by BZ · Wednesday, May 7th, 2008
As Israel prepares to celebrate 60 years of ambiguity in this department, it’s been a big week for issues of religion and state. And here’s the latest news:
Israel’s Reform Jews dedicated the first non-Orthodox synagogue to receive state funding on Monday, after a long court battle that accented the rift among streams of Judaism in Israel.
The Reform Yozma congregation fought for the better part of a decade for state funding equivalent to what Orthodox congregations receive. After arguing their case twice before the Supreme Court, they got what they wanted: a prefabricated, two-room building on a plot of land in the center of Modiin, a new town between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
“This is a substantial step in recognizing different streams of Judaism in the state of Israel,” said Rabbi Kinneret Shiryon, who leads the 240-family congregation. The government has long funded Orthodox synagogues, even paying rabbi’s salaries.
The Reform movement is trumpeting this as a huge victory. And I can see why it would feel good to finally get a piece of the pie. But I’m not feeling so great about it. I want to see a thriving liberal Jewish culture in Israel, but I fear that this development, insofar as it sets a precedent, is dangerous for liberal Judaism in the long run. (And if it doesn’t set a precedent, then it’s an insignificant anomaly.)
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by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, May 5th, 2008
Week Three, Day two:
Gevurah of Tiferet
According to ynet, a Petach Tikvah rabbinical court, after hiring a woman as secretary, sent her away in tears after humiliating her and threatening to curse her (seriously!) because … well, because she was female.
Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann heard about it and decided to intervene, ordering,
that the worker should be returned to work on Monday, and instructed the director-general of the rabbinical courts, Rabbi Eliyahu Ben-Dahan, to escort the woman during her first day at work in order to make sure she was being greeted appropriately.
Friedmann also sent a harsh letter to the Petah Tikva court’s presiding judge, Rabbi Baruch Shimon Salomon, stressing that the rabbinical court was obligated to follow the laws of the State of Israel, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Law that prohibits discrimination based on gender.
The minister warned that should the court fail to accept the worker, sanctions would be taken against it.
What I want to know is how they hired her without figuring to that she was a woman? Or did they hire her and then decided that women were sin-bearing D6 monsters? What?
Well, but OTOH, the rest of the Hareidi world is working on other important measures. Like banning snacks with pictures of the Israeli flag on them. And boycotting Independence day celebrations because they might lead to mixed dancing. Who wrote this punchline?
Finally, more on the Drukman case: “National Religious Party Chairman MK Zevulun Orlev announced Sunday he plans to propose a bill calling for stripping the rabbinical courts of all authority pertaining to conversions.”
by feygele · Monday, April 28th, 2008
They’re not threatening any more: this month, two Toronto-area “traditional Conservative” congregations have voted to leave the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. (Another four voted to remain in the USCJ, while others have votes scheduled for the next few weeks/months.)
[T]he Conservative movement’s shift to the left - including the 2006 decision by the movement’s Jewish Theological Seminary to accept openly gay rabbinical students - stands in contrast to the attitudes of Toronto’s typically more traditional congregations. Of the synagogues [who have voted or will be voting], for example, only Beit Rayim is fully egalitarian.
What about the youth whose groups are now no longer affiliated with USY? Some of these synagogues will “hopefully” be working together “provide quality, innovative youth programming.” Unfortunate, because one of the draws of USY (BBYO, NIFTY, NCSY, etc.) is meeting new people from other cities.
Read more.
by zt · Friday, April 25th, 2008
It is fairly well known that, in Israel, many recognize and observe seven days of pesach and a single seder whereas, outside of Israel, many recognize 8 days of pesach and two seders as proper observance.
Where did the extra day come from?
A piece over at my jewish learning does a good job explaining:
The Jewish calendar is lunar. Over 2,000 years ago, a council of rabbis from the Sanhedrin, the ancient legislative and judicial body, held special sessions in Jerusalem at the end of each lunar month to receive witnesses to the first sliver of the new moon. Because a lunar cycle is approximately 29 days long, it was no mystery when the new moon should appear, but the Sanhedrin still declared months and holidays only on the basis of these witnesses. …
Once the sighting was legitimated, the rabbis declared the next day Rosh Hodesh, the beginning of the new month. Originally, beacon fires would be set on mountaintops to spread the word to distant Jewish communities already living in far away places such as Egypt and Babylon. Watchers on faraway hills set their beacon fires as soon as they saw them, continuing the relay “until one could behold the whole of the Diaspora before him like a mass of fire” (Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 2:4)… Celebrating festivals for an extra day would ensure that, regardless of whatever confusion reigned about the exact start of the new month, at least one day of their celebration would be on the correct day.
