Entering Paradise: Going Deeper into Covenantal Community

Rabbi David Baum 0 Comments

I will never forget my first Rosh Hashanah sermon nine years ago at my congregation, Shaarei Kodesh. I was fresh out of rabbinical school, all starry-eyed and wet-behind-the-ears, energetic and optimistic. For my very first High Holiday sermon, I wanted to present a compelling vision for our community. I spoke about a concept called “covenantal community,”which I had developed from congregation-based, community organizing experiences while in rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary through the Seminary Leadership Project through JOIN for Justice. I began by speaking about social media’s troubling effect on our human connections. While social media platforms were not as ubiquitous in 2009 as they are today, people were beginning to glimpse their irresistible grasp over our ordinary lives. This is how I described […]

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Hope in Times of Decline

Robert Leventhal 0 Comments

A common complaint among today’s synagogue leaders concerns the significant decline in membership and attendance in recent years. It is no surprise that congregational leaders are searching for a “silver bullet” that will bring people in. Many leaders long for the “good old days” of the 1950’s, when many of their synagogues were being built. At that time, Jews wanted to belong to houses of worship like those of their Protestant neighbors. Families attended these congregations together, and kids were raised to feel obligated to carry on that affiliation. Today young families are less connected to religion. Many are distrustful of institutions and are not sure they should be burdened to maintain those they did not create – institutions with high clergy salaries, large buildings, […]

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Being Jewish and Owning Privilege

Rabbi Dev Noily 1 Comment

For as long as I can remember, pursuing justice has been a central part of Jewish communal life. But my understanding of how we pursue justice in the American Jewish community is shifting, especially around the relationship that white Jews have with historic and current structures of white supremacy. Maybe because my father and grandparents were immigrants and spoke with accents, I never quite felt “American”. Or maybe I felt like I was American – but I didn’t feel that American history was really my history, or that American culture is really my culture, or that the American story was my story. My story was somewhere across the sea, sung in a minor key, transmitted through recipes for apple cake and Shabbos candlesticks and tales […]

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I am a Rabbi, and I Was Arrested on Capitol Hill While Protesting For a Clean DREAM Act

Rabbi Barbara Penzner 0 Comments

I joined 100 Jewish community leaders from around the country last week in the rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building. Organized by Bend the Arc Jewish Action, we marched in together, many in Jewish ritual garb, sat down, and sang about building a world of compassion. When the U.S. Capitol Police warned us that we were breaking the law and would be charged with obstruction and “incommoding,” we had a ready response. We sang “We Shall Not Be Moved.” My own arrest was shown on MSNBC, reporting our action live to a million viewers and zooming in on the zip ties that the U.S. Capitol police put on my wrists.  It took the police forty minutes to move us all and we continued singing down […]

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It is Called “Covenantal Community”

Rabbi Sid Schwarz 0 Comments

We should appreciate David Cygielman for introducing the broad eJP audience to the notion of communal “thickness” in his 11/13/17 post. As was noted in the response by Rabbi Michael Holzman, this is not a new concept. Well before the David Brooks’ column in the New York Times, sociologists have sought ways to measure the depth of connection between the people who make up any given social system. The idea of thickness was first introduced into the lexicon of the social sciences by Clifford Geertz in his classic study, The Interpretation of Cultures, which was published in 1973. In my view, it is essential that those who care about the future health of the American body politic focus their attention on the nature of community. […]

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Synagogues Are Not Helpless

Rabbi Joshua Rabin 0 Comments

Synagogues make easy scapegoats. For over a generation, the synagogue has been propped up as a symptom and symbol of everything not working about Judaism today. At the same time, unless Jewish communal leaders, professionals, and philanthropists consider the opportunity cost of speaking about synagogues as institutions incapable of redemption, far too many congregations will lose the ability to approach the challenges of the stormy present with an optimistic and resilient mindset. I travel across North America to work with synagogue leaders in my role at the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism (USCJ).  While I am always energized to meet synagogue leaders who feel optimistic and energetic about the future, sadly collective optimism is the exception, not the rule. Of course, it is difficult to […]

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Look for Best Principles, Not Best Practices

Amy Asin 0 Comments

(Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared on the Union for Reform Judaism’s blog, Inside Leadership.) Everyone wants an easy answer: “Tell us what to do, and we’ll do it!” synagogue leaders often plead – but given congregations’ varied histories, cultures, demographics, physical spaces, and resources, no single solution will work for every community. Even if it did, given the complex challenges presented by a fast-moving and rapidly changing world, a simple plug-in solution is unlikely to work for long. Instead of trying to replicate best practices that seemed to work for another community, congregations should seek “best principles” to guide them in the work specific to their community’s needs. This shift from seeking practices to seeking principles is one of eight principles that drive strong […]

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Makom NY: A New Model of Jewish Community

Rabbi Deborah Bravo and Sherry Gutes 0 Comments

Long Island, NY is one of the quintessential suburban Jewish outposts, developing in the years following WWII. There are many synagogues of varying denominations, committed clergy and people in lay and professional leadership who do great work and are passionate and committed to serving this community. We all know that the Jewish landscape has changed and continues to evolve, yet many synagogues are simply not set up to address these changes as rapidly as needed. Local demographics have changed, most especially over the past 10 years. Every year, there are synagogues that merge or have had to close their doors completely. While there are notable exceptions in this area, most synagogues report diminished numbers of students in their religious schools, reduced membership rosters and lower […]

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Pharoah in your Zip Code: Bringing Some Chesed to Prisons

Rabbi Michael Lezak 0 Comments

“From out of the meitzar, from out of a very narrow or confined space, I called out to God. You God answered me from a place of vast expansiveness.” -Psalm 118:5 It’s two days before Pesach here in Marin County. The Mitzvah Kitchen volunteers at Congregation Rodef Sholom are feverishly preparing matzah ball soup, brisket and all the fixings for 110 men at San Quentin Prison, three miles south of our congregation. It’s a massive effort, with last minute trips to the market, feverishly purchasing food and containers. I get a call from Rabbi Paul, the chaplain at San Quentin, who says to me, “Michael, they found some weapons here and the entire prison is on lockdown. No one is allowed to leave their cell. […]

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Preparing Rabbis to be Change Agents

Rabbi Sid Schwarz 0 Comments

Last winter I was at a first-of-its-kind gathering in Austin, TX. The leaders of more than ten national religious denominations came together to explore why their congregations were losing membership so rapidly over the last decade. The gathering included leadership from the Methodists, Episcopalians, United Church of Christ, Lutherans, Unitarian Universalists as well as top leadership from the Union for Reform Judaism, United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism and the Reconstructionist Movement. There were also a handful of consultant/thought leadership types who have created programs designed to better equip clergy to get ahead of the curve on the rapid changes in American society that are at the root of the declining market share of conventional religious institutions. One of the most important presentations at the gathering […]

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