Blog

Through my varied professional responsibilities - overseeing synagogue membership, outreach, programming, and eventually philanthropy - I increasingly focused on ensuring that all our lay and professional efforts were in alignment with our vision so that the sacred could be experienced regardless of the portal through which one entered.  

Leaders of our congregations had to pivot in March of 2020 to new methods of engagement and connection as the “flow” of our work and community interactions radically changed.

The current wave of violence in Israel and Gaza is a heartbreaking human tragedy. The loss of innocent life (including that of children) rends the heart, destruction of homes and endemic fear defy the peace and security in which every human being deserves to live.

While some see this conflict in only stark black and white terms, it is intensely complex. To help navigate this complexity, we offer this resource guide, including material that may be helpful in laying out the context and nuances of this latest round of violence between Hamas and Israel.

This month we celebrate the graduations and ordinations of a new class of our Jewish future: rabbis, cantors, educators, and non-profit leaders, newly ready to take on the challenges of the 21st century and foster our communities to be vital centers of learning, engagement, and identity building.

Whether you are looking for ways to innovate worship and music in your community or just love Jewish singing, join us for Hava Nashira 2021, the official Jewish worship and music conference of the Reform Movement.

In Reform congregations across North American, teams of clergy, staff, educators, and lay people have worked together to develop innovative ways to re-open, re-enter, and reimagine our Jewish community life. But the challenges that congregations face in strategically thinking through reopening are more than any one community should have to take on alone. The Reform Movement as a whole will continue to work to help congregational communities envision and plan for the future.

As Reform Jews, we stand strongly together with our brothers and sisters in Israel. Over the past 48 hours, Hamas has launched a massive barrage of rocket fire on southern and central Israel. At last report, six Israeli civilians have been killed and hundreds of thousands more - from Tel Aviv to Beersheba –are confined to bomb shelters. Innocent civilians in Gaza have fallen victim to this latest round of violence as well. Furthermore, the rapid escalation of violence within Israel's own borders between Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel is a new, and deeply troubling, development. We pray that calm will be restored soon.

In the days and weeks ahead, much will be written about the Pew Research Center’s "Jewish Americans in 2020." Having just received the full study today, we are still absorbing its findings. The Pew data is likely to provide a wealth of information that can be a useful resource for understanding many aspects of our community