Okay, that makes sense but we started to switch to a rule-based fixed-arithmetic lunisolar calendar system after the destruction of the second temple. That made the days designed to prevent error obsolete since everyone everywhere in the world used the same system and derived the days similarly. It no longer mattered how close one was to the Sanhedrin so why keep the extra days?
There are two major answers.
Our own BZ’s:
At the end of Beitzah 4b that issue is addressed. “Now that we know the fixed new month, what’s the reason for doing two days?” The answer there is hizaharu b’minhag avoteichem (be careful about your ancestors’ minhag), because in the future there might be a decree preventing us from keeping the calendar…And we can even agree on the value of minhag avoteinu (see Beitzah 4b), and you can follow the minhag of your ancestors who kept 2 days, while I’ll follow the minhag of my ancestors who have been Reform for at least five generations.
The other common answer is given by a Rabbi from Aish here:
So why was a second day Yom Tov added? In order to make a distinction, to add to the Jewish awareness that one is living in the Diaspora and does not claim permanent residence in the Holy Land.
BZ’s answer to Minhag Avoteinu is compelling as is the issue that there has ceased to be a consistent mihag in the diaspora. The Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, and Conservative movements have all offered decisions permitting the use of a 7-day pesach. Here is some CCAR (Reform) analysis. The Cons and Recon movements both provide flexibility for local congregations but the result is that a majority of American Jews, and nearly all Israeli Jews fall under a 7-day authority. Many have been in such a situation for generations.
Now to respond to the idea that we should have an extra seder to remember we aren’t in Israel…
Was anyone really confused? In case you were here are ten ways to conclude you are in the US rather than in Israel that have nothing to do with extra days of passover.
10:The falafel is overpriced and underspiced.
9: Municipal services are transparent and efficient.
8: Sunday is for football not school.
7: Teacher strikes are generally limited to a few days, max.
6: People talk slowly and get uncomfortable with interruptions (supreme court excepted).
5: Holocaust jokes are rare and usually generate discomfort.
4: People have difficulty making political and religious assumptions based on the type of kippah a person is wearing. Many can’t remember the word and use “beanie” or “skull cap” instead.
3: Though people talk about God non-stop in government there aren’t religious parties associated with single religious approached.
2: Nation’s founders where individual rather than collective farmers.
1: Look around. No occupations and settlements for miles in any direction? You probably aren’t in Israel.*
*If you are, time for new bifocals.
by masthead · Monday, March 31st, 2008
Some stories have been floating around the media with varying levels of accuracy, but Jewschool has obtained the full (or fuller) story from reliable sources. The real story here isn’t about gay and lesbian rabbis in the Conservative movement (that was last year’s story); it’s about the lengths to which people and institutions will go out of fear, demonizing their own students and losing all perspective.
The story begins a year ago this week, when the Jewish Theological Seminary announced that it would begin admitting openly gay and lesbian students to its rabbinical and cantorial schools. (The American Jewish University, formerly the University of Judaism, is now also admitting gay and lesbian students.) One year later, to mark the anniversary, JTS held a program on Wednesday called Hazak Hazak V’nithazek: Celebrating Strength Through Inclusion, a full day of study, conversation, and celebration.
Several JTS students studying this year at Machon Schechter (the Conservative rabbinical school in Jerusalem where American Conservative rabbinical students are required to spend a year) wanted to participate in the celebration going on in New York in some way, and since they couldn’t attend physically, they organized a small parallel event in Israel. According to email invitations sent to the Conservative Yeshiva and other rabbinical students in Jerusalem, the students invited Yonatan Gher, former Director of Communications for the Masorti (Israeli Conservative) movement, incoming director of the Jerusalem Open House, and a member of Masorti congregations his whole life (and recently profiled in the New York Times because he and his partner are having a child via a surrogate mother in India), to speak over lunch about his personal experiences as a member of a GLBT family in the Masorti movement.
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by BZ · Tuesday, March 25th, 2008
The Union for Reform Judaism has announced that its daily 10 Minutes of Torah email (with over 20,000 subscribers) is making every Tuesday “Mishnah Day”. This weekly Mishnah study will include Hebrew text, English translation, and commentary, and begins next week at the beginning, with Masechet Berachot.
