I confess to feeling very nostalgic recently. It wasn't more than a few minutes from the time that Michael Jackson's death was announced until his songs began playing all around us. The 24-hour cable news networks played "Billy Jean" in their lead-ins, satellite radio stations began broadcasting all-Michael Jackson songs, and Jackson 5 music was loudly played from cars passing by. Facebook status updates, blog posts, and Twitter tweets were made up of reminiscences about the King of Pop and ... Read Full Story

More than three years ago, an article in the New York Times reported that the Reform Movement of Judaism was examining ways to retain young men in the faith. It is well known that women are much more involved in organized Jewish life -- at least in the progressive movements of Judaism (Reform, Renewal, Reconstructionist, and Conservative). Now, the same author of that NY Times article, Debra Nussbaum Cohen, writes in the Forward about a new initiative to keep post-bar mitzvah boys involved in... Read Full Story

My daughter had a fever today so I took my two sons out to lunch. Sitting at lunch I couldn't help thinking about what a blessing it is to be a father. And then, as fate would have it, my father walked into the restaurant and sat down at the booth behind us for a business meeting. I overheard my father's business associate comment that I am a "spitting image" of him, which is funny because I'm always being told that one of my sons is a "spitting image" of me.There truly is something so speci... Read Full Story

There have been many changes in the top leadership of the Conservative Movement recently. First was the commencement of the Arnie Eisen era at the Jewish Theological Seminary. With the beginning of Arnie Eisen's chancellorship also came the change in leadership at the Seminary's rabbinical school with Rabbi Daniel Nevins as the new dean. Second, came the change in leadership at the Rabbinical Assembly with Rabbi Julie Schoenfeld taking the RA's top job. Yesterday marked the con... Read Full Story

Originally published as a guest blog post at Religion Transcends.Tonight begins the festival of Shavuot, the holiday in which the Jewish people celebrate the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Perhaps, the questions about the revelation of the Torah (when, what, how, if, and to whom) are the questions that divide the Jewish people today more than any other questions. The divisions among the modern denominations of Judaism all stem from the question of how the Torah was revealed to the Jewi... Read Full Story

The Reform Movement, under the sage guidance of Rabbi David Saperstein, has always taken the lead in domestic politics. Saperstein, voted Newsweek Magazine's most influential rabbi, heads the Reform Movement's Religion Action Committee (RAC). The RAC's website states that it "has been the hub of Jewish social justice and legislative activity in the nation’s capital for more than 40 years. The RAC educates and mobilizes the American Jewish community on legislative and social... Read Full Story

My first exposure to Catholicism was as a teenager. I was the assistant to a photographer who photographed several Catholic weddings. I found it fascinating to be in these beautiful churches and watch the religious rites of the Catholic tradition. I joked that, at the time, I had been to more Catholic weddings than Jewish weddings. That quickly changed.My next experience with anything Catholic was in rabbinical school when I was selected to participate in an interfaith dialogue program cal... Read Full Story

Yesterday, Israel celebrated its 61st year of independence. When detailing all that this little nation has to be proud of, modern technology always ranks at the top of the list. After all, this is the country responsible for the popularity of instant messaging on the Internet (ICQ was first developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis).I think that modern technology and the new forms of digital communication are wonderful advances that improve our world in general, and the global Jewish commu... Read Full Story

The student-run journal New Voices has published some thought-provoking and quite provocative articles in recent issues. Their current issue takes on a theme I don't think has been discussed much. Is it acceptable for rabbinical students to intermarry? This is certainly not an issue in the Orthodox world and I don't remember it ever really being discussed at JTS (Conservative). However, in the more liberal rabbinical schools (namely the Reform's Hebrew Union College, the Recon... Read Full Story

The Detroit Tigers' 2009 home opener is this Friday afternoon at 1:05 p.m. I would get tickets and attend if it weren't the second day of Passover. According to T.S. O'Connell, sports historian and the editor of the Sports Collectors Digest, Jews shouldn't be the only religious group upset with the date of the Tigers' home opener this year. On his blog, The Infield Dirt, O'Connell writes:I saw a news item recently that said the Detroit Tigers were taking a bit of hea... Read Full Story