Posts Tagged ‘Jewish holidays’

 

WorthRight Israel: Fund Interfaith Couples and Families Israel Trips

Posted on: June 2nd, 2014 by Hayim Herring

 

Imagine what would happen if funders created a variety of high-quality Israel trips that were free or heavily-subsidized for interfaith couples and families.

 

Question to funders and philanthropists: What about making a heavily subsidized trip to Israel available for interfaith couples and families? Here are the arguments for it:

 

“Israel-alienated” Jews constitute about 20% of the young Jewish population, to use Professor Steven Cohen’s term in a recent analysis he prepared for The Jewish Daily Forward. Not just hawkish Israeli government policies, but intermarriage also has emerged as an “indicator of alienation” from Israel.

 

Any rabbi or other educator who has taught an Introduction to Judaism class with non-Jewish learners knows that it’s impossible to give them the experience of pride, love and passion for Israel simply by talking about the Jewish state. They can experience a Shabbat or holiday meal locally, they can experience being a part of a Jewish family locally, but they can’t feel the complexity and depth of emotions about Israel from a classroom in the Diaspora.

 

Interfaith family in Israel

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Questions of Ultimate Importance

Posted on: August 17th, 2010 by Hayim Herring
Since this past Sunday, I’ve had the real joy of being together with two different groups of Schusterman Rabbinical Fellows. Each group has four distinguished students from HUC and four from JTS, learning together about leadership, outreach and inclusion. In one session, the students heard from an outstanding facilitator who worked with them on speaking authentically, that is, not being pontificators but genuine communicators.
One part of that session triggered three questions that seemed so appropriate to think about as we ready for Rosh ha-Shanah:
when were you recently at your best?
when do you think that the Jewish people acted at its best?
when do you think a significant part of the world behaved at its best?
I hope that you will find these questions pointing to issues of ultimate importance. And I hope that some of you will want to respond to them on this blog. And for anyone who is speaking before a congregation on the holidays about some related topics, please send me your sermons or summarize the key ideas below.
Thank you,
Rabbi Hayim Herring

Since this past Sunday, I’ve had the real joy of being together with two different groups of Schusterman Rabbinical Fellows. Each group has four distinguished students from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion and four from The Jewish Theological Seminary, learning together about leadership, outreach and inclusion. In one session, the students heard from an outstanding facilitator who worked with them on speaking authentically, that is, not being pontificators but genuine communicators.

One part of that session triggered three questions that seemed so appropriate to think about as we ready for Rosh ha-Shanah:

  1. When were you recently at your best?
  2. When do you think that the Jewish people acted at its best?
  3. When do you think a significant part of the world behaved at its best?

I hope that you will find these questions pointing to issues of ultimate importance, and I hope that some of you will want to respond to them on this blog. And for anyone who is speaking before a congregation on the holidays about some related topics, please send me your sermons or summarize the key ideas below.

Thank you,

Rabbi Hayim Herring

image from Flickr, Horia Varlan