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The Long Suffering God

From ICE protests in LA to “No Kings” protests nationwide, our own country moves through a time of quaking unrest. The foundation of power and those who wield it tremors as races begin to appear on the horizon. No leader is safe. For those of us who are not politically minded, the noise is deafening, as is the silence. However, what remains unassailable is that the role of those who pursue leadership will always come under question. And this week’s Torah portion is no different.

Parshat Shelach features the Israelites losing faith (again), and upon hearing the report from the spies’ reconnaissance mission into “the land of Canaan,” they stage a protest of their own. Their protest signs read with a jingoism like “Hell no, we won’t go,” “Praying for a better God for my children” and “He’s not my King.” The God character assumes the role of the failed leader, and faith is lost by all as doom and gloom and spiritual practice don’t mix. 

The “God Character” is reminded by Moses of who he is – as “slow to anger” is one of 13 attributes of God’s own self description (Exodus 34:6-7).  Moses begins his approach with an interesting abbreviation of God’s Exodus utterance, and states:  יְהֹוָ֗ה אֶ֤רֶךְ אַפַּ֙יִם֙  (Numbers 14:18) in this week’s Torah portion. Rashi (11th c.) tells this story to grant all of us, 1,000 years later, with perhaps the eyes to see: 

When Moses ascended to Heaven, Moses found God writing the words “The Lord is Long Suffering.” Moses asked “Surely, only for the righteous?” Whereby God responded, “To the Wicked, also.” Whereupon Moses said: “The wicked — let them perish!” He (the Lord) replied to him: “I swear by your life that you shall eventually need this thing (the extension of My mercy also to the wicked)”.

As previously mentioned, we have collectively fallen through the looking glass, gone on a collective psychedelic journey and are spinning right round. For anyone with half a heart, the whole picture does not make sense. Many felt deep pain at the images coming out of Gaza and the ICE round ups, and many took to the streets in protest.

But where is the protest for Israel?

Like so many of our family members – or if we can be honest, our own selves – Israel is both righteous and wicked, perfect and flawed, dynamic and sleepy; it aspires towards human visions of the highest ideals for humanity and falls to the most base. Israel is a Rorschach for the trauma within, as its name itself means “ones who struggle with God.” Founded from the pursuit of self-determination for the Jewish people, it is proof that the Palestinians can do it, too, that Dreamers can make something for themselves in the USA and that colonialism can end and people can return to their homeland. Our sacred covenant as Jews – all Jews, and especially American Jews, as ours is a covenantal land as well (ask any Mormon); in exchange for this sacred covenant returning us to our homeland from 3000 years ago, we have a Disneyland for our Souls. A place that will always welcome us, support our dreams and offer endless Shabbos dinners, cafes for commiseration, jobs in arguably the greatest tech sector in the world and invitations into Knowing our Souls. 

But, most American Jews today, especially the “Nones” – those who are “Spiritual but not Religious” – are uneasy at the thought of Israel. It seems that a lack of moral connection to spiritual pursuit has left a mind and soul disconnected from the family history that gave them the privilege to claim their apathy or alexithymia. The doubt or ambivalence felt by so many (like the ancient Israelites given some bad news) is the crux of their spiritual pursuits of moral bypass; an obsession with psychedelics, self-healing, Instagram tile-therapy and all other massaging of bodies and minds to bypass the work of the soul. Israel represents, at its most glorious, that the soul and who we are and how we show up in this world is intertwined, and any shirking of that truth will lead to a feeling of emptiness. In short, Israel offers us Ethical Monotheism for the Spiritual Warrior.

Which is why we all see how complicated that plays out, and which is why even God expresses that “I am long suffering for both the wicked and the righteous.” For like all of us, Israel is both. No better and no worse than any of us.

From New York Magazine to the “No Kings Day” marches, moral sanctimony is a new national epidemic in the US. It is founded on the principle that the person carrying the sign is more righteous than the person they castigate on their sign. Outside of a moral universe, or within a social media cosmos, we can pretend to be whomever we want to be. But moral consistency is the deepest of spiritual practices, and it is actually a lot easier to wake up every day for a 5 am Cross Fit or 6 am Yoga class than it is to commit to a curiosity of morality and ethics. 

Israel’s war in Iran is NOT a deflection of Gaza. It is the outcome of what began on October 7. What happened in Gaza has been a moral war with collateral damage caused by many players and we grieve for the children and innocent who have and are suffering. We even send them food and medical care, and if we had a Time Machine, would see how much Israel will do to help Palestinians as well as Jews worldwide. There are talks in the works to help people and advance their lives to the privilege all of us reading this has. And I add, it will be Jews around the world helping. 

As for now, what do we do? We pray for the righteous and we pray for the evil. On all sides and in all countries. We pray for the turning of hearts of judgement into hearts of compassion. We pray for their well-being and their ability to have a plan for their government that will restore a balance of power for all of their citizens. We pray for the citizens of Iran (whom the Israelis have magnificently spared in their assault); we pray for women’s rights in the region and for the future of Gaza as a stable one. And we acknowledge this imperfect world filled with imperfect humans, and pray that America never knows of terror as Israel knows of because Israel, our homeland, has done the dirty work for the rest of us. And we pray that our prayers are heard within and we return to a prayer practice that increases our ability to contribute to a moral world – not a sanctimonious one – but a moral world of complexity and subtlety. For ethics and morals require practice. 

Bless the Righteous. Bless the Wicked. And pray for the discernment to know the difference. 

With love and a prayer for all in the region to feel the promise of Torah and lead a self-determined life free of terror,

Rabbi Lori

And for those who want to begin a prayer practice, please use this reference guide as a start. Prepared with my AJR/CA colleagues, it’s a good 1.0 for the “Jew-ishly curious and those who love us.” Godspeed.

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Truth or Consequence(s)

Alongside the Rio Grande is a small town named after a game show where Elon Musk set up camp for Space X. Truth or Consequences pairs perfectly with June 13, 2025.

As I write these words alongside its bath houses and very far away from just about anywhere, Israel defends itself against long range missiles and drones from Iran’s attack showering upon the Tel Aviv night sky. Israelis run in and out of bomb shelters on yet another sleepless night for an already traumatized people. And the international stage lights up for what will not be (nor has been) a short run. 

