Vibrant Jewish Campus Life Benefits the Entire Community

by Rabbi Hershey Novack This article articulates to the St. Louis Jewish community that their support of local Jewish campus life benefits the entire St. Louis community. More broadly, these themes resonate in similar communities throughout the country. A version of this article first appeared in the St. Louis Jewish Light. In 2008, Jewish Living magazine identified the Washington University campus area as the epicenter of one of the Top 10 Jewish communities in America, describing the school as “popular with Jews from around the country, known for its kosher kitchen and strong Hillel and Chabad programs with plenty of activities.” Indeed, St. Louis is a great city for Jewish college students. Some believe that college students are the only ones who benefit from a high caliber of Jewish... Continue Reading

In Boca, There Goes the Neighborhood

from The Jewish Week: JCC, Synagogues In Holy War In Boca … the JCC’s decision has ignited a war in this heavily Jewish Broward County community. As synagogues around the country struggle with membership numbers and count on the High Holy Days to sign up congregants, thereby padding their coffers, rabbis here are seeing the JCC’s action as “usurpation” and an “invasion.” There are even fears that Boca synagogues might ban a representative of the Jewish federation, which funds the JCC, from making his annual High Holy Day pitch. And as JCCs around the country shed their old image of being merely a gym and a pool and instead search for a new mission – including offering services and religious programming, particularly aimed at the large numbers of unaffiliated Jews – the... Continue Reading

After Katrina, Creating Community All Over Again

The New Orleans Jewish Day School Reemerges From Disaster by H. Glenn Rosenkrantz Metairie, LA – Kindergarten classroom, destroyed. Administrative offices, gone. First and second grade facilities, upended. Materials and resources, washed away or damaged. And that was just on the first floor. Hurricane Katrina’s rage and the resulting floodwaters five years ago this week spared precious little, and the New Orleans Jewish Day School – situated here on the south shore of Lake Pontchartrain just west of the city – was no exception. “The storm demolished us,” said Dr. Bob Berk, head of school. “The school was wiped out.” Nearly 100 students, from pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, had barely begun the academic year when Hurricane Katrina changed everything. For the school and... Continue Reading

Jewish Camp: Forget Color War; It’s Time to Build Robots

For campers at the JCC Maccabi Camp Kingswood in southern Maine, a very hot summer just got very cool. The camp invited a team of Israeli high school students and their teacher to bring their technical and scientific expertise in robotics to the camp and teach campers between the ages of 12-15 how to build small programmable robots that follow commands and complete assigned tasks. Working in two and three person teams with their Israeli student teachers, campers use computer software to develop and program their robots and construct motors that propel them toward a set destination. Based on the computer programs the students create, the robots “learn” to respond to light, ultra-sonic and touch sensory commands so they can follow a color-coded path, anticipate obstacles in their path, change direction,... Continue Reading

Still Connected: American Jewish Attitudes about Israel

The news last week that direct negotiations will take place between Israel and the Palestinian Authority ensures that Israel will continue to be a focus of ongoing debate, in particular among American Jewry. The attitudes of American Jews have been much discussed in recent weeks, and some observers have described a growing schism between liberal Jewish young adults and Israel. These views, however, have not been informed by empirical data. A newly released study from the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, “Still Connected: American Jewish Attitudes about Israel” is part of their effort to fill in the information gap and provide systematic data about contemporary American Jewish attitudes about Israel. “Still Connected” is based primarily on a survey that was conducted in... Continue Reading

The Value of Free: Even for High Holidays

High Holy Days Are Free at Some Shuls, And Worshipers Flock by Nathan Guttman When the waiting list for High Holy Day tickets reached 700, leaders of the downtown Sixth and I Historic Synagogue decided to look outside the box – in their case, to the Chinese Community Church across the street. The church was a perfect match for the needs of the ballooning congregation: In its previous life, the building had served as a synagogue, and Stars of David still decorate its pews and stained-glass windows. Now, for at least three days in September, the church will house Jewish worship once again with a spillover service to accommodate the roaring demand for the synagogue’s distinctive offer: free High Holy Day tickets. Afterward, organizers plan to hold a Rosh Hashanah Kiddush for worshippers from both... Continue Reading

History Repeats Itself

How different is the “millennial” generation of Jews? Some attitudes and behaviors have certainly changed, as the sociologist Steven M. Cohen discusses in a recent interview with Manfred Gerstenfeld. There is a danger, though, of confusing superficial differences with fundamental change, and of overlooking parallels with the past. Discussing the rise of independent minyanim in the past decade, Prof. Cohen says “its leaders try to differentiate their community from what they see as the spiritually unengaging and experientially passive suburban synagogues that most of them grew up in.” Aside from the suburban setting, that also was an important rationale in the founding of the Reform movement in the 19th century and the spread of Hasidism beginning in the 17th century. In the area of culture... Continue Reading

Five Teenagers Win Tikkun Olam Awards

The Helen Diller Family Foundation has awarded five California teenagers $36,000 each acknowledging community service projects they have initiated in the spirit of Tikkun Olam. This is the fourth consecutive year that the Diller Teen Tikkun Olam Awards have been offered. The award empowers the recipients to fund future social actions or educational endeavors to further their visions for making lasting differences in their communities and beyond. The awards are funded by the Helen Diller Family Foundation, a supporting foundation of the Jewish Community Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties. Since its inception fourteen years ago, The Helen Diller Family Foundation has granted more than $200 million to a wide range of charitable projects,... Continue Reading

Highly Engaged Young American Jews: Contrasts in Generational Ethos

Steven M. Cohen, a leading sociologist of American Jewry, has for over forty years undertaken studies of changing Jewish identities and communities and how they are shaped. Although most of his work has focused on Jews in the United States, his research has also ventured into other countries such as Israel, the former Soviet Union, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Cohen is a professor at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in New York and director of the Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner. from an interview with Steven M. Cohen: “In the year 2000, together with Arnold Eisen, now chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary [JTS], I had written The Jew Within. It explained how our generation, the Baby Boomers, differed from that of our parents who came of age during the... Continue Reading

What Are Jewish First-Year Students Thinking?

Hillel is constantly changing to keep pace with college students. With the advent of the annual Beloit College Mindset List, Hillel offers the following unscientific survey of Jewish cultural influences that have helped shape the identities of this year’s freshman class. Born largely in 1992, today’s freshmen will delight – if not surprise – their parents by becoming the graduating class of 2014 in four years. Here, then, are the Jewish ideas that are kicking around in the minds of today’s first-year students. Oreos have always been kosher. McDonalds has always served bagels. Women have always been rabbis. Soviet Union? What Soviet Union? Jews have always been free to come and go from something once quaintly called “The Soviet Bloc.” Some have even been in their towns and classrooms! iPhones... Continue Reading

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