Jewish Week reports on the growing phenomenon of Modern Orthodox teens keeping ‘Half Shabbos’ and texting on Shabbat both in private and also in full view of peers and event adults.
The article does note that the phase seems to end when many teens return from gap year in Israel when they frum out. I guess between episodes of getting blotto and into trouble, they wander into the wrong neighborhood on Shabbos, texting blithely away and get violently assault. Welcome to Mea Shearim… Frum satire also fisks…
Rabbi Morris’s thesis is “A 21st century Reform Judaism can no longer afford to have ‘personal choice’ as its core principle because it eclipses other more central Jewish values that are needed now more than ever.” And I certainly don’t take issue with those other Jewish values, including “an increased commitment to Jewish study” and “committed core of learned and deeply engaged liberal Jews whose lives revolve around the Hebrew calendar and who are immersed in the study and application of Jewish texts”. Yes, these are needed now more than ever. But I think he’s beating up on a straw man, and basing his argument on two unfounded claims:
1) “Personal choice” is the core principle of Reform Judaism.
2) “Personal choice” is to blame for the Reform movement’s ills.
Before you panic, rest assured: we’re not about to start charging you when you read more than 20 posts per month. No, we’re talking about the ever-skyrocketing expense of sending children to Jewish day school in the U.S.
With $7,000 you might be able to fly back and forth to Israel six times, but for the same price you could stay put in Overland Park KS and learn at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy for one year. One thousand dollars more will buy you—show them what they’ve won—one year of 1-8th grade education at the Cincinnati Hebrew Day School. If you want to send your child to the Solomon Schechter of Atlanta, be prepared to shell out upwards of $17,000 per year starting with first grade. $26,650 might be a fine price for a Toyota RAV4 Sport, but did you know that for the same price, you can ‘kaneh likha rav’—or maybe even four—and enroll for one year of high school at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, PA? $29, 955 would be a steal for a small, foreclosed apartment in a depressed real estate market, but it could also buy you one year’s education at Milken community high school in LA. These numbers don’t even include the usual “give and get” $1,000+ minimums typically imposed upon day school families on a yearly basis.
Ivanka Trump: a convert to Judaism, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the woman who sat three rows in front of my mother, sisters, and I during the high holiday services of my youth. Just throw a giant hat on her, hand her an Artscroll and presto
Some day schools—such as the Ramaz School of NY and the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, IL— do not openly
disclose their tuition fees, and perhaps for good reason. Unless you are Ivanka Trump, who wouldn’t want to faint upon seeing these staggering numbers? Especially given today’s economy, how can anyone but the super-rich possibly afford to shell out $20,000 dollars annually to send a child (or, more likely, multiple children) to Jewish day school…for 15 years?
As a day school alum (16 years, but who’s counting) whose entire college tuition (yes, all four years combined, at a private institution which furnished me with an excellent post-secondary education) still cost less than one year of Jewish high school, the irony of this situation is not lost on me. (For purposes of full disclosure: I benefited from a faculty discount for my university tuition.)
As we’ve posted before, R. Art Green and R. Danny Landes have been having quite an intense back-and-forth debate about theology and other things over the last few months.
To recap: Last year, R. Art Green published a book, and R. Daniel Landes wrote a critical review of it in the Jewish Review of books. Green then responded to the review, and Landes responded to the response (on the same link). Green’s next response appeared here in Jewschool, and Landes responded on his own blog.
This is rumored to be the last installment, by Green:
Dear Danny,
I think we are still far from understanding each other. You just don’t get me. Identifying me with Mordecai Kaplan and Richard Rubenstein is way off the mark in terms of how I see myself or self-identify, whom I read, or my relationship with either God or tradition. Kaplan was never an influence on me; I came to JTS the year after he retired and never had the privilege of studying with him. I read Heschel’s God in Search of Man for the first time when I was fifteen, and fell in love. I tried Kaplan a bit later, but found him dry and boring, too prosaic, too American and pragmatist, not the soaring spirit I needed. I did indeed try to align my neo-Heschelian mysticism with aspects of Kaplan’s legacy during my RRC years. That attempt did not succeed very well; just ask the Kaplanians. Yes, of course I share some concerns with Kaplan and greatly respect his honesty in raising them, but our framework for responding to them is quite different. We both want to respond out of the most contemporary and profound understanding of religion. But for him that is the rationalism of Dewey and Durkheim. For me it is the phenomenology and post-critical religiosity of Otto, Eliade, and Peter Berger.
