Last week, 13 prominent rabbis held a secret meeting — with Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour, leaders of the Women’s March. The reason: to try to decide whether the rabbis and their congregations should attend the third annual march, scheduled for this coming Saturday. And if they should attend — which one? There will be…
Wake up. For morning prayers, sit in silent contemplation. Have breakfast. Study Hasidic meditation. Study Kabbalah. Have lunch. Meditate. Study the Talmud. Do yoga. Have dinner. Chant the evening prayers. This is how students at a new summer program from Romemu, the congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, will spend their days. The six-week program…
Even in Brooklyn, there are wandering Jews. That’s how Marcella Kanfer Rolnick and Amy Abrams saw themselves in 2012. Both parents of students at the same Jewish school, the two women bonded over their shared longing for a spiritual home. “I felt like here I was telling my kids, ‘Go to a Jewish school, yes…
(JTA) — In the summer of 2011, Lizzi Heydemann returned to her native Chicago to establish a Jewish community loosely modeled on Ikar, the Los Angeles congregation where she had spent two years as a rabbinic intern. She set about harvesting email addresses and putting out the word on social media. Heydemann called her community…
It happens every year, around this time. Jews start to wage war against hametz, or leavened food, by scouring cupboards and countertops, turning pockets inside out, dusting off books one page at a time — anything to rid the house of the offending particles before Passover. Now, a New York synagogue has taken this cleansing…
We’ve all felt it. That ever-present desire — compulsion, really — to check and then recheck our email. Just one more hit of the refresh button. Just one more scroll. Just one more reply-all. Just one more delete. We love it. And we hate it. Most of the year, we bemoan but ultimately accept the…
Rabbi David Ingber is the spiritual leader (and main draw) for Romemu, a fast-growing congregation on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Its quest for spiritual meaning can hardly be disassociated from Ingber’s personal journey. Born and raised in a Modern Orthodox family, Ingber, 44, was drawn to ultra-Orthodoxy while on a gap-year program in Israel in…
A few moments before starting to say Neilah, the haunting prayers that conclude the Yom Kippur service, Rabbi David Ingber asked an unusual question of the members of his congregation. What were they praying for? As three volunteers passed microphones into the pews, the room fell silent. Then, one person stood up. And another. And…
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