experiment in home-based Judaism, Beloved Brooklyn, in her home. There would be an eclectic crowd, great conversations, and a deep sense of community. Another friend suggested I join them at a popup Kabbalat Shabbat, fusing traditional music with spiritual feminist chants from the Hebrew priestess community Kohenet. On the other side of town, friends in Bushwick had invited me to come hang out in their artist’s loft, sharing food and jamming to songs of Shabbos. I had already decided against joining the grand Limmud Shabbaton in Manhattan, though it too was […]

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Rabbinic Activism and Raising Tzedek as a Congregational Value

Barbara Penzner 0 Comments

  Outside of our modest synagogue in a middle-class Irish-Catholic neighborhood in Boston hangs a blue banner with white lettering. In Hebrew and English it reads: Tzedek tzedek tirdof – Justice, Justice You Shall Pursue.   To some the banner may seem uncontroversial. Yet the process of choosing the language, and even agreeing to place any statement outside of our building, was slow and contentious. Our congregation had never placed a banner on our building in seventy years of existence, except for announcements of High Holy Days or the opening of our Hebrew School.   For twenty-three years, as rabbi of Temple Hillel B’nai Torah (HBT), I have witnessed our emergence as a social justice congregation. From early visioning sessions that included “Tikkun Olam” as […]

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Escaping Egypt, Engaging Jews

Rabbi Dan Horwitz 0 Comments

It’s the Saturday evening before Passover. You find yourself and a group of eight friends entering an airy, well-lit loft in a hip neighborhood in Metro Detroit. You’ve been given the objectives and your mission: to find all of the items to fill the Seder plate sitting empty on the large Passover table set in the middle of the room. You and your friends try a sip of horseradish infused vodka before the clock starts, which puts you in the mood not only for Passover, but for a challenge. That’s when you hear it: Click. The sound of being locked into a room with only 45 minutes to escape. Hundreds of young adults in Metro Detroit experienced this moment of excitement in the week leading […]

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You Got Rid of What?—Synagogues and Money

Rabbi Corey Helfand 4 Comments

A mentor and trusted colleague of mine from rabbinical school gave me one piece of advice before entering the pulpit: don’t change anything in the first year.  While I took his message to heart for just about everything, there was one change that had to happen, even if I had only been at my new pulpit for a month. The story went something like this.  On the High Holidays, it was the practice of the finance committee to stand at the door, waiting, until our congregants were just greeted and welcomed. And then this happened to anyone who had not yet paid one-third of their dues before the holidays, or those who were in arrears from the past year: The finance committee members would take […]

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Pittsburgh and the “Awe” of Safety

Rabbi Josh Lesser 0 Comments

In a shtetl outside Vitebsk, Belarus, there was a young, learned man. In the wake of increasing violence and with parental encouragement, he saved money to journey to the US. Uneasy, he set out for a port in Latvia. He arrived a day before the ship was leaving. Eager, yet anxious, he found a place to make his bed on the docks. When he awoke, he realized to his horror that his pack, his money, and his possessions had been stolen. Dejected, he cried out in prayer. As he wandered aimlessly, he felt alone and in despair. But then he saw a sign. He thought he must be dreaming and like the ladder that in Jacob’s dream; it was a way up and a way […]

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Cultivating Communities of Obligation: An Alternate Path to Commandedness

Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum 0 Comments

I have distinct memories of my rabbinical school interview more than 20 years ago. I sailed smoothly through discussions about my Jewish background and why I wanted to go to rabbinical school, and then squirmed uncomfortably as I struggled to answer a theological question posed to me around the topic of commandedness. While my religious practice put me squarely inside the range of acceptable observance at JTS, I struggled mightily with the “v’tzivanu” (“commanded us”) language of blessings. I had (and still have) a hard time believing that the reason for me to do any of these things was because they were what God commanded; I have never had such a sense of clarity about God’s will that I feel certain that I know what […]

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Re-imagining Synagogue Worship

Rabbi Adam Kligfeld 3 Comments

It started as a thought-bubble that entered my consciousness as I shared an immersive, spiritually delicious, musically-uplifting and content-rich gathering with colleagues in one of those wonderfully odd underground spaces in Jerusalem in which it would almost be hard for an experience not to be uniquely memorable. The question in my mind was, “why can’t this moment, or at least a cousin of it, be brought to and experienced back home? At shul? In a good-old-fashioned American synagogue?” Heschel’s call to the American Jewish leadership to resurrect a moribund, utterly predictable, spiritually vacuous standard synagogue prayer experience is already over fifty years old. Start-ups and DIYers and pockets of inventiveness within all the movements have made meaningful strides. But it seemed that for me, and […]

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Synagogues: Re-Mixing the Program

Rabbi Ben Goldstein 0 Comments

I have spent the last twenty years working in synagogues in different capacities. First as a Hebrew school teacher and youth director, and the last eight years as a rabbi. I have witnessed firsthand the benefits and challenges that synagogues face today. I have seen the ability of community to help those who are suffering, and the struggle of even large synagogues to meet the needs of a daily minyan. While I am not a demographic expert, I believe that there is an iceberg dead ahead for synagogues in North America. At the core of the problem with synagogues is how the life of the synagogue is oriented. Most, if not all, North American synagogues revolve their weeks and calendars around Shabbat services. If you […]

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My Road to the “Open Dor”

Rabbi Lori Shapiro 0 Comments

The road to creating Open Temple is over two decades long.  As someone who didn’t grow up with any Jewish identity, an unaffiliated Jew on the “periphery,” countless hours, weeks and well, years, were spent trying to penetrate the world of Jewish life.  In the years of my nascent curiosity, when I walked up to the front door of any synagogue around the world, it was usually locked.  When I finally found a door to enter, I walked into the wrong section (my early journey was in the Orthodox world, years before I determined that denominational Judaism was a 19th century Jewish innovation, and that this diverse collective is Judaism).  Once I finally found the women’s section, I opened the prayerbook upside down and backwards.  […]

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