JewsByChoice.Org

We received the latest issue of Moment Magazine in the mail today and it has an interesting Op-Ed piece in it by Jerusalem based journalist Gershom Gorenberg on the recent conversion controversy in Israel.
Here is a snippet for anyone who is interested, with points of interest underlined by yours truly.

Israel’s Supreme Rabbinic Court [...]

Last month the Jerusalem Post ran an interesting story about a group in Israel called “Kehilat Tzedek”.
Here is a snippet from the article.
One woman prays in a synagogue where gender separation is strictly enforced. Another is a member of a mixed-seating congregation that bars homosexuals from rabbinical ordination. A third belongs to a movement [...]

It seems that I’m not the only person who has the issue of egalitarianism (see my recent post) on the brain as of late. This weekend I stumbled across an interesting article from the Boston Globe titled “Where have all the men gone,” which more or less tackles the same issues I did in my [...]

Cross-posted on True Ancestor
In a previous post, I’ve explored the ideas behind a book that looks at the cross-currents of genes, identity and values and tries to answer the question, “Who is a Jew?”
The answer, according to that post, and the book discussed therein, was “almost everyone.” A new and perhaps even more compelling book on [...]

I recently received an e-mail from the fine people at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel asking me if we could add them to our list of resources. A) I was totally impressed that we are even on their radar and B) while going through the links they sent me, I stumbled across this great [...]

Last week Rabbi Eli Garfinkel of Temple Beth El (a Conservative Synagogue in Somerset, NJ) recorded an interesting Podcast. In short the good Rabbi shares some of his concerns regarding the recent conversion fiasco in Israel.
Here is a brief summary of the episode from the RabbiPod site.
In this episode of RabbiPod, I argue [...]

First African American woman convert to be ordained as a Reform Rabbi, reports the JTA. Below is an excerpt but if you wish to read the full story, check it out on JTA. \
Raised by Pentacostal parents, Stanton-Ogulnick spent her childhood and young adulthood as a spiritual seeker, making the rounds of various [...]

This Haaretz article just found it’s way in to my feed reader.

Reform Jews open Israel’s first state-funded non-Orthodox synagogue
Israel’s Reform Jews dedicated the first non-Orthodox synagogue to receive state funding on Monday, after a long court battle that accented the rift among streams of Judaism in Israel.
The Reform Yozma congregation fought for the better [...]

Hi all,
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the ethics of speech from a Torah perspective, and particularly, how they relate to disagreements among adherents to different streams of Judaism. From time to time these conversations happen on this blog, and they certainly happen elsewhere on the Jewish internet. Personally, this is an [...]

An interesting story titled “Imagine Jews worshipping together,”found its way into my feed reader this evening. Unfortunately, the author a Baltimore Rabbi turned business man doesn’t really offer any solutions to our denominational troubles but none the less, I like his take. More importantly, I like how he shows that an Orthodox Jew can be [...]