We often think of the High Holidays as a celebration of family bonds — and at 92NY it’s also a celebration of creativity and play. As we prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we sat down with the Bronfman Center’s Director of Jewish Family Engagement Rebecca Schoffer and our new Vice President of Jewish Education Rachel Arcus-Goldberg to talk about the communal, creative joy at the heart of our High Holiday Youth Experience and Family Services …
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Rabbi Joui Hessel, Interim Director at 92NY’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, writes: Shavuot, meaning “weeks,” refers to the seven weeks since the second day of Passover and is the second of the three Pilgrim Festivals of the Jewish religious calendar. It was originally an agricultural festival, marking the beginning of the wheat harvest …
Our Bronfman Center for Jewish Life extends a warm welcome to all to join us in celebrating Passover this spring. Rabbi Joui Hessel, Vice President of Jewish Life, Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, 92Y, writes …
Rabbi Joui Hessel, VP of Jewish Life at 92Y’s Bronfman Center for Jewish Life, writes: It is the time when we begin to feel the colder air outside and experience a sunset that occurs earlier each day. We take out our puffy coats, scarves, gloves, and hats and prepare for darker and colder days as winter arrives
This fall, the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life launches The Home Project — a new series of programs that aim to foster stronger community at 92Y for Jews of color, LGBTQ+ Jewish families, first generation Jews, and others who are too often left without a sense of spiritual belonging in New York and American Jewish life at large …
Elie Wiesel was a guiding beacon at 92Y for more than half a century. His pursuit of justice and his unwavering belief in the power of humanity embodied our most deeply held values. Over nearly half a century, on 180 occasions, Elie Wiesel graced the stage at 92Y with his wonder and wisdom … …
… And this is the season for introspection, reflection, and renewal. There is something profoundly moving about gathering as a community to pause and reflect, individually and together, as we put the past behind us, and start the new year afresh … …
“For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under the heavens.” This verse and the ones that follow from the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes are hugely relevant throughout our lives. But they may never have been so pervasively poignant than during this last year. …
The metaphor of the flight from slavery to freedom and darkness to light chronicled in the Bible as the Exodus from Egypt, has never felt more apposite than it does this year. From last Passover to this Passover and from last Easter to this Easter, the incremental changes over the year are obvious …
There is a cruel irony that as we approach the commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, our nation has been injured by the violation of our nation's Capitol by an uncontrollable horde cobbled together from venomous hateful militias, the Proud Boys, QAnon followers, other fanatic right-wing extremists and white supremacist groups, and thousands of citizens unwilling to accept the result of a presidential election proven to be untarnished by fraud …
A young rabbi’s approach to helping children find their way into Jewish life …
During this season of the celebration of the Jewish New Year, we Jews are called to attention by the sounds of the Shofar blasts and compelled to recalibrate our values, commitments and visions. This year, I believe it is more important than ever that we do so …
Nine rabbis reflect on celebrating the High Holidays in a tumultuous year …
There is a photograph of John Lewis, taken in March, 1965, at the front of five hundred marchers coming over the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, head high, walking straight into what he knew was the eye of the storm. State troopers were prepared — and indeed ordered — to attack the marchers on that bloody Sunday … …
As my wife and I complete our fourth month of self-isolation and social distancing, we, along with all New Yorkers, look forward to an appropriate easing of the essential restrictions that were necessary to turn back the marauding devastation of the Covid-19 plague … …
Last week I wrote about prophets before their time, but there is more to be said about prophesy itself. Jewish history contains a tableau of both genuine and false prophets. Swept as he was into the vortex of political upheaval in the seventh century BCE, the great prophet Jeremiah vehemently railed against those he considered false prophets … …
These past weeks have been sad and hopeful, as well as difficult and inspiring. Against the backdrop of the killing of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and other black men and women, there has been a swelling wave of national self-appraisal and reflection, even attempts at reconciliation — all of which were a long time coming and all of which still have a long way to go … …
When Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was asked upon his return from the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march with Dr. Martin Luther King, “Did you find time to pray?” he famously answered, “I prayed with my feet.” …
The Jewish Festival of Shavuot was celebrated this past Friday and Saturday. Shavuot traditionally commemorates Moses and the Israelites receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai …
Shavuot, which begins the evening of May 28, celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses and the Israelites at Mt. Sinai. Fifty days after leaving the pain of slavery in Egypt, the Israelites stood shoulder to shoulder as a free people at the foot of the mountain … …
I hope that, along with all of you, I am an unabashed patriot believing in the resilience of this nation to mindfully meet the expectations the founders of this country set for it … …
In synagogues around the world, a section of the Torah was read last week which included instructions for the preparation of the oil which was to be used to light the candelabra that would burn continuously from morning to night … …
In his extraordinary, and now iconic, poem “Life is a Journey” Rabbi Alvin Fine (z”l) wrote:
Birth is a beginning And death a destination. And life is a journey…
I’ve been thinking about empathy a great deal these past months. Perhaps it’s an unexpected consequence of social distancing and self-isolation which provides greater opportunity for the extravagance of free-floating ideas and uncircumscribed introspection … …
This past Tuesday we observed Yom HaShoah (Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day) during which we memorialized the victims of the Holocaust. We commemorated, as well, the abiding spirit of heroism and courage which infused many of those victims to the very last moment when, without forsaking the core of their humanity, they died in the gas chambers … …
Throughout our history Jews have recited special prayers “for the welfare of the government.” The biblical prophet Jeremiah wrote from Jerusalem in the sixth century BCE, “Seek the welfare of the city to which I have exiled you and pray to the Lord in its behalf … …
In his classic work When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote, “God does not cause our misfortunes. Some are caused by bad luck, some are caused by bad people, and some are simply an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of inflexible natural laws … …
This is a season of rebirth and messianic longing both for Christians and Jews.
We human beings sometimes yearn for unreasonable responses to our prayers. We ask for quick cures, a miraculous turn of improbable events, even world peace …
Note: Today’s Thought for the Day comes to us from Bronfman Center Director of Jewish Education Rabbi Samantha Frank.
Why Psalms? Why Now? Why Robert Alter’s translation?
I was recently reminded of the lesson a beloved and gentle professor of mine taught about the Biblical prophets. He said their message was “Despair is a sin and hope is a duty.” Now, millennia later, this prophetic teaching emerges as an extraordinary lesson for us all. Among COVID-19’s collateral damage, hope should not be a victim …
This is an unsettling time. Often, we’re exhausted by the end of the day, worn out by anxiety, hypersensitive to every cough we hear, and aware of every person on the street …
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