As a blogger who has been both a frequent defender of Reform Judaism and critic of the Reform movement, I think this is excellent news. This is exactly the direction that the Reform movement should be going in. If done well. “Mishnah Day” will enable people to engage directly with the primary sources that constitute the foundation for all subsequent Jewish tradition (in any denomination) while looking at these texts through a perspective infused with progressive Jewish values, and will give people the tools to make informed decisions about their individual and communal practices.
To subscribe by email or RSS, go to the website and select “Tuesday”. (It still says “Hebrew Connections” right now, but I assume they’ll fix that.)
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, March 2nd, 2008
Because I am personally opposed to ever agreeing with anyone, I find myself, often, embroiled in interesting discussions with all sorts of folks. Over at JCarrot, I am having an interesting comments thread with Ben Murane (our own KFJ) about (I think) the difference between who is Jewish, and what is Jewish. The difficult part of this, of course, is that it’s not a completely separate question.
Who one is affects what one does, and the reverse, as well.
I recall a famous quote by (the eminently quotable) Kurt Vonnegut, Jr:
“To be is to do”–Socrates.
“To do is to be”–Jean-Paul Sartre.
“Do be do be do”–Frank Sinatra.
Er, I’m getting off-topic here. Anyhow, so Over at the NYT , there is what is apparently another discussion of the ongoing rift caused by the stringent versus loose approach to answering the question of “who is a Jew.”
The question for me is pretty fraught: I do believe that being this exclusive is ultimately untenable -but at the same time, there does need to be a certain level of internal definition of who gets to be considered “in.”
The question remaining, of course, as to who is in enough, or how in they have to be, in order to make such determinations.
That’s why I’m less interested in talking about who is Jewish, than what is Jewish. If one can agree on the latter, at least in broad terms, than the former can be fixed in almost any case.
Professionally, of course, I have dedicated myself to a particular kind of Judaism, and I do think that meaning inheres in Judaism in particular acts, practices and disciplines, and that there is a teleological reason for doing these practices. This doesn’t invalidate other kinds of doing, but it does mean that not all doing can be accepted as within the boundaries of Judaism. And in truth, I can’t really believe that anyone truly believes that anything goes. No matter how loose your boundaries are, there must be some, otherwise names become meaningless. If everything is “within” then one simply ceases to be - in simply a logical sense.
Anyhow, I invite others to pop in on the conversation, here or there.
by Rooftopper Rav · Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
Unbelievable, but sadly unsurprising. Maybe they don’t teach plate tectonics in Shas schools.
Today’s Haaretz reports:
Shas MK Shlomo Benizri blamed gays Wednesday for the earthquakes that have shaken the region in recent months, telling a Knesset plenum debate on local authorities’ earthquake preparedness that government action on homosexuality would do much to prevent the tremors.
Benizri said the government should not make do with reinforcing buildings, but should instead pass less legislation that encourages homosexuality and other “perversions like adoptions by lesbian couples.”
The ultra-Orthodox party MK invoked passages from the Talmud and the Gemarrah to support his claims.
The Jerusalem Post adds further details:
Homosexuals caused Israel’s last earthquake, Shas MK Shlomo Benizri said Wednesday.
During a special Knesset session on earthquakes, Benizri said he proposed that the Knesset “find a way to prevent mishkav zachar [sexual relations between men], and thus save [us] a lot of earthquakes.”
MK Ophir Paz-Pines (Labor) responded to Benizri’s statements by saying that MK Nissim Ze’ev should be banned from the Shas faction because of his influence on his party members.
Last week, Ze’ev told faction members that “homosexuals were poisoning society,” and that “homolesbianism legitimized the state of Israel’s ’self destruction.’”
At least Benizri seems to hate pluralistically. A bunch of years ago he seems to have made the news for complaining about foreign workers and saying, “”I just don’t understand why a restaurant needs a slant-eye to serve me my meal.” In March 2006 Benizri was charged by the State Prosecutor’s Office with accepting bribes worth millions of shekels and breaching the public trust.
Lovely.
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Sunday, February 17th, 2008
Recent postings on the uterus problem (see here) have been right to question the tshuvah that recently was issued from the bowels of the CJLS. I’m sorry that I got scooped on this because it’s a long standing argument that I have been having with my teachers (whom I respect very much, despite our disagreements) for years now. First of all, here is the URL for the actual tshuvah. I recommend reading it.
Secondly, I want to give kudos to Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ and Rabbi Jason Miller’s comments on the post at jspot. Both of them note that there need to be more social supports put in place for people to have children, Rabbi Jacobs noting:
–Would rabbinical students be more willing to have kids while in grad school if the rabbinical schools offered on-site child care?
