Category Archives: Jewish Community
Instead of Arguing About the Pew Survey, ask “how and where can Jewish experiences make the greatest possible contribution”
Jews “can relax; we don’t have to worry about [quantitative] numbers”
“inreach and outreach go together”
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks believes that Modern Orthodox Jews will be leading the American Jewish Community
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“It has become really clear that Orthodoxy is the only element of the Jewish...People Want Commitment and Not [Necessarily] Programs
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I believe people want commitment. They yearn for commitment. They’re lonely…and they are suffering...Going from the Private Sector to the Non-Profit Sector can be surprising, compensation-wise
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I knew there would be many adjustments needed to switch from the business world...“Like synagogues, the Jewish federation system…once defined community for North American Jews. … Today, however, Federation seems distant from the lives of most Jewish young people….”
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Like synagogues, the Jewish federation system (usually referred to simply as “Federation”) is another...A Pragmatic Reason for Jewish Federations to Reach Out to Intermarried Couples
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Olitzky told me that many in the organized Jewish community are beginning to recognize...“Orthodox rabbis rarely made any comments on the events unfolding on the American scene in the 1920s or early 1930s”
…Orthodox rabbis rarely made any comments on the events unfolding on the American scene in the 1920s or early 1930s. They generally ignored race, immigration, pacifism, isolationism, the League of Nations, lynching, Sacco and Vanzetti, civil liberties, the Klan, racial segregation, industrial (textile, railroad) strikes, Einstein’s theory of relativity, modern technology, modern war, Prohibition, economic warfare, Bolshevism, political events in Europe, and the Depression. Only with the rise of the Nazis and the 1939 White Paper that drastically curtailed Jewish immigration to Palestine, did European events become part of their sermons. Instead, they talked about Torah (which, all Orthodox rabbis agreed, God had revealed verbally to Moses at Mt. Sinai), commandments (“word of God,” they all agreed), ceremonies, customs, observances, rituals, holidays, festivals, and themes associated with the calendrical events in the Jewish/Judaic year. The scientific and philosophical literature of their day was useful primarily to support the conclusions of Judaic values and beliefs.
Marc Lee Raphael, The Synagogue in America: A Short History (New York & London: New York University Press, 2011), 90.