Along with most of the intellectually-oriented JTS students at the time, I was excited when Rubenstein published After Auschwitz in 1966. He had dared to say what many of us were thinking. But I soon realized that his net result was the demise of traditional Judaism, reducing it to nothing more than a psychological tool. My move toward a neo-Hasidic reading of tradition was precisely a response to Rubenstein, not an alliance with him. I needed a Judaism that expressed a spiritual truth, not just religion serving as a crutch with which to get through this absurd life.
It took me many years to say out loud that I am a mystic. In Jewish circles it sounds a bit like proclaiming oneself a tsaddik, which is the farthest thing from my mind. But it is true that as a thinker and as a religious personality, it is only the mystical tradition that has saved Judaism for me. Scholem quotes R. Pinhas of Korzec as thanking God that He created him after the Zohar was revealed, “because the Zohar kept me a Jew.” That is true for me too, regarding both the Zohar and the teachings of the Hasidic masters themselves.
I would love to be able to explain this to you, but find it subtle and difficult. More »
As you may have heard by now, the Union for Reform Judaism has chosen Rabbi Richard (Rick) Jacobs of Westchester, New York, as its next president, to succeed Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who is retiring after 16 years. Here at Jewschool, we wish Rabbi Jacobs the best in his leadership of the Reform movement, but we are left with one burning question: We are wondering whether he is related to Gregory E. Jacobs, aka Shock G, the former member of Digital Underground best known for his alternate persona Edward Ellington Humphrey III, aka Humpty Hump.
They share more than a last name: As a number of news reports have noted, Rabbi Jacobs is doing a Ph.D. in ritual dance, and Mr. Jacobs has “even got [his] own dance“. Rabbi Jacobs leads one of the largest Jewish congregations in America; both how Mr. Jacobs is living and his nose are large.
Whether or not they are related, we hope Rabbi Jacobs’s tenure at the URJ will be committed to the Reform Jewish values of informed autonomy (“No two people will do it the same”), inclusivity (“Anyone can play this game”), intellectual honesty (“Oh yes ladies, I’m really being sincere”), and social justice (“Peace and humptiness forever”).
Let’s legislate non-orthodoxy out of existence. OTOH I’d like to see what the law actually says. Maybe we could add a friendly amendment that since there are no streams of Judaism, therefore the Orthodox have no right to maintain their hegemony, because the Reform and Masorti are not (now, according to this new bill) streams, but exactly as legit as orthodoxy, since it would now all be “just Judaism”? FTW, right? Or we could counter-propose a bill that there is no such thing as Orthodoxy, and the true heir of Jewish practice is [name your favorite non-Orthodox movement].
Or maybe we could get the government out of the religion business, stop allowing the nuttiest of the nuts to determine who is a Jew, while simultaneously preventing people with good intent from converting (contrary to Jewish law, despite the fact that they keep claiming they’re the true inheritors, just like lots of other odd things they do, such as (my fave) prevent Jewish weddings unless their roster of rabbis is involved, despite the fact that one needs no rabbis at all halachicly speaking).
Hey, maybe we should just do that anyway.
Gene Simmons of KISS on Israel. It’s kinda weird, but I love it when Simmons/Witz tells Israelis to toughen up because Americans criticize everyone. So much for the tough-on-the-outside sabra? Maybe the real reason we don’t have peace in the middle east yet is because despite all the machismo of the Israeli image, Israelis aren’t really all that tough? Or maybe even because they are trying to live up to the image that American Jews on the right desperately want them to be? (Hey does that mean we can blame the occupation on all those kids who beat up Jewish kids in elementary school?)
The USCJ strategic planning committee received comments regarding the draft strategic plan and released the final version of the strategic plan yesterday. I figure this was worth another commentary summarizing the changes and my major concerns.
The USCJ board is scheduled to take a yes/no vote on the plan this Sunday. Despite serious flaws, I strongly suspect it will be approved simply because a “no” vote might cause a rapid collapse of the organization. If I had a vote, I’d seriously consider voting “no” both because I think the plan takes USCJ in some damaging directions or non-directions and I suspect the shake-up from the collapse might actually bring about some better institutions. I recognize that would be a radical step that would risk damaging some successful parts of USCJ. This is a risk that board members might not be willing to take. Still, I’m worried that a “yes” vote would lead to a more gradual collapse of USCJ that could bring successful programs, like USY, down with it and would cause more damage to the movement in the long run.