Palestinians also seek shelter, as the Houthis fire missiles from Yemen falling short of Israel, and hitting Palestinian villages. Several Israeli fighter jets have already been shot down by Iran, and Israeli pilots eject into lands yet unknown. Children and mothers in Gaza are all too familiar with these air raids, as they have witnessed and suffered from them for almost 20 months. Perhaps they, too, are thinking, “Truth and Consequences.”

Beneath the streets of Gaza, 55 hostages remain unaccounted for, at least 20 of them, we know, alive and living in tunnels built by Hamas over the past 20 years with money sent from international aid to create a Gazan Riviera, but instead, used to militarize and radicalize a people without a leadership alternative. In the region known as Gaza, everyone suffers from this Truth and its Consequences. 

And on the streets of Los Angeles, the ICE raids erupt a second Los Angeles fire this year, as concrete is pulled from overpasses and thrown onto police vehicles and Waymos are ordered so that they can be set aflame as a few miles away friends sleep on the couches of their family having lost their homes in the Altadena and Palisades fires (and they didn’t have insurance. Or were renters. Or have fallen into depression as they were not prepared for this). Our city seems surprised that “illegal citizens are being pulled away, denied habeas corpus” as most of us don’t even know what that means anymore. Truth and Consequences.

Over 25 years ago, Jack Nicholson in Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men” shouted into the camera at America, “You can’t handle the truth.” In the face of fewer and fewer people engaging in the moral interplay that religious spiritual communities ask of us, and instead, “choose yoga or gratitude groups,” it is the Truth that has come back to bite us. The truth that we need to “create a path for all dreamers who want to contribute positively to our land to become Americans” just as Israel creates a path for all Jews to become Israelis. The Truth that “we need the hostages returned home” so that we can leave Gaza and allow the creation of an infrastructure so that the Palestinians there can begin their own post-trauma Truth journey outside the grip of Hamas and Iran’s indoctrination. The Truth is that Bibi has proven to be Biblical in his leadership, leading Israel to do the world’s dirty work, while also, arguably, overstaying his welcome, as his leadership of Israel is as long as some dictators in recent history. Another Truth is for Israel to self-define new leadership and its future on its own, as we are not Israelis and it is upon them to innovate to Israel’s vision of a Liberal Democracy as radicalized regimes do not do democracy well. And for the US, it’s time to admit the Truth – that both the Left and the Right have gone too far, and we need to return to a reigning regime of Logic and Reasoning rooted in the concept that if we continue to live in naval gazing denial, it’s only a matter of time that the Consequences find their way onto our own soil.

Apropos to all of the above – this week’s Torah portion features God’s sick sense of humor. Reading it as “Fantasy Literature” as the Book of Numbers is truly other worldly, we could say that this is the Land of Lewis Carroll where logic and reasoning are thrown on their heads as well as challenged like a physics experiment. Quayle fall from the sky as the Israelites complain of hunger; Miriam’s body turns squamous as her punishment for the way she uses language against Moses. And we are instructed about how to bang gold into a candelabra to illuminate ourselves in the midst of all of this vivid darkness. It’s a Stranger Things world kind of quid pro quo.  

As we watch this horror show from the portals of glass in the palm of our hands as fireworks illuminate the Tel Aviv sky like Shabbos candles, may we put down our screens and turn to the wise advice from Ibn Ezra’s insight from the Torah portion (Numbers 10:9): “When you are at war in your land against an aggressor who attacks you, you shall sound short blasts on the trumpets, that you may be remembered before your God and be delivered from your enemies.” Ibn Ezra, in his commentary, remarks that the sounds of the shofar are to be read also as “an alarm or a reminder for the people to call out to God.”  

As in: Pray. 

At a time where most believe that a cold plunge is a good enough way to feel reset and renewed and God-optional is a real choice in most religious institutions in the US, that might not be helpful. But, in a world of Truth or Consequences, perhaps the best way to describe God is through Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: “For Every Action, there is an Equal and Opposite Reaction.” 

And so – pray. Pray to increase our awareness of what we can understand, pray for our ability to discern the truth from manipulation and illusion; pray for the grace to make choices that merit the highest human good and pray for the humility to meet the consequences that come when our best intentions fall short.

Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. Pray. 

We pray to counter the evil in those tunnels and to offer the world the Truth we are looking for – a return of the hostages home. We pray that all children in Gaza have a better future ahead of them and the support they need right now to get there. We pray that our friends in Israel (including beloved Open Temple musician Josh Goldberg) be held through this time and find his way home to Andrea in Nashville safely soon. We pray that all living in the United States return to the holiness of this land, and feel in every footstep its radiant and gracious truth of freedom for all who cultivate and nurture it. We pray for all world leaders who support peace and pray that those who support destruction find a new job. We pray that holy community find its way into our lives as the loneliness in the US is a part of what is tearing it apart. We pray for a return to logic and reasoning, we pray for a return to education where we focus on what is important and not surface deep. We pray that curiosity and compassion lead us through these times and we pray that we have the courage to create personal spiritual practices that help us deal with our truths, whatever they may be. We pray to accept what we can’t change and change what we can’t accept and to discern the difference as that is what Truth requires of us. 

As nothing may come from our prayers but a change of ourselves. And then, perhaps, our prayers will empower every human in this world to have space for their own prayers. As after we pray, we are better suited to deal with Truth when it comes along and triggers us. For, if we can’t handle the Truth, we won’t in any way be prepared for the Consequences…

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Seder Question 5785: The Path to Redemption

משלי י״ב:כ״ה

 כה  דְּאָגָ֣ה בְלֶב־אִ֣ישׁ יַשְׁחֶ֑נָּה וְדָבָ֖ר ט֣וֹב יְשַׂמְּחֶֽנָּה׃ 

If there is anxiety in a man’s mind let him quash it, And turn it into joy with a good word. 
-Proverbs 12:25

Before opening my phone, I have a new spiritual practice these days. I whisper these words from Proverbs to myself as an incantation for more than perspective, but a beckoning of my frontal lobe to command the interaction I am about to have. I don’t know if you feel this, but I find this glass (that you may be holding right now in the palm of your hand) to be an undue burden upon my soul. So many times a day, I hear a whisper emanating as if from the space beyond: “WE ARE NOT MEANT TO KNOW ALL OF THIS, HAVE ACCESS TO ALL OF THIS, BE EXPOSED TO ALL OF THIS…PUT IT DOWN, BEFORE IT BESMIRCHES YOUR SOUL!” (yes, the outer universe of my inner life uses the word besmirch). And as it is but a whisper, I am too often in the habit of its betrayal.

