A Second Chance to Make a First Bat Mitzvah
The phrase adult bar or bat mitzvah, if not an apparent contradiction in terms, reads with some incongruity. Why would you need a bar...
Independent Clergy Find Place in Community
It’s fairly typical for a rabbi to seek out a congregation to call home. But for some, a pulpit rabbinate isn’t for them.
Greater Philadelphia...
Why Hebrew School Students Choose Confirmation
Mia Schwartzberg grew up looking up at a photo of her father on a wall at Main Line Reform Temple.
That wall was filled with...
The Cantorate’s Future Is Bright at Hebrew College
NEWTON CENTRE, MASSACHUSETTS — On a bright Monday morning, about 10 miles west of Boston, a group — mostly rabbis and cantors in training...
The Growing Ranks of Female Scribes
It was never inconceivable that Linda Coppleson would be doing this. At least to her, anyway.
Coppleson, 69, grew up in a shul dedicated to...
Tefillin, for the Win?
By Matt Silver
It’s common for hockey players to wrap and get wrapped before games — stick blades and handles, skates and ankles and knees....
Shabbat Offers Reprieve From Constant Technology Demands
Jews have kept Shabbat over history, just as Shabbat has kept the Jews, poet and philosopher Asher Zvi Hirsch Ginsberg wrote.
Those words are increasingly...
South Philadelphia Shtiebel Debuts With Kabbalat Shabbat Service
There was so much that made the first Kabbalat Shabbat service on July 19 at the South Philadelphia Shtiebel a special affair.
That it was...
Designer: Center City Mikvah Will Have the ‘Feeling of an Ocean Breeze’
Welcoming, embracing and refined are just some of the characteristics designer Herb Tapper is trying to evoke as he creates the interior of Mai...
Opinion | Reaching Out to the Next Generation in the Synagogue
By Rabbi Evan Schultz
When the daughter of one of our past synagogue presidents recently moved into town with her new husband, I did what...