Strengthening Congregations

Don’t Call it Hybrid: Multi-Access is the Future for Jewish Communities

Cantor Rosalie Will

Rabbi Esther L. Lederman

Rabbi Leora Kaye

May 5, 2021

Not surprisingly over the past number of months, the word “hybrid” has become popularized to refer to this new world we have entered. We want to make an argument for a new, and more precise term that some congregations have started to use: multi-access.

Strengthening Congregations

Ensuring the Sacred and the Ethical in Sacred Partnership

Amy Asin

The URJ offers resources that address the challenges of building sacred partnerships and leading our institutions at this moment in time. We strongly suggest that you take a look at them and begin to apply what makes sense to ensure that you put as much care into how healthy your organization is emotionally as it is physically. Many of these are offered in partnership with movement partners.

Strengthening Congregations

A Community, Not a Commodity

Rabbi Jennifer Jaech

April 27, 2021

The first wedding at which I officiated as a newly ordained rabbi was on the island of Maui. The couple planned their ceremony in a location that rarely received significant rainfall.

Young girl wearing googles while watching a Zoom screen surrounded by materials for conducting a science experiment

Education

Creators, Thinkers, and Inventors: STEM in our Synagogue Learning Community

Alison Weikel

Jacob Paikoff

April 2, 2021

As the STEM educator and director of education, respectively, at Temple Shir Tikva in Wayland, MA, we’re sharing reflections on introducing STEM to Jewish learners in our building pre-COVID and in our online learning community.

Passover

Pandemic Passover, Take Two: The Long Journey through the Wilderness

Rabbi Rick Jacobs

March 2, 2021

Last Passover began the urgent quest to reinvent much of Jewish life, highlighting that some of the ways we “do” Judaism needed to be updated. This year has been a powerful catalyst to shifts in how we perform our holy work.