The Tikkun Leil Shavuot is the traditional all-night learning session that takes place the first night of Shavuot. Every other year I'd been here, the Hillel had two tikkuns running concurrently -- one run by the Hillel community, and usually taught by members of both Conservative minyanim (the adults generally taught 10pm-1am sessions, and ( Read more... )

With the somewhat Orwellian title "RABBINICAL ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON JEWISH LAW AND STANDARDS REAFFIRMS INCLUSIVE APPROACH TO GAYS IN CONSERVATIVE JEWISH LIFE," (emph mine), the Rabbinical assembly released a press release with their latest statement. It's very weakly worded, and I don't think it goes far enough in repudiating the language/ideas of ( Read more... )

Although this year, the text of our Purim kiddush was not updated (laziness), we did have 2-page long "source-sheets" (pdf) (OpenOffice.org 1.1 source*) including the text and translation to hand out. In order to make it exactly two pages, and get the formatting to work out, I did add an additional "explanatory" story and instruction set. Here it ( Read more... )

This entry was inspired by two posts on Bloghead, and their comments, a previous entry on this blog, and a Jerusalem Post magazine feature (free registration required).

The feature, comments, etc. bring up a couple of ideas that I want to address:

• Post-denominationalism is a non-Orthodox phenomenon
• Post-denominationalism is the baby of the ( Read more... )

From the weekly email of the Chabad House of Montreal:

Pizza
Our restaurant is now serving home made pizza ! (open 12ish - 2ish)

I guess that makes it coincide with zman Shacharit.

One of Aish HaTorah's tactics in their attempts to sway Jews to believe that their fundamentalist conception of Judaism is correct involves selectively using science to "prove" the veracity of Biblical or Rabbinic claims. A prime example of their selectivity is their attitude towards genetics and evolution. See, for example
Not by Chance: ( Read more... )

(The title is from a really weird 1981 Terry Gilliam movie, Time Bandits).

A few days ago, smartphil8 (I got to it via DW's friends list) published a list of online links to Jewish works. ( NOTE: I do not think there was any malice intended on his part.). Included in that list was Come-and-Hear, a website that includes online scans of the 1961 translation ( Read more... )

Inspired by conversations between DW and shirei_shibolim.

The priestly blessing is traditionally recited by kohanim (men only) during the repetition of the festival musaf amidah (with the exception of Simchat Torah, when it is recited during Shacharit; Sephardim have a different custom as to when it is recited). Following a hand-washing by Levites (I just had ( Read more... )

DW recently got a solicitation to participate in a womens' tefillah group, which made me wonder --

Orthodox groups have been arguing back and forth over the halachic legitamacy of womens' prayer groups. (Needless to say, I've never been to one, and would not be very welcome at one). In summary, they involve groups of women getting together to ( Read more... )

Do we live in the same universe? (See also the comments, and you'll know what I mean).
(I know it's a bit late, but I'm new at this :-) )

Oh, by the way, Happy (Secular) New Year.