Community

You already know how to celebrate Shavuot at home: Make a Seder

For most communities, the coronavirus has cancelled Shavuot. That’s because the standard Shavuot celebration revolves around public, shared space events like all-night Jewish learning at a synagogue or JCC. But there is a way to bring this experience home and, in doing so, make it far better. The all-night Shavuot program is a flawed product….

‘The goal is simply to see, hear and feel our lives in a new way’

I spent last Shavuot at a “walking, sitting, writing” retreat in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Seven thousand feet above sea level, I planted my feet in the red-brown earth at the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. I held a pen between my fingers. I wrote on a page. When I signed up for…

‘Jewish day schools must be the most appealing option by leaps and bounds’

If there is anything I have learned working as a teacher in New York City during COVID-19, it is how vital Jewish education is. The school I teach in, the Rabbi Arthur Schneier Park East Day School in Manhattan, performed phenomenally throughout this crisis, but we were not the only ones. Following Jewish day schools’…

Everyday lessons for life that I learned from studying Kabbalah with my friends

One morning in the winter of last year, I agreed to show up to a new study group. For whatever reason, I was less than enthusiastic. I just did not feel like leaving my house and I wasn’t sure why I had agreed. But I had nothing else on my schedule that morning so, with…

‘What she lacked was the goodness of possibility:’ Parallels with Ruth in a pandemic

“I went away full and have returned empty” (Ruth 1:21) This Shavuot, when the Jewish people open up the book of Ruth, it will be Naomi’s cry that will resonate in our souls. There is a natural catastrophe, resulting in geographic displacement and economic insecurity. The deaths of Naomi’s husband and two sons are devastating,…

Women leaders on the front line prove that speaking from the head doesn’t preclude speaking from the heart.

In every generation, leadership is forged by crisis. While the COVID-19 pandemic gives rise to fear, grief and uncertainty, women-led organizations around the world are answering the call. Women leaders, including heads of state, as well as key players in business, science and philanthropy, have been doing some of the most important work combating the…

I dream of seeing my grandkids across the ocean, but the pandemic still has me grounded

With life returning to a strange new normal I’m thinking of flying back to the U.S. again. Like many olim, I’m a dual national, a citizen of both countries with my heart and family divided. Until this pandemic I was a frequent flyer. I thought that was my natural right to go whenever the spirit…

‘When mashgiach is applied to the Zoom experience, it becomes a symbolic metaphor of guidance and support’

Mashgiach literally means supervisor in Hebrew. The word is usually used to describe an individual who supervises the standards of kashrut or Jewish dietary observance in a kitchen where kosher food is prepared and served. But today, it has another meaning: the Zoom supervisor. All institutions should consider creating a Zoom Mashgiach to sustain and…

Minyans with Horsey and Peanut