(JTA) — What do you get when you bring together 5,000 of the Reform movement’s faithful for a conference in sunny San Diego in mid-December? Four days of singing, learning, schmoozing and worrying at a gathering that seemed equal parts pep rally and intervention session. For pep, there were the spirited prayer services, the morning-till-night…
The Union for Reform Judaism has sold off half of its headquarters in New York and is investing $1 million from the proceeds to overhaul its youth programming. The sale of one of the union’s two floors at its midtown Manhattan headquarters closed on Wednesday; Rabbi Rick Jacobs, the movement’s president, announced the sale in…
More than 5,000 Chabad rabbis and supporters gathered on Sunday for the 30th annual conference of international Shluchim, or messengers of the Hasidic movement. Former U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman addressed the crowd as the first keynote speaker. Rabbi Dov Greenberg, Chabad rabbi at Stanford University, told the crowd that you are more likely to find…
The heads of the Reform and Conservative movements will demand that Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein investigate the involvement of rabbis on the government payroll in Friday’s violent demonstrations at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Thousands of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators showed up at the Western Wall on Friday morning to protest against Women of the Wall, a…
Anticipating provocations by ultra-Orthodox individuals and groups at their monthly prayer service at the Western Wall on Friday, Women of the Wall have instructed supporters and activists planning to participate in the event not to “engage in conflict – verbal or physical” with any of the protesters. Ultra-Orthodox protesters have made a practice in recent…
The head of the Reform movement endorsed a plan for egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall. “At this moment I believe our path forward and our path is to support the bold, audacious proposals by Natan Sharansky,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said Friday at Connections 2013, the 36th International…
Nearly 900 high school students representing Reform congregations from around the U.S. and Canada attending the NFTY (North American Federation of Temple Youth) Convention in Los Angeles this weekend were met by an unusual picket line of Jewish protesters. The Jew vs. Jew confrontation was brought about by the decision of the event organizers to…
Preaching to a preacher man – or woman – doesn’t always play out as planned. That’s the lesson learned this week by officials at the National Cathedral after several clergy, including three rabbis, made impromptu changes to the readings they were given to deliver at a prayer service following the Jan. 22 inauguration of President…
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