Our attention is held as prey to this Leviathan amidst a tsunami of information washing us away from our spiritual attentiveness as it feeds our anxiety. Even our commanding 11th Century commentator Rashi acknowledges that we must “divert our attention from our worry!” There is only one way through, friends, and our invitation into this path approaches.

This year’s Passover Seder Quest offers a Threshold into reclaiming a personal spiritual practice despite the Pharaohs in our Midst. Through joy, disruption, radical ritual and a lot of critical thinking as we pilgrimage through Venice, CA, our objective is to collectively reclaim our mind’s (and heart’s) discipline of attention. 

[As I write these words, the Nefarious Notifications Chime ceaselessly commands my attention towards a response at this very moment, and the demi-anxiety it seeds begins to sprout and root and branch out through my hand to click onto it…I pause.]

Pause.

Yes, Pause.

And Breathe.

Breathe…

And say: Break the Manacles of the Glass and Set Me Free.

Passover Seder Quest invites all of us into this re-discovery of what Breaking the Glass towards Redemption means in 2025. In a post-LA Fires, post-inauguration, post-antisemitism-is-real, post-oh-my-Gawd-what-is-going-on-in-the-world way, Open Temple’s Seder Quest is that full mind, body, and soul workout towards catharsis that releases the inflammation of the soul caught up in modern-day spiritual slavery. We will be asked to THINK and PROBLEM SOLVE WITH OTHERS, to DANCE AS IF WE WERE NAKED AND FREE, and LOVE OURSELVES AS A SPIRITUAL PRACTICE OF ACCEPTING OTHERS as we Quest Through Venice in a Pilgrammation of Transformation, emerging through the parted waters to a feast where friendship and sustenance will nurture us and the final taste of the Afikomen will have never met our tongue as sweetly.

Rabbi Lori

Seder Quest 5785: Break the Glass
Passover Seder Quest at The Open Temple takes place on Sunday, April 13, 2025
Learn More and Register here. 

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Dancing in the Darkness

 

We are sitting amidst the burnt embers of civic destruction. All is vanity. Ashes from your incredible kitchen to Dust and Destruction of that backyard, where we sat for hours jumping in and out of the pool with the kids. Destruction of the corner yogurt shop where we ran into one another as our children grew taller and taller. Destruction of communities that will never again exist.

How do we respond to this depth of ruin? We dance.

The City of Santa Monica and the Third Street Promenade along with Open Temple host a Silent Disco Dance on Shushan Purim Shabbat. That’s Friday, March 14 at 6:30 pm. Find us just south of the corner of Arizona and Third Street where a Walled City will rise for a Silent Disco as we Dance in Defiance.

Yes, the Jewish response to the face of evil is dance. Revery. Joyous disruption, even if it feels contrived at first. The month of Adar is upon us, and the rabbis declare: “Our Joy MUST increase!

Our Purim story takes place in the crib of creation – Ancient Persia – a gnarly corner of today’s world. And, both then and now, we look to the Rise of Women, a divine feminine energy, for our redemption. Narges Mohammadi is our modern day Queen Esther…our dance this year is dedicated to her release from incarceration as we cultivate the Voices of Women as Voices of Reason for an Unreasonable Age.

Look to the mothers, your Chick Rabbi Calls. Look to the mothers dancing and weeping and laughing as we lick tears from our cheeks and recollect the Mayim Chayyim (cleansing waters) of the sea which is now soiled with the toxic ashes of a thousand Teslas. Look to the mothers who see ourselves in Shiri Bibas, who nursed Kfir and Ariel’s friends, and declare:

“Dear Shiri, you did not die in vain. I do not want to even imagine your end of days, yet I can’t help, as a mother, to find my mind drifting to what it was like. It was…”

And in that blank… is the Story of Purim.

Purim is a dark tale; just read Chapter 9. It invites us into the dark space of destruction and asks us, amidst the ashes of ruin, connect with a source that is not at all present in that space, but always present within if at times forgotten.

The Concept of God in the Megillat Esther is one of God’s absence. Even Esther’s name itself means “Hidden One.” And it is through our own work of sorting through the ashes, seeking what is hidden beneath the ashes: that one mezuzah, that one Hanukah menorah, that one ring with the diamond that was sewn into a hem of a coat that your great grandmother smuggled out of Auschwitz; one Hazmat suit cleaning up one home at one time, one gardener with a metal detector looking for your family’s kiddish cup so that he can continue generating an income for his family when his entire clientele was lost in one week; it is through this HOPE and DEFIANCE in the wake of devastation that we will find our way through this darkness.

So Arise! Awake! Make your bad day better. And please Dance. Dance at home, Dance-walk to your morning coffee, dance while brushing your teeth, dance with your children and partners, and dance with Open Temple.

Let’s dance our Tucheses off.
 
To Joy.
To Freedom.
To Love.
To Movement.
To Defiance.
To Life.
 
May we all rise again. May Shiri and Ariel and Kfir’s deaths be not in vain. And may our memory be of their smiles and tenderness and may our Purim Story this year awaken the Divine Goddess energy of all of  our Jewish Matriarchs, of all of the Mommas still living out of suitcases, of All of the Esthers Yet to Rise. May All of us Dance and Defy every last particle of Hatred and Evil in this world. And May each of us, in our revery, celebrate all of this amidst Orange Balloons.
 
With Resolute Love and Defiant Joy,
Rabbi Lori

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If the world is not going to change, I am.

Shalom, Friends.

The year that has passed was not what we expected it to be one year ago. And the year ahead remains indeterminate. With that, High Holidays in a post-10/7 world requires a special kind of reflection – of our place in a changed world. With all of the change in the greater world, we also have some changes at Open Temple.

I have given the community a lot of thought as I moved through 6,000 miles of America this summer. I saw a lot. Mostly, I had a front row seat to a country divided. The division we are seeing in the Middle East exists between our two coasts; my heart is heavy with all of the miscommunication and the pain it causes. America needs to do life differently, lest we fall into patterns like we are seeing in Europe and the Middle East.

With that, I am announcing that if the world is not going to change, I am.

It’s been a difficult year for many of us in the Jewish world, and I strive to lead by example and model the value and importance of self-care and personal reflection through these times. In order to continue holding and pouring generously into our community, I need to fill my own cup first by honoring my needs and allowing myself to receive holding. I need to hear my own heart as it breaks and feel the tears I have been holding back flow. This year, I am focusing on healing – myself, our community and through this, our own little corner of the world.

