Posted in Holidays, Synagogues, Uncategorized on Sep 15th, 2008
My family just moved to Massachusetts a few months ago from the Midwest. My husband and I are a typical Jewish Boston couple: he is a medical fellow and I am the Network Director at InterfaithFamily.com. Our son is enrolled in the JCC preschool. We are a middle class family living in a very expensive […]
Posted in Synagogues, Statistics, Intermarriage on Jul 11th, 2008
Back in April, I read “The Missing” in the World Jewish Digest, and found it absolutely amazing. (The title has been changed: it was “A Jewish Man is Hard to Find.”)
The article was advocating that single Jewish women should “panic” if they hadn’t found a Jewish man to marry. (Click the link, I’m not exaggerating!) […]
Posted in Outreach, Synagogues, Marketing Judaism on Jun 16th, 2008
Young unmarried Jews are just as interested in Judaism as their married peers, a surprising new study shows. What’s different, say co-authors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman, is that they avoid affiliating with synagogues, federations and JCCs in part because those institutions are so focused on the traditional family unit.
Uncoupled: How Our Singles Are […]
Posted in December holidays, Synagogues, Other religions, Marketing Judaism on Dec 21st, 2007
At its recent biennial convention in San Diego, the Reform movement apparently borrowed a few chapters from the modern evangelical handbook:
In a darkened room at the San Diego Convention Center last week, nearly 1,000 people clapped, sang and danced to evening prayers, with the words projected on two large screens against a bucolic backdrop of […]
Posted in Synagogues on Sep 12th, 2007
Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins this evening. The High Holidays can be a challenging time for interfaith families; Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are probably the two most inaccessible major holidays on the Jewish calendar. Fasting, spending all day in synagogue, paying hundreds of dollars to pray, listening to the powerful but atonal […]
Posted in Synagogues on Aug 6th, 2007
Part of a growing trend around the country, a new “synagogue without walls” is opening in Cleveland, according to the Cleveland Jewish News. Called simply “The Shul,” it will cater to unaffiliated and interfaith families, especially baby boomers.
The rabbi of this new congregation, Edward Sukol, has clearly done his research. He’s not centering the […]
Posted in Synagogues on Mar 1st, 2007
Two innovative national Jewish organizations are teaming up to create a program that will help 18 synagogues become more welcoming towards interfaith families. The program, “Call Synagogue Home,” is the product of a partnership between the Jewish Outreach Institute and STAR (Synagogues: Transformation and Renewal), a group that helps synagogue improve and strengthen their services.
The […]
Posted in Synagogues, Statistics on Oct 30th, 2006
There are more young Orthodox Jews than either young Reform or young Conservative Jews, says a study coming out this week, according to a Nathaniel Popper article in the Forward. Says the article:
While the Reform and Conservative religious movements have long jockeyed for the title of the largest Jewish denomination in America, a new study […]
Posted in Synagogues, Marketing Judaism on Sep 22nd, 2006
Sue Fishkoff, the JTA correspondent who focuses on Jewish identity and affiliation, has just launched a new blog. Her first entry raises the question whether High Holiday tickets should be free. I posted this response:
I understand both sides of this issue. As a former synagogue president, I know what it costs to run a synagogue, […]
Posted in Synagogues, Other religions, Intermarriage on Sep 19th, 2006
Part of my job is trawling through Jewish newspapers for stories of interest to interfaith families and those who work with them. Most papers have items of interest every few weeks, but there is one paper that seems to always have intermarriage on its mind: the J., San Francisco’s Jewish paper. (It’s full and […]