The first clear change in the plan is that it has a new supertitle, “VeAsu Li Mikdash” (And let them make me a sanctuary…). I suspect this addition is intended to emphasize that synagogues are still central to an organization that will now serve “kehilot.” Several other changes, including an additional priority to re-engage synagogues that left USCJ, support this interpretation. I think this phase is also, unintentionally, a beautiful summary of my critiques of the plan. They cut off the rest of the sentence “VeShachanti BeTocham” (…that I may dwell among them). The plan clearly focuses on the imperative to build and support synagogues and institutions, but the purpose of those institutions is an unwritten afterthought. While the plan charts out what’s necessary to keep USCJ alive, I still have no clue what USCJ sees as its role in the Conservative movement and the larger Jewish community. Why are we supposed to build this sanctuary?
This lack of vision is highlighted by some of the changes to the strategic plan. There’s a lot of text making clear that USCJ can no longer view itself as a content creator. It needs to connect groups and collaborate for content creation. That’s why it confuses me that, “USCJ will provide kehillot with programmatic and managerial resources,” was added to the final plan. USCJ can be both a collaborator and a creator, but it doesn’t have the staff or budget for both priorities, and it seems like they are unwilling to accept that they can’t do everything. They talk about core focuses and the need to prioritize, but it’s unclear what those core focuses practically mean, who gets to decide what is or is not core, and what is done in-house vs. collaboratively. This uncertainty of mission is also observable in little changes. For example most of the instances where draft plan said “USCJ needs to” do something have now been changed to “USCJ should” do something. Even taking the plan’s goals at face value, they are afraid to clearly state what needs to be done.
On a positive note, the draft plan didn’t give a clear vision of USCJ’s role in adult learning. The plan now says “While the emphasis here is on reforming the educational system for children, this strategic plan recognizes the importance of adult learning and the need to sustain a culture of lifelong Jewish learning. There are many sound programs available for adult learning, which should be encouraged. The greatest need, however, is in re-imagining the educational system for our children.” Agree or not, it’s one example of a clear priority for the organization while still recognizing needs it might not be able to meet itself. Regarding education, they also added a direct reference to “Linking the Silos: How to Accelerate the Momentum in Jewish Education Today (Avi Chai Foundation, 2005)” as a model for their education plans. That document talks about the need to focus on identifying and collaborating to meet common educational needs rather than fighting over which organizations get ownership of ideas. Good things can happen if they take that to heart. (As a starting suggestion the executive director of TaL AM would be glad to collaborate with USCJ on Hebrew language curricula.) On a negative note, their goal of having their “blue-ribbon” education panel develop a plan in 3-5 years has completely lost that time limit. There’s a real fear of committing to anything specific.
I was also glad to see them alter their plans for college students. The new version essentially says they don’t know how to pay for it or what they’re supposed to do, but they recognize a direct Conservative presence on college campuses is important. They plan to keep Koach running until the movement figures out something better. Oddly the to-do list at the end of the document still calls for a Koach reorganization in July 2011. I don’t know if they are still planning major changes or just forgot to remove this sentence from the plan.
One of the more surprising changes relates to how they view their relationship to non-denominational communities. I was so intrigued by their desire to become “a nexus for serious, post-denominiational Judaism,” that I focused an entire section of my commentaries envisioning what USCJ would look like if they seriously meant this. Assuming they read it, I guess they didn’t like my vision because they expunged this sentence from the final plan. Reading the plan as a whole, it is now very clear that they are only interested in engaging unaffiliated communities (i.e. indy minyanim) if there’s a potential for them to affiliate. They might ask a few indy minyan leaders to join a focus group or fill out a survey, but they won’t be partners in expanding the numbers of Conservative-friendly communities unless those communities are willing to call themselves Conservative. Sadly, the plan still doesn’t present a compelling rationale or mechanism for minyanim to affiliate with USCJ, even if they wanted to. This is a major lost opportunity.
I was also disappointed to see that they refused to reassess their fundraising plans. Several commentators, including me, were very critical of their plan to sell most of their lay leadership positions to people who can donate or raise at least $10,000 per year. As I wrote before, I feel this was included because they couldn’t create a rational for large donations without selling leadership positions. Assuming they find 30 people who are willing to buy those board seats, this will do immense damage to USCJ’s ability to attract new voices into its volunteer ranks and leadership.