In this spirit, I invite everyone to attend a healing High Holidays this year. We begin with a healing ritual at WiSpa for Selichot on September 28. We will sweat, soak and meet for some learning in the jimjilbang over smoothies and tea. And a few days later, Open Temple Band returns and together we offer a healing Rosh HaShanah service on the beach, October 3 at 4 pm as the waves crash on the shoreline. The service we are preparing models the work that I have been doing, and hope others will engage in as well.

On October 7, I invite 26 souls to attend the Nova exhibit for an impactful ritual experience which will culminate with a creative ritual in what I call “Nova’s Shiva room.” Then, on October 10, everyone is invited into the healing waters of the Pacific for a moonlight mikveh as we prepare for Kol Nidre.

Our Ritual Lab continues with an important announcement: for the first time, Kol Nidre will be held in the space originally intended for Open Temple’s Cemetery Service: Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary. We are invited to bring all of our grief, our ancestral wounds, and our hopes for A New Beginning, and return through our unique and intimate service on October 11. And in order to provide the greatest care I can for myself, I am not offering a Yom Kippur Day service. Instead, I am leaving Hillside and getting on a red-eye to New York to honor Yom Kippur with two synagogues that deeply inspire me. While I will miss spending Yom Kippur with you, I know that this choice is ultimately in service to my ability to connect more deeply to what spiritual leadership is in a post-10/7 world. Like you, I have many questions: about faith, God, connection, purpose – I need the space to see how some admirable colleagues handle these times in order to achieve the spiritual transformation required for me to bring Open Temple to its next incarnation.

With that, we are approaching this year’s High Holiday Ritual Lab with deep intentionality, prioritizing quality over quantity. I look forward to journeying with those who feel the call.

If you are still reading, we also have changes internally at Open Temple that we are excited about. We are thrilled to welcome back our High Holidays logistics whiz, Conrad Starr as Director of Operations at Open Temple as we wish good things to our outgoing managing director, Kirsten Hudson. We are also thrilled that our communications wizard, Bri Rubin, continues to keep us connected, our returning Rabbinical Student, Rabbi-in-Training CJ Mays continues his work with our B Mitzvah class, and Rabbi Ilana Grinblatt will continue as a tutor for our B. Mitzvah students. And we’re giddy with anticipation for what Kent Jenkins and the Open Temple Band have in store for us this Rosh HaShanah and Kol Nidre. We are also beyond excited for our Soul Journey Fellow, Micah Bernhard who will also be living at Open Temple House. Please stop by and say hi, and look for the new creations we are cultivating for our healing year ahead.

Lastly, I do hope to return with the full High Holiday Ritual Lab next year. However, I can only do this with your support. This year, Open Temple has been impacted by many monetary factors, including everyone feeling the economic pinch, the need to give to Israel and other factors. We hope that in the coming year you consider becoming a Co-Creator, or making Open Temple a part of your philanthropic giving. All of our funds go towards keeping Open Temple open. I am holding the vision for those who share the desire to re-enchant Judaism to emerge from this year’s High Holiday portal feeling more deeply connected to one another and to our Jewish souls, inspired to work together to create an abundantly nourishing community- with trust that our contributions will return to us tenfold. We welcome your call and any insights you may offer. Thank you for your authenticity through this time.

If you feel strongly that Open Temple should once again offer services on Yom Kippur (for 5786), let us know. The best way to do this is by renewing your Co-Creatorship or becoming an Open Temple Co-Creator for the first time. We simply can’t do it without you.

Looking forward to shared meaning as we walk through the portals this coming month of Tishrei, as only community can begin to piece together this broken heart.

Authentically and Gratefully Yours,
Rabbi Lori

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A Long Letter But Necessary

Shalom, Friend.

High Holidays 5785 feels different. Despite pandemic, seditious uprising, a divided nation, war in Europe, the loss of agency over our bodies, our addiction with social media and devices, and everything else we have been through in the past decade, this year is something new. 

As a Rabbi, I have never had to prepare for High Holidays with such a deep feeling of uncertainty. Personally, I feel burned out. And amongst my colleagues, I am not the only one. My friends who live in Israel struggle daily – from caring for wounded soldiers as physicians in Israel’s major hospitals to just watering their plants. My Palestinian-American friends feel bewildered and powerless. As moderate American Jews or Palestinians – we all want peace. However, others choose to have “big feelings” about Israel, and hate rallies, crimes and worse have found their way onto American soil as acts of moral superiority. Whatever side of the conflict spectrum we find ourselves, one thing we cannot deny: the state of world affairs demands that we take a second look at our Jewish identity.

Open Temple High Holiday Ritual Lab 5785 honors the complexity of our times. This year, we focus on the surrealism of our world through a Morality Tale. It’s like the Wild West out there. And internally as well. I don’t know about you, but I, personally, struggle to understand who I am through these times. I cling to my moral compass as a north star. My prayers don’t seem enough. I am unsure, more than ever, that there is any divinity driving all of this. It’s a crisis of faith. It’s existential.

And yet – the Rabbis offer us a tradition that states “The King is in the Field.” I hear a voice in my head responding, “if that’s the case, then where the hell was he on 10/7 while thousands of young people danced in the fields of Kibbutz Be’eri?”

With this state of being, Open Temple offers Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur services that match our mood. Rosh Hashanah invites us into an exultant celebration on the beach. Inspired by the memory of our holy brothers and sisters who died dancing, and those healing through the wounds and memories of that day, we will meet on the Playa (aka Venice Beach), for a service of joy and celebration as we seek to define and make meaning through the complexity of our times. Together.  

On 10/7, we invite those who feel moved to attend the Nova Festival Memorial in Culver City, as I lead a group and provide a siy’um (completion ritual), or threshold, into meaning. Open Temple already purchased tickets for 18 individuals, so the first 18 to RSVP will receive them. If others are interested, we will purchase more. 

And to complete the cycle of the 10 Days of Awe, Kol Nidre, our annual Memento Mori service, which commences the 25-hour death meditation called Yom Kippur, will for the first time be held in the container I originally conceived the service for – Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary. To bring this service into a Jewish Cemetery – where many of us will spend our eternities as well as be surrounded by the memories and remains of our families – casts a new and deepened meaning to our services.

Our incredible band, led by Kent Jenkins, is back as well as some new artists we are spotlighting this year. Most of all, we just ask, humbly, for the gift of your presence.