–Would it be easier for Jewish women professionals (and men) to participate in professional conferences (such as the RA, from which I just returned, and where I bumped into a few poor women trying to nurse on the floor of the bathroom), if these conferences offered nursing rooms, child care, or other accommodations? (a shout out to the Wexner Foundation for being a leader in this regard)
–Would Jewish women professionals be able more easily to “have it all” if more Jewish institutions offered flex time, family health insurance, on-site child care, and paid for child care when the mom or dad is on the road?
And Rabbi Miller adding:
— not just for the women. As a 26-year-old rabbinical student whose wife was working full-time, I often felt the challenge of sitting in a class while bottle-feeding my baby son. An on-site day-care facility at JTS would have been an important resource.
He also on his own blog made some comments.
(Although I do want to note that I can’t imagine why any women were nursing on the floor of the bathroom, since the hotel in question is luxurious to the point of ridiculousness, and the WC had an anteroom with, I’m told, quite comfortable chairs and, I’m told by a nursing friend, the heat turned way up so that it was a perfectly comfortable place to strip down and nurse if necessary. Of course, the very luxuriousness of the hotel was apparently rather a sore point amongst the many, many Conservative rabbis who lack large convention stipends or, indeed, any, such as those who aren’t pulpit rabbis, or who are, but whose pulpits are more modest, say, under 500 members. A sore point indeed).
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by Kung Fu Jew · Saturday, January 5th, 2008
The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College published a working paper which reexamines the annual AJC opinion surveys for the past seven years. It’s a thorough fisking of sorts of the information the AJC pumps out regarding peace proposal opinions. Even with caveats to the study’s limits, Perlmann has some interesting data to report.
Highlights:
– The AJC surveys have been limited to people to identify as Jewish religiously.
– No socioeconomic or demographic factors dramatically affect any opinions on the West Bank…
– …Except orthodoxy. Orthodox Jews reject by 93% varying compromises around peace. For the other 9/10ths of American Jewry, denomination accounts for very little differences in opinion.
– Within the non-Orthodox denominations, opinion is divided in even thirds: accept all compromises, accept all but Jerusalem, and accept nothing.
– The older you are, the more you are emotionally attached to Israel…
– …Yet, the older you are, the more ready you are to compromise on return of the West Bank.
– 51% who report Jewishness as being “very important” do not report a “very close” attachment to Israel. American Jews appear able to separate their feelings for Jewish religion from the Jewish state. Gasp!
– New York City (or other metro area) Jews aren’t any more conservative than Jews in other places, once you remove the Orthodox contingent.
– Emotional attachment to Israel, in non-Orthodox respondants, does not correlate with rejection of peace proposals.
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by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Thursday, January 3rd, 2008
Earlier this week, we posted a little American trouble for the Lubavitch (or perhaps it’s the end of the trouble, hard to know how to frame it).
Now, there’s more. Apparently this is their fifteen minutes. Or something.
First, England’s Jewish Chronicle notes that England’s Lubavitch movement is in some serious economic trouble: apparently because of pouring an enormous amount of money into a new club for young Jews that they opened this year. Apparently nearly all the donations they received this year went into said club, “including ‘almost all’ of this year’s £750,000 yield,” leaving them £1.5 million (that’s 2,959,951 dollars American) in debt - and of course, they’ve had to close the club, in addition to leaving their teachers unpaid since April (although donors have now stepped in to pay the teachers’ wages).
In Israel, though, they’ve got different problems. Or, perhaps it’s the same problems that they’ve got here. Apparently it’s just gotten out that there may be problems with the beliefs of some Lubavitchers regarding their former (or not) rebbe. The Jerusalem Post reports that a former FSU immigrant who was not Jewish , but was eligible under the law of return, had become interested in converting and studied in a meshichist Jerusalem ChABAD yeshiva.
About two weeks ago, he appeared before a beit din (rabbinic court) for his conversion. He had nearly finished, when one of the rabbis asked him if he believed that the rebbe was the messiah. He answered yes, that that was what he had been taught, and the court refused to convert him.
The JPost says, ”
… a source in the State Conversion Authority said that at least two leading religious Zionist rabbis ruled that messianic Chabad was beyond the pale of normative Jewish belief.
“They [messianic Chabad Hassidim] attribute to him supernatural powers years after he passed away. That is not Judaism. It’s something else.”
