I find that YOU ALL come up with terrific ideas for topics and events. I’m asking each of you to share your thoughts on questions you’d like to have answered, Jewish skills you’d like to learn, topics you want to explore, events you’d like to attend together. The sky’s the limit; suggest anything that moves…
Read More »Community
Where and with whom will you have Seder?
Here it comes, the most celebrated Jewish holiday of all, Passover! Where and with whom will you have Seder? A few years ago a Jewish woman participating in a Passover cooking workshop said, “I have a question. We have lived in the bay area for a few years but no one invites us for Seder….
Read More »This is Bay Area Jewry
This is Bay Area Jewry: Photo Essays on the Changing Nature of Our Community Beth El, Lehrhaus Judaica and Building Jewish Bridges present a photo essay exhibition showcasing the range of diversity in our community. The exhibition features 21 intimate portraits of individuals and families (including Beth El congregants, Renee Passy-Zale and Seidlitz-Smith family) from…
Read More »Looking for the Perfect Synagogue
I’m looking for a synagogue. Here are my (many) demands. (This was published in my Mixed and Matched column in the J-weekly.) I received an inquiry that, quite frankly, annoyed a number of people who read about it. A young man approached me about his desire to find the “right” synagogue. Here is his perspective….
Read More »How to tell people you’re perfectly fine without Christmas
I wrote the opinion piece for the J-Weekly because so many Jews told me they felt pressured to embrace Christmas. Please expand your idea of what other people “should” like. Growing up without a formal religion in the United States can lead many people to insist, “I have no religion. I’m certainly not a…
Read More »Being an interfaith couple doesn’t protect you from anti-Semitism
Being an interfaith couple doesn’t protect you from anti-Semitism, not in Nazi Germany, not in America. Having one partner who is NOT a Jew doesn’t prevent people from hating the Jewish members of your family, and even hating the person who loves Jews. Sadly there has been a spike in anti-Semitism in the bay…
Read More »