Finally, I am personally asking each of you to become a Co-Creator this year. Open Temple only exists due to the support you give us. It would be so meaningful to know that you find us important enough to ensure our future through your support today. We await your response to this humble request.

One final reminder for the soul: every Friday at 11 am, I host Torah Study on the picnic tables at Open Temple House. Please consider showing up and opening the portal of wisdom from those who came before us, as their enduring light illuminates our way through the Wild West. 

The final image I offer as a blessing is this ~ 5785: Dance Again.

With love and authenticity,

Rabbi Lori

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Tears of Growth: Portals into a Middle Eastern Tomorrow

From the moment I landed, it was clear that the country is exhausted. The posters of the hostages dog-eared and fading in the sun; rows of ribbed riot barriers line the streets awaiting the next protest as the heart of Tel Aviv continues to beat, albeit with an arrhythmia. But one thing is certain: Israel is changing. Rapidly. And for the better. However, this is not about the atrocities or political maelstrom, which we have heard too much about; this is about how we convert these indelible images into a message for building tomorrow.

Over four-and-a-half days, a group of U.S. clergy traveled through Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza envelope on a listening campaign sponsored by Tr’uah and J Street. Each 14-hour day spun a centrifugal 360 degrees of Israel’s reality-invested citizens (Israelis) and naturalized residents (Palestinians, Arabs, Christians and more) transforming the country in a post-Oct. 7 world.

Israel persists as a beehive of dynamic innovation through necessity – billions of IQ points from Start-Up Nation, the hearts of activists confused and transformed through the contradictions of the times we are living through. “Our allies have turned against us,” proclaimed one rabbi from a progressive rabbinic advocacy organization. All sides — left, right, center, and none-of-the-above — pivot in a dynamic post-Oct. 7 reinvention of country, citizenship, the nature of protest, and the call of duty to support Israel through this existential crucible.

Ronen Koehler, a sturdy, compact man with puckish features, may very well be the premier officer of tech CEOs in Israel. Reminiscent of the unique formula of dreamer and pragmatist of the early kibbutzniks, Ronen and his Start-Up Nation colleagues transformed public service post-Oct. 7.  In mere days, he and his colleagues organized what looks very much like Israel’s first National Guard. “You see,” he informed us, “from the start, there was no one to retrieve the victims of Oct. 7. As the reserves were called up to prepare for war, there was no one left to help the citizens within Israel in need. There were people who sheltered in place in their mamad for up to three days before anyone came to get them,” he remembered.

Out of the movement seeded by Ronen and his colleagues, Achim l’Neshek (Brothers and Sisters in Arms, which arose last year to combat Israel’s proposed judicial reform), Brothers and Sisters for Israel emerged mere hours after the attacks on Oct. 7 in response to the 150,000 Jewish refugees who had to flee their homes from the Gaza envelope and the north. Brothers and Sisters for Israel began an aid campaign for these Israeli refugees and received so many donations that within four months their warehouses filled with overstock. Individuals were relocated to Eilat and the Dead Sea resorts where they organized an education system for thousands of displaced and traumatized kids across the country. They set up laundromats, provided baby strollers, sourced and sorted clothing for every shape and size, reunited lost animals with their owners, and when there weren’t any owners to receive them, found them new homes. Brothers and Sisters in Arms is the hug Israel needed through these times.

The Place Where God Cries

There is a passage in the Talmud that describes “a place where God goes to cry, and its name is Mistarim” (Chagigah 5b). The rabbis teach us that the place of God’s tears is a hidden (Moostar) location, or portal; as I walked through Israel, it was clear there were portals everywhere. Like Augmented Reality (or AR, most famously rolled out in “Pokeman Go” a few years back), real and virtual images intermix through historic plates lining the streets, animating the mythos of Israel’s history as the street itself fills with protesters envisioning Israel’s tomorrow. Israel today lives in an Augmented Reality defining its “utility of presence” as it wrestles between its past and its future.

Weaving through the country, this augmented reality reveals spaces of God’s tears with each encounter. It forces us to ask: Can we hone our senses, awaken our heart-center, turn our preconceived notions, prejudices, previous traumas and veils of pain and sorrow enough to see God’s tears? Knowing what we do from Jeremiah and Ezekiel, can we heed the call of their modern-day bewailing before it is too late? For within these teardrops are the answers, materializing as if out of thin air, of a path through these impossible conflicts and horrors. Perhaps with every tear shed, we grow more humble, more hopeful, more human.

Sometimes, the prophetic spirit lives in a place, beyond the lives lost there. Nova is a huge portal. Yet, it is still too new; this is not Auschwitz 70 years later, or “Never Again,” as the horrors continue right now, just a few miles away. This site is a living grave, as parents gather around photos of their children, lighting candles marking a birthday (or death day), where barely eight months ago, young people danced, made love and moved to the rhythms of the earth. Amid the Be’eri forest that nestled the encampment of the Nova festival, someone had affixed an unremarkable white t-shirt to a tree. A shirt worn by just about every man at some time of his life, and most women as well. The shirt swayed in the breeze, rising with an updraft, and folded in on itself, as if the young man dancing at the rave were still wearing it, freely moving his body as he felt the music. The earth remembers and still weeps, as the shirt wailing in the wind was there to remind us.

The Wailing Wall

The morning after the visit to the Gaza border, I awoke early with most of the cohort for the monthly Rosh Hodesh gathering of Women of the Wall (WOW). Formed over 30 years ago by Anat Hoffman, who has held firm in her commitment to progressive politics in Israel through these monthly gatherings, WOW has persisted as a grassroots presence in the women’s section of the Kotel (aka the Western Wall) where women daven wearing tefillin, tallitot and reading from the Torah, all rituals denied women in traditional halakhic Judaism.

As the davening began, I stood behind a seated teenager, her face pressed upon her siddur. I was told that these students come every month to disrupt WOW. As I davened, I sensed a wave of chaos approaching, drawing my eyes off the page to catch a glimpse of Jewish women attacking one another with words. As we began Hallel, I heard the abrupt movement of a chair on the stone floor, and as I looked up, saw a middle-aged woman wearing tefillin, a tallit and bright red lipstick physically push one of the girls.

Overcome with nausea, I excused myself from the cluster and found my way to the front row. I softly tapped a young woman draping herself on the ancient stones on her shoulder. “I really need this,” I said in Hebrew. As I lay my head upon the wall, a portal opened for me, as I became it.

I cried for the hungry and the homeless. I cried for the lost dogs and humans who had no one to console them, as we were all grieving. I cried for a shiva that is going to last 1,300 years. 

