We may fret about declining enrollments in rabbinical seminaries and the ever-rising tide of intermarriage, yet one aspect of the contemporary Jewish experience should lift our spirits rather than roil them: music. From monthly concerts and annual festivals that cast a spotlight on the creativity that pulses throughout the community to Shabbat services where, week…
The U.S. Senate approved Reform movement leader Rabbi David Saperstein as Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom at the State Department. The Senate approved Saperstein for the post on Friday by a vote of 61 to 35. He will be the fourth person and the first non-Christian to serve in the post. The ambassador…
(Religion News Service) — At Beit Daniel, a Reform synagogue in Israel’s secular metropolis, 75 members gather for the Friday evening Sabbath service, led by a female rabbi and a guitar-strumming cantor. Long used to new faces and numerous Hebrew accents, the congregation these days is getting even more diverse. That’s because even as Israel…
Reuven Rivlin, who drew criticism before becoming Israel’s president for his broadsides against non-Orthodox Jewish streams, told a group of Conservative Jews that Jews are “one big family.” “We cannot agree on everything, but we are brothers and we are one big family,” The Jerusalem Post quoted Rivlin as telling the delegation Wednesday from the…
(Religion News Service) — Rabbi David Saperstein will be named the next ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, the first non-Christian to hold the job since it was created in 1998. As ambassador, the man named as the most influential rabbi in America by Newsweek magazine in 2009, will head the State Department’s Office of International…
Hey America, it seems like you really like your Jews. That’s the takeaway from a new study by the Pew Research Center, which asked Americans to rate various religious groups on a “feeling thermometer,” where 0 is coldest and 100 is warmest. Jews earned an average score of 63 “degrees,” the highest of any religious…
(JTA) — Two decades ago the Jewish community united in support of landmark religious freedom legislation. Now the Supreme Court’s application of that law has Jewish groups divided. Leading Jewish advocacy groups denounced the court’s 5-4 decision Monday in the Hobby Lobby case granting religious freedoms protections to companies, while Orthodox groups lauded the ruling….
Israel’s Supreme Court has overturned a ruling by a court of rabbis that would have forced a mother to have her son circumcised under the terms her divorce. Circumcision is not legally obligatory for Jews in Israel, but a rabbinical court presiding over the woman’s divorce case had ruled she must fulfill her husband’s wish…
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