You can find a list of our public positions and endorsements here.
You can find a list of our public positions and endorsements here.
Or Zarua, a suburban-Philadelphia community serving baby boomers, was started with funding from Reconstructing Judaism's Auerbach Entrepreneurial Grant Program.
Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association are horrified and saddened by yesterday’s terrorist attack in Tel Aviv, and by the recent attacks against Israelis in Beersheva, B'nei Brak, and Hadera.
As part of our recent convention, B’yachad: Reconstructing Judaism Together, we shared this video of a new setting for Hinei Mah Tov by RRC student Solomon Hoffman. It features over 150 Reconstructionists representing 40 of our communities from across North America and beyond. The participants reflect the spectrum of our movement—lay leaders, Rabbis, Cantors, students, teachers, children, elders, musicians, singers, dancers, artists—all sharing in this collective project.
Following Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's March 16 speech to Congress, more than 375 Jewish and other faith-based groups and organizations urged President Joe Biden to take immediate steps to welcome refugees from Ukraine. Jewish Federations of North America spearheaded the letter, sent March 18.
In this piece, which originally appeared in The Times of Israel, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., outlines the goals and hopes of B'Yachad: Reconstructing Judaism Together, the movement convention.
Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association joined more than 130 other faith and civil rights organizations on a letter urging the Senate to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), which would create a new tool for safeguarding access to high-quality abortion care and securing constitutional rights by protecting patients and providers from dangerous political interference. While the bill did not garner enough votes needed to pass this time around, we are proud to have stood with this coalition for reproductive justice and will continue to do so in the weeks, months, and years ahead.
Reconstructionists gather for a movement convention, B’Yachad: Reconstructing Judaism Together.
Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association join countless nations and faith communities around the world in condemning the unprovoked and brutal Russian military invasion of Ukraine.
Reconstructionist congregations are part of the World Union for Progressive Judaism (WUPJ), which is also home to ten Ukrainian synagogues. We hold them, the entire Ukrainian Jewish community, and all the people of Ukraine in our hearts.
Rabbis Donna Cephas, Sandra Lawson and Michael Hess Webber each took very different paths to becoming Reconstructionist rabbis. Despite disparate journeys, the three religious leaders have continuously demonstrated dedication, creativity and an ability to inspire others. Their stories share an additional element: their paths to the rabbinate were once blocked because their partners are not Jewish.
Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association have issued the following statement in response to the recent Amnesty International report:
Apartheid is one of the most shocking words in the English language, conjuring images of the brutal and racist South African regime that decades of struggle brought to an end in 1994. Last week, Amnesty International became the latest human rights organization to accuse Israel of the crime of apartheid. Amnesty’s report follows reports by Human Rights Watch and by the Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, both of which level the same charge. Over the past several days, we have taken the time needed to study Amnesty’s 280-page report and develop our response.
Reconstructing Judaism offers prayers, and positive action steps, following an 11-hour hostage standoff at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas.
Today, Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association along with 10 other national Jewish organizations urged the Senate to quickly approve funding for the replenishment of Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. While the House overwhelmingly voted, on a bipartisan basis, to fund its replenishment last year, the legislation has stalled in the Senate.
The Progressive Israel Network (PIN) welcomes the news that the Israeli government will not be building Jewish settlements in the E-1 for the near future. We applaud the Biden Administration’s efforts to prevent such construction, and urge them to continue to push back against settlement expansion more broadly.
The Reconstructionist movement is being well represented at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Society of Jewish Ethics, taking place Jan. 6-9 over Zoom. In fact, in terms of the number of presenters —at least three — the movement will have a greater presence at this year’s virtual gathering than at any time since the first conference was held in 2003.
The Center for Jewish Ethics at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College has received a transformative grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to fund cross-disciplinary research into race, racism and the American Jewish experience. The center’s aims have an impact far beyond the academy by developing educational materials and programs for youth, individual adult learners, and communities.
The one-year, $199,850 grant will enable the Levin-Lieber Program in Jewish Ethics to establish and run a new initiative tentatively called “Race, Religion and American Judaism: Cross-Disciplinary Research, Public Scholarship and Curriculum Development.”
On the eve of Thanksgiving, we feel grateful for one of the most extraordinary things about the Reconstructionist movement -- the caliber of people who are attracted to it. We are lucky that so many of these extraordinary people step up into leadership, on our behalf and in the wider world. Over the last several months, we have lost several national leaders, and we write now to share some reflections on these folks who offered the best of themselves to us and on our behalf.
On Sunday Oct. 28, 2018 — one day after the deadliest day in American Jewish history — I mourned with members of Congregation Dor Hadash. The Pittsburgh Reconstructionist congregation met in the Tree of Life building and had lost one of its own, Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz (z”l). Another member, Dan Leger, clung to life. Virtually every member of the congregation had gathered in solidarity. People were understandably raw, numb and devastated. Yet, in their commitment to mutual support, I was reminded of the awesome power of Jewish community to cultivate resilience in the face of pain and threat, including violent antisemitism.
In these polarized times, discourse over how best to confront antisemitism has often been visceral and sometimes taken on hyperbolic tones. At Reconstructing Judaism, we believe there are several steps toward a vigorous and constructive fight against rising antisemitism.
Before Ritualwell was a website containing more than 2,200 liturgy and rituals crowdsourced by Jews, it was an idea of where to put dozens of scraps of paper in the drawers of offices in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Kolot: Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies in Wyncote.