My body convulsed. Tears flooded from my eyes. A wail rose from me like the cries of a shofar. I cried for the bubbes and the zaydes, the babies and the girls in tunnels. I cried for the baseless hatred. I cried for the abject hatred. I cried for the Palestinian children who are injured or dead or just manipulated by Hamas to pretend that they are injured and taught to call dead children martyrs. I cried for the hungry and the homeless. I cried for the lost dogs and humans who had no one to console them, as we were all grieving. I cried for a shiva that is going to last 1,300 years. I cried for the colonizing progressives, whose incredible empathy and ability to feel the pain of their neighbors ends with a territorial war between Jews at the Kotel. And as I cried, the swallows circled above like the spirit of Shechinah, who had been given no room in this pit of self-righteous prayer to join us.

Palestinian Polls and Vision – Ramallah Millennium Hotel

Israelis are not allowed in Ramallah: except for Natalie Portman, whose ads for Dior festoon the billboards there. Today we were to meet with Dr. Khalil Shikaki, a professor of political science and the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research. Dr. Shikaki, a former Brandeis professor and Brookings Institution Fellow, presented data both encouraging and worrisome depending on the fable woven from the formula. One particular stat stood out above all others:

 One percent of all Palestinians (including West Bank and Gaza) are satisfied with the U.S.’s performance in the current war.

 These stats were taken in March, 2024. In the wake of the antisemitic tsunami in the U.S., purportedly “in support of Palestinian self-determination,” this stat glared at me, spurring me to angry tears. Tears of frustration for all the efforts my colleagues are making to bring aid and attention to the Palestinian cause, tears of anger for the errant protesters on college campuses (whose efforts apparently are going unnoticed in Gaza and the West Bank), and tears of incredulity as I heard no curiosity from anyone else in the room.

Agitated, I started clicking my pen. Looking at it, I saw the words “Millennium Hotel, Ramallah, Palestine” written across it and immediately cracked a smile. In my hand was a radioactive power of self-determination. Bombs won’t create a nation; branding will. The pen made a fabulous clicking sound, and as I rapidly fired its ink on and off, my thoughts of a future alongside Palestine crystallized. You see, I reasoned, we have been living amidst our Muslim brothers and sisters since the late stages of Rabbinic Judaism; indeed, evolving alongside one another’s intellectual curiosities with mutual benefit to our spiritual traditions. And we have endured and even, one might argue, thrived, in a dance of exiles and returns. How unimaginably providential to live at a time of such tidal changes. Can we learn anything from our ancestors, I wondered, clicking the pen in and out and in and out. What whispers to us in the admonitions from the prophets, the bloody pages in the Book of Judges, the anti-heroes of Genesis, the divisive and destructive design of the House of Hasmonaeans? What moral patterns emerge through our shared Abrahamic code of poetry and human expression from evolving wisdom traditions, Jewish Kalam and Sharia Halakha woven through a shared literary history lighting our way into a brighter tomorrow? The Palestinian pen clicked…it was, indeed, more powerful than the sword.

“Dignity and hope” — a female Palestinian Geographic Information System expert and policy maker remarked — “are the only way through; we must restore one another’s dignity and hope.” 

The Search for Hope in Abu Dhabi

Ignited, broken-hearted, and still curious, I left Israel for a Shabbat experience where I could try to imagine Israel’s future. I first learned about Abrahamic Family House in 2019, when United Arab Emirates (UAE) announced its “Year of Tolerance.” Opening a center designed by Ghanian-British architect David Adjaye, the center itself is a striking edifice for religious tolerance. With each unique structure resembling one another, yet with elements of symbolic and subtle distinction, this monument to religious unity and understanding drew me from Israel to Shabbat in Abu Dhabi. There, after a service led by Rabbi Peter Berger in a sanctuary fashioned after a “Sukkat Shalom,” I sat around a Shabbat table filled with an international assortment of Israeli and Diasporic Jews from the tech sector and academia, all mostly residing in UAE for work. Their discussion of UAE/Israel relations reflects a shared bond deeper than just a negotiated agreement – it is an alliance rooted in personal relationships.

One tech CEO at the table told a tale about an Emirate royal’s mother, who was sick. The best treatment that they could find for her was in Israel, so they traveled to Tel Aviv for treatment. While there, the sheikh experienced first-hand an attack from Gaza, and marveled at the Iron Dome interception in the sky. It was reported that his impression was one of moral indignation: Here was a country where they were healing people with life-threatening illness and offered care to all who needed it; and yet, there was the arc of bombs falling from the Gazan sky into Tel Aviv. As he witnessed the marvel of Iron Dome’s interceptive fires in the night sky in real time, it was reported that his feelings toward Israelis and the Gazans transformed.

UAE resembles Israel with its “Start-up Nation” mentality. Dubai presents as if someone decided to build Miami Beach on the Saudi Peninsula 20 years ago. As Emirates shares threats from Yemen mere miles away, the specter of existential destruction from Iran helps clarify what most college protesters don’t understand – the war in Gaza is less a war of Palestinian self-determination (or allegations of Israeli neo-colonialism), and more a war of resistance against cultures in the Middle East embracing progress. The Royal cities are cosmopolitan playgrounds, modern-day-marvels in the desert. If Israel has a future in the Middle East, it must follow its moral compass and affirm allies who share values of human progress through science, the arts and a vision for tomorrow. With a Museum of the Future, a Guggenheim Museum in the works and a Louvre already standing, Emirates broadcasts as a partner oasis in the Arab world rather than a mere mirage of augmented reality.

Labor Pains and Tears

The tech minyan, as one might affectionately call the group gathered for Shabbat in Abu Dhabi, were not without wounds. Almost everyone in the room had a family member in Gaza – either as soldiers or hostages – or lost someone or was nursing someone with trauma post-Oct. 7. The hope these individuals cast drew from the same web as Ronen, from Brothers and Sisters for Israel, and his tech colleagues. Listening around the table at how these men and women were fostering relationships through innovation and technology, I was reminded of a perfunctory visit from one of the few Labor Party members left in the Knesset earlier that week. Rabin’s party, which championed the peace process, now measures as anachronistic, an ideology formed in the last millennium, as Israel has moved from labor of the land to a new kind of labor.

