Judging by the traffic on relevant mailing lists, lots of Reform congregations have the problem of families expecting to "own" the service at which their kid is bar or bat mitzvah. ("Own" means the kid does most of the service, family members get all or nearly all of the honors, the parents stand up and kvell about the kid for several minutes, and ( Read more... )

[Written Thursday, 5/31.]
In this week's parsha Miriam and Aharon criticize Moshe over his ( Read more... )

I used to be the chair of my synagogue's worship committee. The incoming president and I were discussing candidates for the position. I have some fairly strong opinions about the requirements of the job, which I thought it was important to articulate. (If he disagrees, he'll want to take that into account.)
Caveat: My only experience is with one ( Read more... )

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New word: bloggerrea. I'd been wondering why sometimes an update causes the RSS feed to spew old entries. Pretty annoying.
Clever, in that "uh-oh" sort of way: one piece of spam-sending malware installs its own anti-virus programbecause it doesn't want all your other viruses slowing it down ( Read more... )

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A friend posted (in a locked entry, so no link) an exchange he had with another member of his congregation about attracting people to synagogues. (They've been having a rough time of it.) At about the same time, my rabbi and I were discussing why people (don't) come to minyan, and cahwyguy published a digest of mail.liberal-judaism that ( Read more... )

I was discussing my decreased involvement in the SCA (over the last decade or so) with a friend who suggested that I've shifted my social allegiance from the SCA to my synagogue. This is something I've thought about before and I want to record a comment I made in that discussion ( Read more... )

Disclaimer: this has nothing to do with my employment. If it did, I wouldn't be posting it for the world to see. :-)
Recently I was talking with someone about moonlighting, and the question came up: what exactly is wrong with moonlighting, anyway? In trying to sort out my answer to that question, I've concluded that it's "it depends".
One issue ( Read more... )

I talked with my rabbi today about my leading services at the other shul ( Read more... )