In 2001, RRC and Kolot, in partnership with Ma’yan, a Jewish feminist organization, uploaded the prayers scrawled on those papers to the newfangled Internet, creating an archive of Jewish writing that filled in the gaps of liturgies and practices that historically excluded women and LGBTQ+ Jews. Community members were invited to write and submit their own liturgies and rituals.
Almost two decades later, Ritualwell has not only become a library of prayers and poetry, but an online community center for Jews looking to hone their skills through writing workshops and classes.
Mazel tov to Joshua Angrist, an Israeli-American economist who was awarded the 2021 Nobel prize in economics, together with David Card and Guido Imbens.
Angrist was raised in Pittsburgh and celebrated his bar mitzvah at Congregation Dor Hadash, a Reconstructionist affiliate.
For 20 years, Ritualwell has served as a pioneering resource for original Jewish liturgy and rituals, along the way nurturing an informal network of liturgists, poets and ritual innovators. Now, it has launched ADVOT @ Ritualwell, a formal online community offering unprecedented support and empowerment to writers who are imagining new ways to mark life’s most salient moments in a Jewish context.
The last sixteen months of the pandemic have highlighted the necessity of community as something both poignant and urgent. With many of us physically removed from our “normal” sites of gathering (i.e., workplaces, schools, cultural venues, “third spaces,” places of worship), we’ve learned to cultivate relationships online, to use digital tools to create new places of meeting and connection, and to experiment with alternative and even more accessible forms of engagement. Despite the very real challenges of long-term isolation and Zoom fatigue, we’ve found new ways to experience community, to address pragmatic needs, and to fill our souls.
In this workshop, Rabbi Lawson addresses the question, "What do our Jewish texts and values say about welcoming others into our communities?"
Amanda Beckenstein Mbuvi, Ph.D., has been named the next vice president for academic affairs at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC) outside Philadelphia. Mbuvi (she/her), a scholar of Hebrew Bible, brings to this role a wealth of academic, administrative and nonprofit leadership experience.
In the wake of the recent armed hostilities between Israel and Gaza, American Jews have increasingly experienced antisemitic harassment and violence. In a recent NPR story, "Antisemitism Spikes, And Many Jews Wonder: 'Where Are Our Allies?'", Rabbi Sandra Lawson recounts her experience being targeted on social media.
The first American bat mitzvah took place nearly a century ago, but its effects reverberate to this day. This podcast episode explores how the bat mitzvah helped pave the way for greater inclusion of women in public Jewish ritual and practice and laid the groundwork for further steps toward inclusion.
The Center for Jewish Ethics, affiliated with the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, has awarded the 2021 Whizin Prize — an essay contest to encourage innovative thinking on contemporary Jewish ethics — to Miriam Attia, a doctoral student in religious ethics at the University of Chicago Divinity School.
Nominations are open for the Reconstructionist movement's Tikkun Olam Commission and Joint Israel Commission.
Rabbi Sandra Lawson (she/her), a trailblazing leader, will join Reconstructing Judaism as its inaugural Director of Racial Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Working with senior staff, lay leaders, clergy, rabbinical students and Reconstructionist communities, Lawson will help Reconstructing Judaism realize its deeply held aspiration of becoming an anti-racist organization and movement. Lawson is a 2018 Reconstructionist Rabbinical College graduate.
Jewish experience offers a valuable entryway into the study of race. Jewish identities and experience complicate conceptions that are overly simplistic or that lack nuance. Jewish history illuminates both the difficulty and the imperative of grappling with race and racism. To deepen our understanding of race, we have organized a series of online talks that will bring leading scholars of race, religion and Jewish life to a broad public.
The existential nature of the Coronavirus pandemic is laying the groundwork for a religious revival, and the Reconstructionist movement is poised to contribute a compelling vision of 21st-century Jewish life as part of this revival.
2020 has been a year defined by pandemic, economic collapse, protests for racial justice, political disarray and, in the case of much of the West Coast, catastrophic fires. Yet Jewish life went on, proving to be both adaptable and vital. Reconstructionist congregations have adapted, based on millennia of precedents and an unceasing commitment to community.
Reconstructing Judaism’s president, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., has been hailed as an LGBT Icon as part of LGBT History Month. Waxman is the first woman and first lesbian to lead a major Jewish denomination and rabbinical seminary.
Reconstructing Judaism explores and funds innovative ideas for connecting with and serving unengaged and under-engaged populations — in new ways and spaces. Congregation Bet Haverim created "Your Jewish Bridge" in Atlanta, and its founder shares lessons learned after the first year and a half of the project.
This summer we encountered a growing movement that forces us to stare into the face of racial injustice. For those of us who are accepted as white, it demands that we stop looking away. It requires us to try to imagine what it means to raise a child of color in America and examine how we, despite all of our best intentions, fail in our efforts to include and empower people of color in our civil and religious communities.
Now that Joe Biden has telegraphed his pick for vice president, Kamala Harris, let’s give credit to the woman who stepped out first: Victoria Claflin Woodhull. In 1872, before women had the right to vote, Woodhull ran for president against Ulysses S. Grant. Since then, according to Rutgers University, at least 31 women have made serious bids to be president or vice president of the United States. Six of those women ran twice. You know how many have won. Now, at this historic moment, I’m thinking a lot about women and power.
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