These tech colleagues represent the potential of a new Labor Party, one resembling the Abraham Accords, and extending its partnership as a new, cosmopolitan Israel akin to the Northern Kingdom’s Biblical Israel. It is taught that the builders of the ancient Temple in Shiloh, in the Northern Kingdom, following the fall of the unified Kingdom of Israel, affixed a relief of Ba’al, a god of the Canaanites, at its entrance. It was there that Hannah prayed for a child, who would come and find David, who himself would conceive a child with a Hittite who would build a Temple and through this bloodline, in the Augmented Reality of the Rabbis, shall come the messiah.

The stories from our biblical scribes offer our most ancient form of innovation technology, where Jewish ideas acted outside of rabbinic rebuttal or review. Today’s Israel, a teetering democracy, is being asked to recognize a moral god and return to its biblical roots as a mosaic tradition, as we innovate a peaceful future through nanotechnology, micro-processors and medical devices— miracles and marvels that benefit all humanity. Today’s Start-up Nation houses the Temple of Tomorrow. On the walls of this modern-day temple there is a benediction, written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, like the parking garage of the Abrahamic Famly House, welcoming all who find holiness through the labor of collaboration.

But, with labor comes tears. The work ahead of us is an impossible puzzle and hero’s journey not for the faint-hearted. Tears from these labor pains of “something new being born” make it hard to see and challenge our prejudices while triggering our fears. Only leadership with the most flexible of minds and hearts can lead us through this portal of God’s tears.

Tears of Growth: Portals into a Middle Eastern Tomorrow Read More »

Doing the Work

A message from Rabbi Lori:

Making it Meaningful…

What does Passover mean in 5784? As the concept of Freedom has become a universal trigger, Jews all over the world approach Passover with a personal revisionism this year. In Israel, they are saying “Lo b’Seder” – a pun playing with the Hebrew word for “all right” and the fact that we are “not all right” as well as an expression for who will NOT be present at the seder. Elijah’s cup and visitation are being revised through poetry and rituals; we are encouraged to add an empty seat with a yellow ribbon to our seder tables to keep the lack of freedom for the hostages prominent; some are even placing gauze on the seder plate as a symbol for the suffering and healing wishes we have for victims in Gaza (where the word originated through the weavers who lived there in the Ancient world). And on and on and on (read this article on Rabbi Stav of Shoham and how Israelis are re-valuing seder this year).

Regardless of how we feel – approaching Passover, or passing it over – this is undeniably a time for self-reflection. Half a year ago, we gathered at Yom Kippur and marked 50 years since the Yom Kippur War. Tomorrow night’s Passover seder will mark 200 days since 10/7. How are we doing?

The only response I have through this time is this: It’s time to do the work. Our Seder Crawl invites everyone into Radical Ritual; the cleaning we have ahead of us before Monday night invites us to begin with the outer work as we deepen our inner work; and our upcoming series Omer Ascent accompanies us into deepened spiritual development that calls to us from within.

My heart remains broken; my hope never fails; my love deepens with compassion each day as we read more and more about our broken world. May the Matzoh be a reminder of the work our ancestors did in setting their own seder table through troubled times and may we never be resigned to defeat; for our power to love and understand the Other is our Superpower and the essence of our journey around the Seder Table.

May this year we find Redemption for All.

With Love and a Blessing for Freedom from Bondage,

Rabbi Lori

Doing the Work Read More »

Pray Tell

 

Congregations Rely on Both Innovative and Traditional Approaches to Worship

By Jeff Weintraub

On a Shabbat morning last spring, I was one of two prayer leaders who launched the service at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, with the traditional Ma Tovu prayer. Instead of simply vocalizing it with one of several age-old melodies, as many might in other American synagogues, I was both singing and playing guitar to a melody co-composed only a few years ago by Josh Warshawsky, whose modern and catchy liturgical music has lately been adopted by a growing number of American synagogues.

We similarly offered up several psalms and prayers with a mixture of familiar ancient Nusach, or traditional musical modes that correspond to segments of various services, and—with instruments—melodies from other modern composers. We also drew on tunes from two Israeli influences—the singer Yosef Karduner and the group Nava Tehilah—as well as a setting by the Philadelphia-based Joey Weisenberg, who leads Hadar’s Rising Song Institute, an incubator of emerging young Jewish musicians like himself.

It’s an approach much different from some of the synagogues a short distance away. At the Modern Orthodox Kemp Mill Synagogue in Silver Spring, Maryland, congregants recite the entire text of an Ashkenazi-style (or traditional Eastern European-inflected) service in Hebrew, without instrumental accompaniment, which they avoid on Shabbat and major holidays. And unlike the service at Adat Shalom, which pauses for frequent insights and explication of the text, prayer at Kemp Mill is “efficient,” as Rabbi Brahm Weinberg describes it. The service moves, he says, “at a fairly robust clip to make sure it doesn’t feel overly long or taxing for people when they come.”

Tradition, tradition: 19th century artist Maurycy Gottlieb’s famed “Jews Praying in the Synagogue on Yom Kippur” focuses on individual responses to worship. Photo: en.wikipedia.org/Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv

Not far from Kemp Mill, Ohr Kodesh, a Conservative-affiliated synagogue in Chevy Chase, Maryland, covers much the same liturgical real estate, with similar choreography—standing up, sitting down and bowing at prescribed times—and including chanted music. But Ohr Kodesh has no mechitzah, or separation between men and women, who equally share the duties of prayer leading and Torah reading. And like some Conservative synagogues, it also uses electrically powered sound and web-streaming systems that are off limits at Orthodox synagogues.

According to a Pew Research Center survey, as of 2020, about 8% of Jews in the United States said they attend some kind of prayer service monthly, and 12% report that they attend weekly or more often.

Those who do attend might be part of Reform-affiliated synagogues, which rely more heavily on English, responsive readings and music. Or they might participate in the sort of service associated with Jewish Renewal, an emerging segment of the community that offers a mixture of mystical, Hasidic, musical and meditative prayer practices. Others might be attracted to pray at a place like the Open Temple in Venice, California, an unaffiliated incubator of new approaches to engaging Jews that has featured, among other offerings, a “Kayak Shabbat” on the Venice canals, where members float on kayaks alongside their leader, Rabbi Lori Shapiro.

