Building Community Together
I Found Religion, My Spouse Left It, What About Our Kids?
By Dawn Kepler for BuildingJewishBridges
Dear Dawn: I’m the daughter of a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother who raised me with no religion. Finding my way into Judaism has been difficult and, at times, painful. My partner, Tom, was raised Christian and is now an atheist. While he has warm feelings for his church, he no longer belongs. When discussing how we would raise children, I mentioned enrolling them in Sunday school and their having b’nai mitzvah. To my surprise, he was resistant to this idea. It turns out the experience of being raised in a religion and subsequently separating himself from it was a lot more of a struggle than I realized.
InterfaithFamily Rabbi Survey Results
This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily
The results are in, and make for an interesting read. We wanted to share some of the high-level findings with you.
We focused our analysis specifically on CCAR and RRA members who responded so that we could compare results to the last known publicly available survey on officiation practices of clergy, which focused on that group. Of CCAR and RRA members who responded:
More than 85 percent said that they officiate at the weddings of interfaith couples. Of those who officiate:
For the full report, click below.
My Jewish Encounter With Hinduism
By Alon Goshen-Gottstein
How I came to an intellectual and spiritual connection with Swami Chidananda Saraswati
Religions are complex realities. They are constituted by systems of beliefs and rituals. They are embedded in particular cultures. They involve communities and they are mediated to a large extent through teachers and living spiritual exemplars.
In what follows I describe a process of encountering Hinduism that has been in the making for nearly forty years. It has gone through the various stages described below, a high-point of which is certainly the encounter with living spiritual masters, one in particular.
In Europe, religious minorities face mounting hostility, harassment
By Tom Heneghan for Religion News Service
PARIS (RNS) — A decade ago, Austria was a European country where Muslims felt they could live in peace. Islam was a recognized religion since 1912, the population seemed tolerant and the government maintained a constructive dialogue with community leaders.
7 Ways to Celebrate Tu B’Av, the Jewish Day of Love
by Kristin Posner; This article has been reprinted with permission from InterfaithFamily
When InterfaithFamily asked me to write a post for Tu B’Av, I have to admit, I had to do some research: Tu B’Av is not widely celebrated in my Reform Jewish community in San Francisco.
One of the most interesting Intro to Judaism classes I took at my temple was a class on the Jewish calendar. Jewish time is determined by the sun and primarily by the moon, making it a lunisolar calendar. The calendar is so beautifully and thoughtfully designed to punctuate the year with rituals that help us heal, reflect, mark time and celebrate. Many Jewish holidays were designed to take place on the brightest night of the month, during the full moon. Tu B’Av is one of those nights.