Rabbi on the Beach from Jewish Daily Forward on Vimeo. Eliyahu Fink is the spiritual leader of Pacific Jewish Center along the Venice boardwalk in California, an Orthodox rabbi who so inspires his eclectic congregation that he was named one of the Forward’s Most Inspiring Rabbis of 2014. When Martyna Starosta, our digital media producer,…
In a nondescript apartment building in Budapest’s Eighth District, Rabbi Sholom Hurwitz stands behind a wooden podium and claps out the beat to a raucous Sephardic melody. About 30 people, most of them men, pray together in the flat’s main sanctuary, a small living room that the congregants affectionately call their shtibl — from the…
For most of my congregants, Israel is an accepted and welcome fact of life at the top of our communal agenda, not a point of contention. People care about Israel and identify with it. They love it in the unconditional way in which parents love their children. They are at peace with it. Every Sabbath,…
“They should be ashamed,” a friend wrote me recently. He was referring to the resistance of some Orthodox Jews to joining the Israel Defense Forces. His communication joined the lists of emails and conversations I have had recently with many a friend on the rising tension between the so-called “Orthodox” and “secular” Jews in Israel….
Thirty members of our synagogue community are in Jerusalem, standing by the side of the road in Gilo, looking at the security barrier, Bethlehem and a new settlement in the distance. An educator from Ir Amim, which advocates for “a more viable and equitable city,” explains the horizon before us. We knock our heads against…
For my congregation, Israel is not the most important matter on the agenda. Oh, members care about Israel, want it to succeed, pray for it, support it and sometimes visit it. But it’s not our central focus. So when people ask me how I handle the many divisive feelings around Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,…
A few years ago, I sat on a panel about Israel/Palestine with two of my friends at a local liberal arts college: a Methodist minister and a Palestinian Muslim. The moderator did not control the panel or the crowd, and the evening got hijacked by anger and emotion. In Mississippi we are passionate about Israel….
Thank God the world is obsessed with Israel! I’m even more grateful that the younger generation of Jews — millennials, for instance — are also passionate about Israel. But you wouldn’t always know it from events that are planned around the Jewish state. We’ve had numerous Israel Friday night dinners at our synagogue over the…
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