STAR’s Rabbi Hayim Herring recent blog entry, The Jewish People Inc: A Study On How Synagogues Develop is clever… and brings up an interesting question. Herring likens the development of the Jewish people, to the development of a company or corporation. We began as a family owned business (Abraham through Jacob). Jacob moves the company because …
I recently wrote about my experience recommending a church consultant to work with a synagogue. Fortunately, for me and for the synagogue, the experience with this consultant was excellent. He was exactly what they needed. Afterwards, I had the opportunity to talk with the consultant about his experience. Although he had never worked with a …
What Business Are We In? Posted on March 25, 2015Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D. Synagogues should be asking, “What business are we in?” That may seem obvious, but it isn’t, and most synagogue leaders get it wrong – with disastrous consequences. The usual answers are things like Jewish education, Shabbat and holiday services, social action, …
Passover 5771 may be past, but its lessons return in last week’s parashah (B’ha’alot’kha). Of all our holidays, Passover ranks supreme in that we were delivered from Egypt specifically with Passover in mind. Whatever else we do as Jews follows from this singular event in our past. In Temple days, therefore, the Passover sacrifice was …
In an attempt to address the well-documented and growing gulf between the economic fortunes of the rich and poor–and almost in tandem with the onset of the recession and the collapse of the housing market–Rabbi Jill Jacobs published a book on the Jewish imperative to practice tikkun olam, or repairing the world, as seen through both rabbinic and contemporary activist perspectives.
Parashat Tzav Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman We can chart the last half century by the kinds of seder we have had. Fifty years ago, we celebrated an old-country model brought here by grandparents who davened it through in Hebrew from the Maxwell House Haggadah. Some of us remember it nostalgically, but in fact, we rarely …
Continue reading “A Passover Question That Keeps Us Up All Night”
Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman Parashat Ki Tissa, 2010 Nature and culture are the twin poles of human existence. Nature is how the world greets us in raw beauty, promise and power. Culture is how we partner with it, riding its sound waves with music, converting wood and stone into homes, and carving ski slopes out …
Continue reading “Synagogue Life Should Be Like Handwashing (not hand wringing!)”
From Jewish people to Jewish purpose: The new age of social innovation in American Jewish life Notes from a talk given by Prof. Steven M. Cohen at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, London, UK, December 2 2009. There has been an efflorescence of independent, exciting and creative collective Jewish activity carried out by young …
Guest Synablog writer and regular contributor and blogger for The New York Jewish Week, Rabbi Gerry C. Skolnik gives an interesting take on the synagogue transformation movement. Skolnik contends that organizations like S3K and STAR might be more part of the problem than the solution. S3K team members Ron Wolfson, Larry Hoffman and Steven Cohen respond to Skolnik’s …
Continue reading “Synagogue Transformation: part of the solution or problem?”
Rabbi Jeremy S. MorrisonSept 12, 2008The Riverway Project Introduction In the spring of 2007, Synagogue 3000 published an article written by Tobin Belzer and Donald E. Miller titled, “Synagogues that Get It: How Jewish Congregations are Engaging Young Adults.”[i] In their study, Belzer and Miller described three synagogues – in L.A., Chicago and New York …