What Does It Mean to Be a Zionist?

Join Summer Rabbinic Intern Josh Franklin at Lunch and Learn this week, to discuss: What Does It Mean to Be a Zionist? 

Review and continue last week’s discussion:  Zionism, the move toward a physical return of the Jewish people to a homeland, has resonated in the Jewish mind for thousands of years. In this past week’s Lunch and Learn on the origins of Zionism and early Zionist thinkers, we discussed the the common factors that united the ideologues who set the stage for the Zionist movement. We discussed four very different Zionist thinkers: Continue reading

Confirmation Academy’s You Be the Judge Project

The confirmation academy has been working on a project over the past few weeks to come up with real-life dilemmas and the Jewish answers to these questions.  Please have a look below at the wonderful creations of our student!

Apollo 13B

You and your friend are astronauts on a malfunctioning spaceship. There is only one working escape pod left, and only one person can fit in the space pod to get back to earth. Your friend has left the decision to you, and will not be offended by your choice.

Do you take the pod home yourself or let your friend go home? You be the judge.

Continue reading

Jewish Repentance: Tough Demands

by Rabbi Jill Maderer

Is it enough to confess to God?  What if it’s too messy to mend a relationship with a person?  Last Friday night, our Interfaith Families Connection Group hosted a Shabbat dinner about the High Holy Days.  When I shared this High Holy Day prayer, it sparked passionate debate about tshuvah, repentance.  The text reads: “For transgressions against God, the Day of Atonement atones; but for transgressions of one human being against another, the Day of Atonement does not atone until they have made peace with one another.”Continue reading

Why Haven’t We Heard of the First Female Rabbi, Regina Jonas?

Can you name the first female rabbi? It’s a trick question, because almost 20 years ago, the answer changed. Most people familiar with the history of the rabbinate or Jewish feminism would proudly answer that the first female rabbi was Sally Preisand, who was ordained by the Hebrew Union College in 1972. Recently retired, Rabbi Preisand served as a congregational rabbi in New Jersey for many years, and has been the pioneer who laid the groundwork for the rest of us. As it turns out, Rabbi Preisand has the distinction of being the first female rabbi ordained in the United States. Continue reading

Is the Torah true?

One of the most common questions I am asked: Is the Torah true?  Did it happen?  Our liberal Jewish community is compelled to seek meaning in the Torah and understand it as sacred text.  Yet, we don’t want to check our brains at the door or ignore biblical scholarship. 

One important way to discover the truths of Torah is through biblical archaeology.  Join us on that journey next Shabbat, Friday June 4, 8:00 pm, when our Helen O. Sellers Memorial lecturer Professor Elizabeth Bloch-Smith adresses these issue with her talk: “Not Your Grandparents’ Judaism: Faith and 21st Century Biblical Scholarship.”  Click here to learn about Professor Bloch-Smith’s archaeological work in Israel.

Grace After Meals: Birkat HaMazon

Why is the blessing before a meal so short, and the blessing after, so long? Why don’t we spend the time thanking God before we eat the food? Because, we’re hungry! At our Shavuot Night of Study, we’ll focus our learning on Birkat HaMazon: Grace After Meals.  Want to do some extra preparation?  To review and listen to Birkat HaMazon, click here and choose “Birkat HaMazon, short version” and it’s introduction used on Shabbat: “Shir HaMaalot”  in the right hand column.  Or, just join us for our Night of Study on Tues., May 18, 7:00-9:00 pm.  Biblically, Shavuot celebrates the harvest of the wheat.  So this Shavuot, study the way Jews have, for generations, thanked God for such bounty. We will discuss the meaning and commentary of the Birkat HaMazon/Grace After Meals, and then we will learn how to chant it together.  Join us for this annual tradition of study, as we prepare to receive the Torah once again on Shavuot!

International Terrorism: Past, Present and Future Challenges

Professor Stephen Sloan explores terrorism in his publication, which you can review by clicking here: “The Evolution of Terrorism as a Global Test of Wills: A Personal Assessment and Perspective”, a personal narrative of his evolution as a scholar of terrorism.  Professor Sloan’s research has spanned the past four decades, to include a coup attempt in Indonesia to the Oklahoma City bombing. He has stood out as a leading thinker on the domestic terrorism threat, the transformation of the international environment as well as the need for the integration of local and national intelligence.

This and next Sunday morning, February 21 and 28, 10:30-11:30 am, join us at Rodeph Shalom for study with RS member Professor Stephen Sloan in our class “International Terrorism: Past, Present and Future Challenges.”

A View of Urban History from Jewish Philadelphia

This introduction to Philadelphia Jewish history comes from Temple University’s Murray Friedman Chair of American Jewish History and director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History, Dr. Lila Corwin Berman.  Dr. Berman will speak on this topic at Synaplex Shabbat this Friday night.

On Leaving, Staying, and Returning: A View of Urban History from Jewish Philadelphia, by Lila Corwin Berman
 
One of the perennial themes of Jewish history and lore is movement.  God commands Abraham lech lecha, “Go away from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.”  Driven by trade, by decree, by economic instability, by violence, by the desire for a better life, Jews have moved.  Some historians and thinkers have argued that the constancy of migration in Jewish life has bred a sense of Jewish detachment from land, territory, and place.  Continue reading

Open My Lips for Prayer

By Rabbi Jill Maderer

This Friday, we continued our Shabbat summer series “Spiritual Power in Prayer” with a text that focuses on the one-line introduction to the Amidah: “O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth declare Your praise.”  The commentary teaches:

“As a person begins to pray, reciting the words: ‘O Lord, open my lips and let my mouth declare Your praise,’ the Presence of God comes into him. Then it is the Presence herself who commands his voice; it is she who speaks the words through him.  One who knows faith that all this happen within him will be overcome with trembling and with awe”  (Your Word is Fire: The Hasidic Masters on Contemplative Prayer, Arthur Green and Barry Holtz.).Continue reading