It was recently occurring to me that I’ve written many emails, using both my real name and this pseudonym, to USCJ leaders over the past several years. When I’ve written as a representative of an organization, or when a USCJ board member forwards my email, I’ve gotten replies from USCJ professionals. Until yesterday, when I got a response after noticing a missing website link, I have never had a personal reply from any USCJ professional. I never got a personal reply after sending several emails to the 4tomorrow@uscj.org address. Months after I sent emails to that address and after the draft plan was released, I got a form response that they were starting to look at comments and will send them to the appropriate people. I doubt this only happened to me. Sadly, they look at this planning process as a communications success. The plan states, “The new USCJ’s potential lies in its ability to create settings where all kinds of leaders can come together and work together for the improvement of Conservative Judaism. The strategic planning commission that produced this document models the kind of cooperation we envision and know to be possible.” Considering entire constituencies (college students, Fuchsberg Center users, etc.) were shocked at never being consulted about basic elements of the plan that would affect them, I seriously wonder what the planners were thinking when they wrote that sentence.
In the end, I suspect that the selling of leadership positions combined with a complete inability to engage new voices and volunteers at even the most basic level will doom USCJ to irrelevancy as new generations of Jews create or find other organizations that want their volunteer time and leadership skills. Regardless of the vote on this plan, this inability to engage new voices and volunteers is the main issue that I think USCJ needs to reconsider if it doesn’t want to collapse in less than a decade.
Last year, R. Art Green published a book, and R. Daniel Landes wrote a critical review of it in the Jewish Review of books. Green then responded to the review, and Landes responded to the response (on the same link). This is now Green’s next response. Underlying all of this are some interesting questions about the possibilities and limits of Jewish theology. (One could say “questions about Orthodoxy and Neo-Hasidism,” but perhaps it’s more complicated than that.) We welcome more discussion and debate on these issues, and not only from the two men involved. Green’s next letter is below.
Dear Danny,
Let’ s continue this public conversation, which is not over, in a face-to-face second person form, without the barrier of an intervening magazine. Internet interest will provide more than sufficient readership.
I find your tone, in your latest response as well as the initial review of my Radical Judaism, to be significantly annoying, ranging between dismissive and condescending. This is particularly bothersome because you continue to distort my views, either because you have not read me carefully or because a straw-man Art Green better suits your purpose.
You distinguish my views from earlier Jewish notions of an abstract deity by saying that I “flatly deny” divine transcendence. Nothing could be farther from the truth. More »
Reforming USCJ governance and finance to greatly improve support to affiliated communities
USCJ is currently running deficits, losing affiliated congregations, and dealing with a large number of affiliated congregations who are questioning the benefits of affiliation. Many congregations simply don’t think the organization is able to respond to the needs of affiliated communities. Successfully executing some of the better governance ideas in the strategic plan will help. They plan to lower dues and link them to congregational budgets rather than numbers of members. They also plan to put more of the dues back into all geographic regions.
I have no expertise in organizational structure, and I’ll confess that this section is a bit more brainstorming than the above sections, but I figure I’ll try to write something vaguely useful. I look at the most recent budget and the professional and lay leadership organizational structures and I just don’t see how they communicate and function. It looks like a bunch of people with malleable job titles who mostly work in NY. ($4.3million of the $18.4million budget is spent on central office staffing. USCJ gets $8.3 million from affiliation dues and assessments.) I have no clue how ideas travel around the organization and what the lay-leaders who have 1-to-1 pairings with professional staff’s job titles are supposed to do. More »
Whether it’s USCJ or some other Conservative organization, the problems with the Conservative movement’s education programs are central issues for the health of the movement. Simply put, the vast majority of children who are growing up in the Conservative movement are not being given the opportunities to gain the knowledge needed to become full participants (let alone leaders) in their own communities. For a movement whose purpose includes keeping Hebrew as the language of prayer, not placing children on a solid path to knowing the full liturgy and its meaning is a failure. The strategic plan rightly says that USCJ needs to get the movement’s various educational organizations working more closely together, but punts on what their goals should be except to say there should be a “blue-ribbon panel” to figure it out. Perhaps training children to have the basic skills needed to be the next generation of full participants in Jewish prayer might be a good starting goal. More »
The third part of this three part post turned out to be rather long, so I will post it in three smaller chunks, so that people are able to comment on its various parts with better ease.
