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Spokane
March 30, 2020

Building a New Community from Scratch

Kenissa Lauren Spokane

This week’s column is by Lauren Spokane of the New Synagogue Project, an emerging Jewish community in in Washington, D.C. The four propositions laid out by Sid Schwarz are clearly reflected in the community we are building in the Washington, DC region through the New Synagogue Project (NSP). Here is how each proposition shows up in our […]

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March 23, 2020

Seeing Jewish Portals through Israeli Eyes

Kenissa Idan Sharon

I am an Israeli, working in a progressive, Reconstructionist Congregation for two years as a shaliach. My goal is to bring to American Jews some of the rich culture that is part and parcel of Israeli life outside of Orthodox circles. But my presence in America also exposes me to the way that American Jews […]

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March 16, 2020

Purpose and Community: Building Blocks for True Spirituality

Kenissa Hazzan Jodi M. Sered-Lever

Mekor Shalom focuses on two of the four propositions that Rabbi Sid Schwarz sets forth in Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community.  About community/kehilla, Rabbi Schwarz writes that “the Jewish community must offer places where people can find support in times of need, communal celebration in times of joy, and friendships to […]

ravjer
March 9, 2020

Co-Housing: Taking Congregational Life to the Next Level

Kenissa Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz

Temple Bnai Israel in Northeast Connecticut has been involved in a “visioning process” for the last several years about how to “to formulate the best way to sustainably foster and serve the Jewish community in North East Connecticut (including the non-Jewish participants in that community) for the coming several decades.”  We launched this process in […]

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March 2, 2020

Social Justice in Their Judaism

Kenissa Cindy Rowe

The Jewish Alliance for Law and Social Action (JALSA) asks people to act on their Jewish values in the pursuit of social, economic, environmental, and racial justice.  The “tools” we use to achieve those ends include advocacy, community organizing, coalition building, litigation, and education. Our members, volunteers, and donors cross many generations, ranging from their […]

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February 24, 2020

Live with Purpose

Kenissa Rabbi Laurie Phillips

LIVE with purpose.LIVE with meaning.LIVE with kindness. Our privilege and our responsibility as human beings is to LIVE on this earth.  Tapping into the sacred text of Torah, we learn from the first story that God has established a unique partnership with human beings – one of trust.  God entrusts human being with the task […]

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February 17, 2020

Engaging Gen Zers

Kenissa Libby Parker

I see my work aligned closely with Rabbi Sid’s proposition about with community/kehilla. He writes: – “At a time when technology has made meaningful social intercourse much harder to come by, the Jewish community must offer places where people can find support in times of need, communal celebration in times of joy, and friendships to […]

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February 10, 2020

The Part-Time Dual-Role Rabbi: Secular and Spiritual Entwining

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Rabbi David Evan Markus

If I’m a Jewish trendsetter, it’s at least partly by accident and, because “There is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9), the trend that I am setting is a rabbinic “Back to the Future.” I am North America’s only pulpit rabbi simultaneously maintaining a full-time public oath of office.  I serve full-time in the […]

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February 3, 2020

What My Children Have Taught Me About Jewish Identity

Kenissa Rabbi Evan Krame

Who is wise? I believe it is the one that learns from his children.  As I read about megatrends in Judaism and religious life, I understand what I read through the lens of my two adult children. Here’s my Jewish background so as to explain what may seem to be my approach. I am a […]

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January 14, 2020

Birthing as a Portal into Jewish Life

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Na'amah Wendy Kenin

Imeinu Jewish Birth Workers Collective is a network of birth professionals and other service providers who are committed to offering physical, emotional, informational and spiritual care to the laboring mother, her baby and her family to encourage the most positive pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum experience. We are honored to offer resources for childbirth as a […]

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January 6, 2020

A Congregation Without Walls

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Rabbi Cantor Ellen Jaffe-Gill

Mine is a congregation that doesn’t read books such as Jewish Megatrends (though it occurs to me that I should send them the chapter on which we’ve been asked to write this essay), so its members don’t quite get how at least two of the three factors Rabbi Schwarz described (the two that aren’t about […]

melissa-hoffman
December 30, 2019

Extending our Values to all God’s Creatures

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Melissa Hoffman

My work with Jewish Initiative for Animals (JIFA) engages institutions and individuals of all stripes to turn the Jewish value of concern for animal welfare into action—a mission that aligns with and transcends the four propositions that Sid Schwarz outlines in Jewish Megatrends. Chochma /Wisdom There are ways in which the traditional Jewish framework for […]

becky-havivi
December 16, 2019

Challenging the Jewish Establishment on Israel/Palestine

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Becky Havivi

IfNotNow was founded in the summer of 2014, during the war in Gaza. The movement’s founders were all Jewish millennials, some with roots in the institutional Jewish world, having grown up going to Jewish day school or summer camps, and others had little to no connection to the organized Jewish community. The founders of this […]

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December 9, 2019

An Intercultural Minyan in Washington D.C.

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Mo Golden

When the American Synagogue came into being, the institutional structure had to respond to, and contend with, the societal challenges of the time: social circles being segregated by race, class, and religion; the push and pull of assimilation vs. maintaining a strong – but foreign – identity; and the concentration of resources and communication around […]

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December 2, 2019

Jewish Community: The Other Side of Plenty

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Asher Gellis

The “forced continuity” of the Jewish community of the 80s and 90s, as mentioned in Jewish Megatrends, gave birth to frustrated Jews who felt that it was an all-or-nothing reality– do and believe what the religion required, or abstain from it. Meanwhile, these same individuals were told that they could change the world. The Boomer […]

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November 25, 2019

Beyond Fear-Driven Survival

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Kohenet Rachel Galper

The quote from Talmud at the beginning of Jewish Megatrends is very beautiful: “Fortunate is the generation in which the elders listen to the youth” (Rosh Hashana 25b). We should be so lucky.  I agree with Rabbi Sid’s assessment that Jews are seekers of wisdom (dorshei chochmah), seekers of social justice (dorshei tzedek), seekers of community (dorshei kehilla), and […]

eleyna
November 18, 2019

The Alberta Shul: Building Kehilla Through the Lens of Tzedek

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Eleyna Fugman

In his thesis, Rabbi Sid Schwarz offers that the downturn in Jewish communal affiliation does not “suggest that Jews are no longer seeking each other out. It simply means that Jews are turning their backs on larger, mainstream organizations that are experienced as top-down institutions in an era when Jews want to do it themselves.” […]

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October 7, 2019

A Community of Meaning for Young Adults

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Lilli Flink

My roommate and I are both alumnae of Barnard-JTS and both of us have been very Jewishly connected for most of our lives. We had been living in Philadelphia for about six months when, one shabbat afternoon, we sat and pondered why it was that we did not feel part of a regular Shabbat community […]

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September 23, 2019

Never Too Old to Engage

Kenissa Rabbi Brian Fink

Since 2013, I have directed UJA-Federation of New York’s Engage Jewish Service Corps at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan, a volunteer initiative that helps baby boomers find meaning and community as they begin to envision what retirement may look like for themselves (very different than how it may have been for others in the past […]

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September 16, 2019

Kesher Pittsburgh: An “Everyone-Friendly” Community

Kenissa 2019 Cohort, Kohenet Keshira haLev Fife

As I read Rabbi Sid’s introduction to Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Community, I felt a sense of relief. It affirmed much of what I’ve sensed about current trends in the American institutional framework and it acted as a sort of mirror, reflecting that the work that Kesher Pittsburgh* is doing […]

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book cover Rabbi Sid Schwarz's Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American Jewish Future (Jewish Lights)

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