Yoffie: More Shabbat, More Dialogue, More Health Care, More Israel
This week, the lay leadership (and most of the professional leadership) of the Union for Reform Judaism converged on San Diego, CA for the 69th (heh heh) Biennial. Basically, this is the big conference where Reform leaders educate themselves and each other, meet to talk about pressing issues, conduct the business of the Reform movement, and launch new products and initiatives.
Some Biennial news bites:
• Delegates (or, rather, anyone who managed to be at this morning’s Shabbat services) got to take home their own copy of the new siddur, Mishkan T’filah, which is now — after quite a few delays — officially out and available for temples or individuals to purchase. Fully discussing the new siddur would take a separate post, but I think it’s fair to say that most people here are pretty excited about it.
• Michael J. Fox received the Eisendrath Bearer of Light award for his activist work. People seemed to be inspired by his speech. I rode in an elevator with him when he was leaving his hotel to go to the award reception thing. He is, indeed, short.
• URJ Press and the Women of Reform Judaism (the movement’s sisterhood wing) released a new women’s Torah commentary. It is a hefty book and is the product of some serious scholarship. I don’t know who’s going to use it (and for what), but the buzz is that it’s a good thing.
Of course, one of the big highlights was the traditional Shabbat morning sermon from Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the URJ. In these sermons, Yoffie basically picks some big issues that the Union should be focusing on, and then unveils initiatives and programs that the Union is embarking on in order to address them. You can read the whole sermon (which took him an hour to deliver) here, but here are the big points, with some commentary:
