I first read this essay when it came out in 2013, just before graduating rabbinical school. It was an invaluable tool for communicating my vision with my synagogue and the greater Milwaukee community. As I am preparing to leave Congregation Shir Hadash, I want to consider my work in the context of three of the […]
Excluding strange mystic experiences and perplexing dreams that whispered lech lecha into my soul at night, I had a perfectly outlined ‘covenantal identity’ childhood. My family was not religiously homogeneous nor observant. I was bar-mitzvahed at a Reform synagogue. I was a High Holiday Jew, a covenantal Jew. I would argue I have since become […]
First as one of Ikar’s founders, then at Synagogue 3000, and currently at Jumpstart, I’ve had the privilege to work in the U.S., Europe, and Israel with leaders of new organizations and communities of all types and persuasions. I came to this work as someone who grew up disaffected from Jewish life, but who came […]
“Jews are in fact seekers of wisdom (dorshei chochma), seekers of social justice (dorshei tzedek), seekers of community (dorshei kehillah), and seekers of lives of sacred purpose (dorshei kedusha).” What if we want to treat Jews not as consumers of these four domains, but as co-creators? What balance do we want organizations to strive for […]
On page 13 of his essay in Jewish Megatrends, Rabbi Schwarz describes a twenty-year-old, non-Orthodox Jew named Bill. Bill is engaged to a person of another faith and when he places a call to his childhood rabbi to see if he will officiate their wedding, he receives a response that makes Bill feel rejected. It […]
My work as an educator and Jewish leader has always been about (1) fostering kehillah, and (2) deepening kehillot with kedusha. I believe wisdom, learning, confidence, further involvement, Jewish risk-taking, asking questions, engaged Jewish life, emerges from positive experiences of community first and foremost. And it has been my experience that as we grow older, […]
Chochmah (Wisdom), Tzedek (Justice), Kehillah (Community) and Kedushah (Sacredness), the four propositions Rabbi Sid Schwarz outlines in his opening essay for Jewish Megatrends, are core Jewish values that are a winding thread throughout the millennia of the Jewish People’s journey. I have found all these areas resonant in my decades of avodah– work in sacred […]
The four propositions that Sid suggests will shape and inspire meaningful, relevant Jewish communities today contain strong echoes of central themes found in the traditional wisdom of the Torah. Chochma, kedusha, tzedek and kehillah are rooted in the famous mishnah of Pirkei Avot 1:14: Shimon the Righteous who said, “On three things the world stands: […]