Worshippers at Adat Shalom Reconstructionist Congregation in Bethesda, Maryland, participate in Shabbatons, weekend-long events intended to illuminate and deepen the significance of the Sabbath through the exploration of prayers and their meaning. Photo: © 2023 Audrey Rothstein Photography—All Rights Reserved

 

Rabbi Lori Shapiro conducts services at The Open Temple in Venice, California. Its social media encourages congregants to: “Feel Your Fury. Let Your Passions Penetrate. Express.” Rabbi Lori asks us to “Unmask Our Souls.” Photo: The Open Temple

All this speaks to one of the hard-to-miss features of the entire American Jewish prayer landscape: The variety is vast—arguably more so than in any other Jewish community in the world, where the Orthodox-style service is most common.

Much of the difference is, of course, driven by theological distinctions among the movements. But it’s not hard to notice that the prayer experiences at synagogues even within the same movement can look and feel much different. That’s the result, perhaps, of the unique history and lay and clergy personalities that make up a particular synagogue or prayer group. 

The American Jewish prayer landscape got this way, argues Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, in large part because of this country’s unique commitment to separation of religion and state. 

Hoffman, who, until his recent retirement, taught Jewish liturgy for nearly 50 years on the faculty at Hebrew Union College in New York, notes that because of the strict separation between religion and government in the U.S. “it meant that the church, as it were, has been free to experiment more than in most other countries.” Religious groups in the U.S., he adds, “learned how to compete for people’s attention and identity. Hence, religion in America is rather specialized in innovation.”

The other and perhaps even more notable hallmark of Jewish prayer observance in the U.S., Hoffman says, is prayer’s relationship with the personal identity of individual Jews. It shapes them, tells them what is important or what it means to be Jewish.

Mirele Goldsmith of Bethesda, Maryland, for instance, says that when she recites various Jewish blessings and liturgical poetry that express wonderment about and gratitude for the world around her, it reinforces her commitment as a national leader in the Jewish environmental advocacy movement. Parts of the Shema, the centerpiece Jewish prayer that expresses God’s singularity, she points out, “talk about the connection between our ethical behavior and the condition of nature, that if we don’t behave ethically, the earth will suffer. That speaks directly to my work in this field.”

Hoffman notes that, just as prayer can shape us, the opposite is also at work. Worship in the American context has changed over time in part because it can reflect how American Jews view themselves. “Consequently,” he says, “worship tends to vary with the people attending it.”

For two decades, Rabbi David Lyon has been senior rabbi at the Reform-affiliated Beth Israel Congregation in Houston, where he is keenly conscious of, and plays a role in shaping, the forces of change. “I’m always taking the pulse of the congregation,” he says. “In the past, my predecessor had the good fortune of waiting every five to 10 years for change to happen. That change is happening now every three to five years and more likely three years than five. So, we’re trying to keep pace.”

Lyon has ushered in rituals that are standard in more traditional settings, such as: a hakafah, or Torah procession; lay recitation of aliyot, or Torah blessings; and the calling out of chatimot or concluding lines of prayers and liturgical poetry. A growing number of members, he says, feel comfortable wearing ceremonial garb such as kippot and tallitot, a big departure for a century-and-a-half-old synagogue that long stood firmly as classical Reform.

Immersing themselves in the beauty of the natural world, “kayakers” at The Open Temple’s shabbats are invited to enter the realm of the spirit; it’s an experience that the Temple describes as: “Ma’ariv…the mixing of light and darkness. The sun sets and the Divine Palate [sic] reveals itself in the sky. As the colors blend, darkness envelops the sky. Our prayers lead us through this process. Music, Enchantment and Stirring of the Souls.” Photo: Kelly Fogel/The Open Temple

Likewise, as egalitarianism has arguably become more prominent in the personal identities of many American Jews over the last few decades, it has been absorbed into the liturgy of the community’s more “progressive” segments of Judaism.

They allow—indeed, encourage—women to participate in all aspects of the service and insert a mention of Judaism’s ancient matriarchs alongside the patriarchs in the Amidah, the central prayer of every Jewish service. The Reconstructionist movement leaves out references suggesting that Jews are the chosen people—as in the traditional version of the Aleynu prayer, which praises God for not making us “like the other nations of the world.” Also, most progressive worship practices give no special status or prayer responsibility to descendants of the Cohanim, or high priests, as is common in more traditional settings.

In every context of American Jewish prayer, there is music, whether it is Nusach, older and well-established melodies—like the one most commonly used for the Shema that was composed by Viennese Cantor Solomon Sulzer in 1830—or some of the new settings that are emerging from the recent burst of younger musicians.

Music cannot fully express the emotional and spiritual grandeur of Jewish liturgical poetry or the solemn philosophical underpinnings of, say, penitential Yom Kippur prayers. But, considering that, according to the Pew survey, about 13% of American Jews claim to understand Hebrew, it can help them find a connection to prayer and to Jewish tradition that might otherwise be out of reach. 

One of the most recent changes for American synagogues—one that may prove to be permanent and, in many ways, profound—is the shift to Zoom-powered prayer services that were driven and perfected out of necessity by the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns. Many synagogues appear to be making online access to services a standard feature, bringing prayer and more to those who cannot show up in person (especially distant relatives who can’t make the trip in for a shiva or bar or bat mitzvah).

At Adat Shalom, a twice-weekly, mostly traditional morning minyan that took root on Zoom during COVID-19 shutdowns seemed likely to continue with a core of about 15 participants. One prayer community—whose creator, Rabbi Mark Novak, calls a “Zoom-agogue”—meets entirely online and includes people from many time zones.

It’s impossible to predict the future of the American Jewish prayer landscape, but Hoffman, the recently retired faculty member from Hebrew Union College in New York, believes that relative to times past, “we’re in a healthy era of creative engagement,” which could bode well for Jewish prayer practice in the years and decades to come.

“I think that the more creativity, the healthier the engagement,” he adds. “The richer will be the prayer life of people, the more spirituality people will find, and the deeper and denser their sense of what Judaism can be.”

Pray Tell Read More »

AJR/CA Moving to the Campus of Loyola Marymount University

It’s more important than ever to consider Jewish leadership. As a rabbinic graduate of the Academy for Jewish Religion/Los Angeles, the work we are called to do is to be connectors. Open Temple is inspired by my time at the Academy, and the transdenominational rabbis with whom I studied. My colleagues inspire (and many teach at Open Temple). 
 
Recently, AJR/CA found its home on the campus of Loyola Marymount University, a Catholic University. This collaboration represents the best of Jewish education. If you are at all curious about rabbinical school in America, I recommend AJR/CA at Loyola. It will prepare you for Jewish leadership that will guide Jews into the 22nd Century.
 
https://www.ncronline.org/news/culture/rabbinical-school-moving-catholic-university

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