WORDS THAT BREATHE

Transform the High Holy Day Appeal now and your synagogue just might nurture a greater culture of giving. Then, defying the...

By Rabbi Paul Kipnes, Rabbi Julia Weisz, Andrew Fromer (Teen Engagement Coordinator), Rachel Altfeld (Senior Educator) and Rabbinic...

A service to address the lingering loss for covid-era zoom Bar/Bat Mitzvah ceremonies. Far too many became B'Mitzvah away from the synagogue, instead taking the first steps on the path to becoming an adult on Zoom. It is time for staff teams to address the lingering sense of loss.

An Open Letter to the Board of Governors of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Dear Member of the Board of Governors: I...

An open letter supporting the recommendations for a path forward for Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Dear Synagogue Leaders, We keepers of the flame Of Jewish communal living, Know- If we haven’t already done so – That the time to go back...

Transform the High Holy Day Appeal now and your synagogue just might nurture a greater culture of giving. Then, defying the prognosticators of the decline of the synagogue, yours might find itself with the funding to forge ahead, fashioning a future filled with hope and excitement. Here's how Congregation Or Ami did it.

Addressing synagogue leaders, this letter wonders aloud about how we can go back better to in-person synagogue life, especially for our staff and clergy.

You should also send your rabbis, educators, cantors and youth professionals to Jewish summer camp for their benefit and for the benefit of your congregation. Why?

Invite 6th and 7th graders to get real about God and spirituality, and the depth of their questions and their unceasing quest for understanding will astound you!

Soon after I finished reading the Pew Research's Religion and Public Life Project study - a Portrait of Jewish Americans - the first thing I did was to ensure that I was registered for the Union for Reform Judaism's Biennial Convention in San Diego on Wednesday to Sunday, December 11-15, 2013. Getting together with 5,000+ committed American Jews ranks high on my short list of responses to the more worrisome portions of this landmark study of American Jewish identity and va

Do you want to know the worst kept synagogue secret? It is not about politics at the pulpit or the fact that most Jews do not regularly attend Shabbat services. No, the worst kept synagogue secret is that almost 90% of the young people who become Bar or Bat Mitzvah in our synagogues are absent from our programs by the time they graduate high school. Elsewhere I have written about Congregation Or Ami’s recent attempts to rethink the whole enterprise of youth engagement. We hav

Educator Avram Mandel and Rabbi Julia Weisz Seven other educators, Rabbi Julia Weisz and I sit together with convener Eve Fein as part of the Clinical Faculty meeting at the Rhea Hirsch School of Jewish Education of Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles. We gather a few times a semester to reflect upon the field of Jewish education and to improve our own work as Jewish educators. This fall, we are focusing on studying Milton Chen's Education Nation . KQED's=">KQED's" interview

I wish I had coined that phrase: "Jewish Education is Dead; Long Live Jewish Education." But in truth, this is the title of the talk by Dr. Jonathan Woocher , the Chief Ideas Officer of JESNA , the Jewish Educational Service of North America. Dr. Woocher, whom I have followed through his writings for years, spoke at the Union for Reform Judaism's Education Summit 2011, as part of the URJ Biennial Convention 2011. (Yada yada yada.) To quote one of my tweets : "I was so inspi

The traditional answer (in Talmud Bava Metzia 28b) is a synagogue is a (house of study), a (house of assembly), and a (house of prayer). Many synagogues today add a fourth, that it should also be a (house of social justice). At Congregation Or Ami , we see our synagogue as a series of intersecting circles, a community of communities. Where the Talmud speaks about three (houses), we tend to talk about an ever-expanding group of Centers . Like the Kabbalistic sefirot whi

Challenge : Over 1,000 congregants gathered for Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur services. All 1,000+ worshippers want to be able to touch or kiss the Torah during the . We have only two aisles in the Fred Kavli theater in Thousand Oaks where we worship, and those aisles go up the sides of the theater. Too much of a (craziness) when Torah scrolls are carried up the aisles because of the lack of space in those side aisles. Idea : Have you ever seen a concert when the musician on

Once again, Congregation Or Ami has been held up as an example of meaningful, visionary Jewish community. We kvell! What makes a community uniquely compelling, such that people strive to be part of it? This question consumes the attention of so many in the American Jewish world, as our numbers and rates of affiliation declines and as the tightening of our finances and free time forces restructuring everywhere. In an America where Jews have gained unprecedented acceptance and

Our Or Ami board explored the intersection between innovtion and tradition by looking at four teachings and deriving lessons about them.We discussed:1. What do these texts teach us about tradition and change, stagnation and innovation?2. What lessons might Or Ami take from these texts?The Hungarian halachic authority of two centuries ago, Rabbi Moses Sofer insisted that "Chadash asur min ha-Torah - innovation is forbidden by the Torah."Jewish tradition teaches: Bechol yom

Bar Mitzvah for child #3 went computerized. Not the Torah or Siddur (prayerbook), but just about everything else. We created an online invitation using a Create Your Own Website template (maybe sometime in the future we will post it here for all to see). We made an online donation to an Israeli Nature organization equal to what we had saved not printing invitation (and saving trees). We uploaded addresses and sent an online invitation to everyone we wanted to invite (at ou

8 Blogs for 8 Nights of Chanukah Blog #4: Making Chanukah Come Alive, Four Nights Later Question: Everyone is kvetching that we should just light and give gifts. How Can We Make Our Ritual Uplifting and Meaningful? As you are gathering around the candles, before you light them, view one of these videos on a computer, laptop or iPod: G-dcast Spins Chanukah , the story and meaning of Chanukah Honika Electronica , a music video Pass the Candle , music video Adam Sandler's C