Chief Sephardi Rabbi Shlomo Amar will be asked to decide this weighty theological question and in the process pass judgment on thousands of members of the messianic stream within Chabad Hassidism who believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, is the messiah.
This according to the article; I have heard an (unsubstantiated as of yet) rumour that, in fact, Rabbi Amar has ruled against the conversion applicant, and thus, essentially declared meshichist Lubavitch treif. I am curious as to what effect will this have on ChABAD: Is this a recognition that some beliefs are outside the pale, even if the holder of said beliefs has the outer appearance of Orthodox praxis? What effect will this have on the yeshivot that are still er, offering this perspective, either in Israel or the USA?
By the way, speaking of treif, Rubashkin (who is owned by the ChABAD Lubavitch Rubashkin family just to be on topic), has apparently had its teudat kashrut yanked by KAJ (HT to Failedmessiah)
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, December 31st, 2007
According to a study by the Israeli Masorti movement,…well, maybe you should see for yourself:
According to survey conducted by Masorti Movement in Israel, 87% of public support gender equality, but only 24% of seculars would attend synagogue more often if partitions separating men and women were removed…
Eighty-seven percent of the public believe that nominal gender equality is entirely justified, and 54% claim that Jewish tradition discriminates against women….39% are of the opinion that discrimination doesn’t exist, and another 4% claim that Judaism holds women above men.
Meanwhile, 24% of seculars and 18% of ‘traditional’ Israelis said that eliminating the gender barrier in places of worship would in fact make them more likely to attend prayer services.
OK: Not startling: gender inequality exists; startling: gender inequality doesn’t exist; not startling: most Israelis support gender equality, also not startling: only in theory. startling: the Masorti movement bothered with this study at all. What is it supposed to tell us, exactly?
I suppose the idea is to show that there’s a whole group of people out there for whom Masorti would be a godsend - and IMO, Masorti is making great strides among the Israeli and immigrant populations it Israel, but were they thinking that this would get the government to take them more seriously, or send money, or even help them fight off the more egregious exclusions of the hegemony in Israel?
Well, all the same, good luck!
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Monday, December 31st, 2007
New York’s supreme court ruled that two of the three main bodies of Chabad have the right to expel Congregation Lubavitch - the messianist faction- from the synagogue in the bottom of 770. Apparently this struggle has been going on for about 15 years (actually, this makes me feel much better - I hadn’t known that there was much of anything going on opposed to the crazier factions of the movement, which, from all accounts now make up, at least half of Chabad) but the suit stems from when some member/s of the messianist group defaced a plaque that referred to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson as “of blessed memory” because that’s not what Congregation Lubavitch believed was the current state of said rebbe.
From JTA
New York State’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and Agudas Chassidei Chabad, two of Chabad’s three main bodies, giving them the right to eject Congregation Lubavitch Inc. from the synagogue located in the basement of 770 and 784-788 Eastern Parkway, in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The sites represent the worldwide headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch.
In that first case, the court ruled in favor of Chabad’s leadership, declaring in June 2006 that Merkos and Agudas are the rightful owners of the entire property. The current suit was brought by Merkos and Agudas in order to give them the authority to physically remove the opposing congregation, and its four gabbais, or trustees, from the premises.
by BZ · Tuesday, December 25th, 2007
The slide in the picture, from Prof. Sylvia Barack Fishman’s presentation yesterday at the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute’s International Conference on Contemporary Reform Judaism, depicts a sentiment I’ve been warning about for years. This quote is from an interview with one of Prof. Fishman’s students at Brandeis, but she said that it was typical of many of her students. So I guess this means I wasn’t just crying wolf.
The two-day conference continues today and promises to be interesting, so if you’re in Jerusalem, stop by the Van Leer Institute (it’s free and open to the public), and if you’re not, you can tune in to the live web broadcast. I only caught a little bit of yesterday’s sessions, but I’ll have more time today since my Arabic class is cancelled (apparently most of the students are observing some sort of holiday or something), and I’ll be covering it for Jewschool.
Unlike the recent URJ biennial, this is not a conference put on by the Reform movement — this is an academic conference talking about Reform Judaism. And I must say that, in the limited time I was there yesterday, I found it quite refreshing to hear Reform Judaism discussed with respect, rather than either disdain or defensiveness.
