“We wanted to make it clear that this wasn’t going to be just another Hanukkah program,” says Rabbi Burt Visotzky of the Jewish Theological Seminary. “We wanted it to be a mix. We wanted there to be music, we wanted there to be fun.” More →

December 12, 2014

For the young Jewish professionals he works with in Washington, DC, “social justice is their faith,” says Rabbi Scott Perlo of Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. “If someone needs help from me, I really have to give it, because they are worth, in God’s eyes, just the same as I am.” More →

November 14, 2014

“You had people watching synagogues burn. You had people looting businesses that had been plundered. You had people joining in on the violence.” More →

November 7, 2014

“Music has been, in a sense, my religion, and it is what brings me closest to God or truth or whatever you want to call it.” More →

October 10, 2014

Yom Kippur “was thinking, sitting, and praying,” says Rabbi James Michaels of the Hebrew Home of Greater Washington. “Sukkot is just the opposite.” It is, he observes, “something that really gives us a very nice feeling of being alive.” More →

October 10, 2014

“T’Shuvah is repentance, return, and new response. T’Shuvah is change,” explains Rabbi Mark Borovitz of Beit T’Shuvah, the House of Return, in Los Angeles and author of the memoir The Holy Thief. “T’Shuvah says that change is possible, and change is mandatory.” More →

September 19, 2014

“What have I done this year? Am I facing God? Am I facing myself?…T’Shuvah says each day we can improve one grain of sand. We just don’t have to be perfect.” More →

September 19, 2014

“He was a master teacher,” says Rabbi Chaim Schochet, recalling the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson—who led the Hasidic Chabad-Lubavitch movement until his death 20 years ago. Rabbi Schochet directs Jewish Summer Fellowship, a program of intensive training in sacred texts and mystical teachings for Jewish college students. More →

August 29, 2014

“The Rebbe was as profoundly a religious and spiritual figure as you can imagine. He was of course scrupulous in his observance of Jewish law. He prayed with a sense of tremendous profundity, and you actually felt, when you were dealing with him, that you were with a person who was suffused with a God-consciousness.” More →

August 29, 2014

Best-selling writer and journalist Sara Davidson felt completely unprepared for the reality of dying. Then she met Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, founder of the Jewish Renewal movement. Their weekly conversations about mortality led to their book “The December Project.” “When you feel you’re coming to the end of your tour of duty, what is the spiritual work of that time,” asked Reb Zalman, “and how do we prepare for the mystery?” More →

August 8, 2014