JVoices: your jewish wake up call

[I'm lifting this out of the ALEPH mailing list]
Time Magazine recently named Velveteen Rabbi, the blog of ALEPH rabbinic student Rachel Barenblat, one of its top 25 blogs in its first-ever annual blog index. Velveteen Rabbi is the only religion blog on the list, which includes The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and [...]

This is a special service announcement:
Do you enjoy the light, airy taste of that “special cracker” that comes out in added quantities right around Easter? Do you think, “my, how splendid! This will go perfect with my assortment of cheese and sun-dried tomato spreads for appetizers!”
Well, NOT THIS YEAR!
This year, we Jews NEED to eat [...]

This year was my first Passover in Jerusalem. At my seders last year, I still wasn’t sure whether I meant it when I said “next year in Jerusalem,” but this year I knew as I said it that I’d be staying for a second year. When I spoke with my mother a few days before [...]

I don’t doubt we all have many elements to reflect on, moving from Mitzrayim, from those narrow places, to freedom. From personal to political, from individual to national, from national to global, may this time allow all of us the opportunity to restore, rejuvenate and build our collective path, and so we say, from all [...]

Parashat Metzorah
Cross-posted to Jewish Mosaic
We’re in the middle of the book of Leviticus, in the middle of the torah, which means that we’re reading the instruction manual for the Levites in Temple times, detailing the knowledge necessary to carry out the job of the descendents of the house of Levi. On the surface, Leviticus teaches [...]

Now, some of y’all know about my obsession with Project Runway and fashion, so while this isn’t *exactly* the same (damn if I’m not still quite lost to the Bay Area everything organic including your underwear and some sh*t phenomena–this event is gonna crack. me. up.), you know I couldn’t turn my girl Heidi down [...]

I’ve always been fascinated by the power of stories. And given that some of the stories I’ve known all my life come from the torah, those tend to be the ones that fascinate me the most. But even though I can talk about Isaac and Rebekah and their whole mishpocha as if they are my [...]

I won’t do full justice to the plethora of resources out there, but here’s a sampling:
Immigration Supplements: Our beloved social justice orgs all seem to have one theme this year: immigration, so take your pick of a haggadah supplement on immigration from JFREJ, JFSJ, or PJA.
This past year we’ve seen an incredible growth in haggadot [...]

So, some of us go home to more progressive and radical anti-occupation families. With that, I offer Bradley Burston, Ha’aretz Senior Editor and recipient of the Eliav-Sartawi Awards for Middle East Journalism, an annual prize for Arab, Israeli and international journalists.
He won this award for his piece, “Let their people go” which appeared [...]

So many great resources out there for Pesach, but for those of us who are going home to families who will not talk about the occupation, we often feel this schism most deeply during holidays like Passover. We also often lack the tools for speaking with our families about the occupation in ways that our [...]