The USCJ Strategic Plan, Part 3: Some thoughts on what USCJ could be
Any useful long-term plan needs to be a bit idealistic. In my mind, USCJ’s strategic plan was a bit too heavy on the idealism with very little vision or practical conception of how to get there. Here, I’ve taken the ideals already in the USCJ strategic plan and tried to envision what an organization would need to look like to possibly reach some of these goals. I humbly acknowledge that my ideas have their own leaps of logic and limitations and could receive similar criticisms to those I’ve thrown around. Then again, I’m not consultant who spent a year and charged $30,000 to write up USCJ’s actual strategic plan. Even if USCJ collapses, perhaps this could be part of a discussion of how other large Jewish institutions interact with the broader communities they serve.
I’m going to try to divide the challenges/goals of USCJ into three main categories: (1) Becoming a “nexus for serious, post-denominational Judaism” and Conservative movement regrowth, (2) Improve Conservative Jewish education (particularly pre-college education), and (3) Reforming USCJ governance and finance to greatly improve support to affiliated communities. More »
First of all, let’s just set aside for a moment the ridiculousness of mentioning Islamic extremists in every other breath – really, I have to say (I never thought I’d defend Beck in any way whatsoever) that really, his comments weren’t about Reform Jews being terrorists. While his comments were completely inane, his point was that Reform Jews are primarily a political organization rather than a religious one. How many ways this is a stupid comment leaves me gasping, but it’s not what most people seem to have taken it as – i.e. a claim that Reform Jews are terrorists.
However, the level of stupidity remains pretty high: More »
The USCJ Strategic Plan Part 2: Critique of the strategic plan
by ImproveUSCJ
The first thing that jumps out of the USCJ strategic plan is a revolutionary change in membership focus. They are no longer an association of synagogues. They are now an association of “kehilot.” There’s even a whole paragraph about why this is so significant and how they plan to create a team to figure out how to rebrand USCJ with a new name to match this word change. This is part of the growing trend where transliterated Hebrew is considered more profound than English [insert random quote from Steven M. Cohen here]. Beyond the excitement that the Conservative movement has finally discovered transliteration, it is a welcome part of an effort to create ways for groups of Jews that don’t call themselves synagogues to affiliate with USCJ. They even say they want USCJ to become “a nexus for serious, post-denominational Judaism.” (Hello Indy Minyanim! We love you! Really! Honest! Ignoring lots of evidence to the contrary, we still consider all of you expatriates of our movement and want to welcome you back.) More »
This will be the first in a series of three posts on the USCJ strategic plan from guestposter “ImproveUSCJ.”.
The USCJ Strategic Plan Part 1: USCJ as it is
I’m a parent in my early 30’s. I grew up in a Conservative synagogue and I’ve been a dues paying member of Conservative synagogues since my early 20’s. I’ve davened with at least 8 independent minyanim. I have never been paid for work in the Jewish community. I spent a couple of years on the board of directors of one synagogue where I had many opportunities to observe the competencies of USCJ. I think the Conservative movement would benefit greatly from an organization that connects our communities to resources that help them improve. It would be great if USCJ could be that organization. I figure it’s worth a bit of my time to prod them in that direction. You can reach me at: improve dot USCJ at gmail dot com
The United Synagogue for Conservative Judaism has just released a strategic plan. This is in response to an ongoing effort to revive an organization that is rapidly losing members and relevance. Large factions of remaining members formed groups like Hayom and Bonim to demand significant changes or the creation of new organizations. This is all at a time when major Jewish publications are writing articles saying that the decline of families in synagogues affiliated with USCJ is a sign of the decline of liberal Judaism. It’s not completely clear why synagogues’ refusal to write large annual checks to an organization that wasn’t giving them much back in return is a sign of the decline of liberal Judaism or even a decline in the Conservative movement, but it makes for a catchy article title. Many of Judaism’s large, communal institutions are losing strength and significance. Due to errors in management and vision, USCJ’s recent decline has been particularly impressive.
It’s worth noting why large institutions, like USCJ, matter. Simply put, if small communities have common goals, putting some time and money into an organization that helps them meet those goals can be a good investment. The common goals and funding needs vary depending if you’re USCJ or the National Havurah Committee, but the concept is the same. Before talking about what USCJ plans to do, I wanted to discuss what it currently does, and sketch its current problems. More »
I will not twist Mr. Beck’s brilliance to say anything besides what he said:
“Reformed rabbis are generally political in nature. It’s almost like Islam, radicalized Islam in a way, to where it is just — radicalized Islam is less about religion than it is about politics. When you look at the reform Judaism, it is more about politics. I’m not saying that they’re the same on … and they’re going to take it at that, but — stand in line.”