No time to write more — I’m off to hear about “Halakhah and Ritual in Reform Judaism”. Perhaps I’ll see some of you there.
by LastTrumpet · Monday, December 24th, 2007
Daniel Burstyn, over at Sustainable Judaism, on the jumbotrons during davvening at the recent URJ Biennial:
Jumbotrons are all well and good for large gatherings of non-Halakhic Jews, like the Biennial and Craig Taubman’s Friday night live kind of things. They might be ok for other environments, like camp. Maybe when the Temple is rebuilt, there will be Jumbotrons.
But they really go against the grain of the “do it yourself” aspect of Judaism, as it has developed since the publication of the Jewish Catalog in the early 1970s.
…
If Joe or Jane Jew can’t walk onto the bima and run a worship service as well as s/he can run a committee meeting or an awards dinner, then something is broken. There should be no “little man behind the curtain,” nor flashy light show on the bima in Judaism.
Full story.
Amen!
I remember the jumbotrons and the pit band at Kabbalat Shabbat at the Biennial two years ago, and feeling like it was Shabbat: The Musical. More »
by Kol Ra'ash Gadol · Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
‘Course, that doesn’t appear to be what they’re looking for, anyway:
Grand describes how the group’s members help each other through divorce, job change, death and anything else that affects their lives.
“We all want the same thing — a connection to God, a sense that our lives are holy,” he said. “But some were afraid to use those words.”
Other men in the session talked about their loneliness, the difficulty of making friends and how rarely their sons ask them for advice.
“I think we go to poker games and play on softball leagues and help our buddies move because we hope we’ll have an ‘I-thou’ moment,” surmised Rabbi Dan Moskovitz of Temple Judea in Tarzana, Calif., editor of “The Still Small Voice,” a collection of Reform men’s essays just published by the URJ Press.”
Clearly none of these things could happen with women around. It’s just TOO embarrassing to talk about being human and wanting God with people who have breasts.
I don’t even know where to begin. I’ve always been opposed to separate women’s groups: Rosh Chodesh groups, whatever (Although healing circles, contrary to what the article says, aren’ just for women), found sisterhoods to have boring activities, preferring to play baseball and having barbecues (which is what all the men’s group’s in shul I know do, while the women are often snorting tea and discussing the moon). I’ve always had male friends - pretty much all my life had at least as many male friends as female. Never confused the guys I was dating with the ones I was friends with, never felt that friendships with guys were inherently different and always felt that separating off genders was asking for trouble. And guess what, I was right. At least that seems to be the excuse that the Reform movement is using, “but they did it first…..”
The Reform, who claim to see flagging numbers of boys are desperately grabbing at straws by trying to fix that problem under the assumption that 1. Boys would feel safer and better by not having girls around and that they’ll start showing up if they don’t have to share space with girls, and 2. That it reflects a social trend they need to cater to, rather than undermine.
This attempt to start men’s groups is not really news - they - and the Conservative movement oh, yeah and let’s not forget Robert Bly and his drums, have been experimenting with this for a while, even as women still have trouble getting higher paying jobs in the Jewish world, many Jewish institutions can’t be bothered to provide maternity (let alone parental) leave in most places, women rabbis still have trouble getting hired, and when they do it’s for smaller jobs and with fewer benefits, let alone salary, women lead very few philanthropic institutions, synagogue boards, and so on… shall I go on?
We have not arrived. Feminized my a**. More »
by TheBarkin · Saturday, December 15th, 2007
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:
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by BZ · Friday, December 14th, 2007
(Crossposted to Mah Rabu)
Last week I posted some initial thoughts on the Spiritual Communities Study survey results, and then ZT posted a second round. Since then, they’ve made some revisions to the report, incorporating suggestions from us and other bloggers, so the squeaky wheel has gotten the grease. As crazy as it sounds, I’m now posting a third round of commentary on the survey.
As Desh has pointed out, these results should silence those who claim that independent minyan participants are motivated by selfishness and narcissism, in contrast with conventional synagogues and their participants who are committed to the broader community. In addition to the data that Desh cites, the results show that independent minyan participants have higher “yes” rates than synagogue members on the questions “I have a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people” and “I have a special responsibility to take care of Jews in need around the world”. (The report didn’t list the results for the question “I have a Jewish responsibility to care for people in trouble (as with Darfur or Katrina)”, which would also be interesting to see.) Moreover, though there are no comparable numbers for synagogue members, the survey also shows that 95% of independent minyan participants have been invited to a Shabbat meal by someone in their community in the last year, and 86% have invited others. These results come within a few days of another study showing that people are leaving conventional congregations because this sense of community is missing. (Of course, this isn’t true of all synagogues. Kol hakavod to any community of whatever structure whose participants are committed to each other and to the larger world.)
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