I will not take it “that way”…I will take it at face value. My religious experience is all about politics. Nothing to do with God, Israel (people and land) or Torah. Nope, nothing what-so-ever. More »
I gave the service three and a half ballpoint pens (|||-), and said that I’d be going to Romemu the following week for Shabbat morning. To me, one of the true tests of a shul with a reputation for spirited davening is the morning after. A reputation for spirited davening usually comes from a spirited Kabbalat Shabbat, so it’s always interesting to see if a community can maintain a good morning service as well.
This can be harder to do because people have to drag themselves out of bed–and when it comes to liturgy, it’s harder to make me happy because there’s more to do on Shabbat morning than on erev Shabbat.
So I went. As I said, it was about a month ago, so my memory is a tad rusty. But I took a lot of notes while I was there and I started drafting this the day after, so I think I’ve got most of my thoughts in order. This is the first review I’ve written since I refined the Five-Ballpoint Pen Rating System. What I’m going to try to do is go through the copious notes I took first, as bullet points. Then I’ll do a more concise write-up at the end using the new rating categories. In the service notes, the section on the Torah service may be the most interesting and insightful about Romemu as a community.
Shir Yaakov, Romemu’s [musical director/insert correct title here] provided me with a copy of the song list he was using that week, so I’ll be able to provide correct [read: coherent] descriptions of the music this time.
Getting Started
Began with “Hareini Mekabel Alai” by Gabriel Meyer Halevi, which I think I’ve identified as being by Kirtan Rabbi once before. That was wrong, although Kirtan Rabbi does a cover of it.
The Setup
There is a guy playing a cajon, Shir Yaakov is playing a djembe–though he also played guitar throughout–and a guy playing some very lovely classical guitar-type stuff.
Rabbi David Ingber, of course, is leading. He’s using a mic, which it doesn’t seem to me that he needs. He’s a loud-voiced fellow. I asked him about it later and he said he does need to keep his voice from getting destroyed every week. However, does he really need a flesh-tone pop star mic? And does he need to be so loud? And do we need a full-on sound guy in the back sitting at a control panel and everything? The whole things engenders and odd atmosphere, in my opinion.
There are, as we begin, about 20 people. They don’t fill the space at all. It feels quite empty. Ingber later told me that the previous night’s service had been one of the most packed they’d ever had. (This, mind you, was not the one I was at, which had been the previous week.)
The set-up is quite similar to B’nai Jeshurun, in that there is a rabbi leading from a podium, plenty of open space between the rows pews and the rabbi, and a semicircle of musicians behind and to the left of the rabbi.
Architecturally, the space is more similar in style to Anshei Chesed. I figure that they were probably built around the same time. Major difference: Romemu is in a church. It’s a wonderful space. If Romemu bought it from the church, they could turn it into a fantastic sanctuary for their purposes, but for now, I’m quite unsettled by the imagery around me. I’m actually a big believer in the notion that Jews ought now pray in churches. After services, I chatted with Ingber about this. He said that many in their community actually like that it’s a church. It’s a sign to many of the radical atmosphere of welcoming they want to engender at Romemu. I think you’ll all get my drift if I respond to that with an unenthusiastic “Whatever.” More »
The Dec. 20 vote came after what the president of the organization, Rabbi Barry Gelman of Houston, told The Jewish Week was a “wonderfully healthy and passionate discussion.”
This is the liberal orthodox group co-founded by R. Avi Weiss of Riverdale, where Rabbah Sara Hurwitz gained fame. Glad to hear that there was neither a rubber stamp nor a hasty thumbs down, but a vigorous debate. Judaism always should be both vigours and a debate, a wrestling with God and the law. In this respect, IRF demonstrates how it is similar to its Conservative cousins- not in that it would consider women as members, but that it would engage in thoughtful debate of the subject.
Lawmakers, Jewish leaders and kosher businesses are lobbying New York’s new governor Andrew Cuomo to restore the state’s kosher law-enforcement division.
Budget cuts and retirements over the last year have left the division with one employee, the division’s director, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The cuts in the department, which once employed 11 kosher inspectors, will save up to $1 million a year in salary, benefits and services, according to the newspaper, citing a state Department of Agriculture and Markets spokesperson.
So New York can either save $1 million a year, or it can get back into the business of government-sponsored certification of religious claims. Is this a hard choice?
JTA reports that last month, the 140 member 
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