Rabbi

It has been a “season of regret,” with corporate miscues and apologies rampant: Toyota’s recall, NBC’s Jay Leno/ Conan O’Brien scheduling gaffe and final recognition of Time Warner’s AOL blunder. If only there were a do-over. What are the biggest mistakes in Jewish history? We asked Rabbi Charlie Buckholtz, senior editor at the Shalom Hartman Institute and author, to describe regrettable moments in Jewish history where a do-over might have been helpful. Tell us what you think. Any regrets on our regrets? E-mail us at connect@jinsider.com.

Female rabbis in the Conservative movement face obstacles to career advancement not unlike those encountered by women in other historically male-dominated professions.

A new report shows that women rabbis earn $77,000 annually on average, while men make about 50 percent more, earning an average of $119,000 per year.
The study also found that women tend to lead smaller and less populous congregations, and hold fewer influential non-pulpit positions than do their male counterparts.

In 2000 Rabbi Shohama Wiener was invited to lead High Holy Days services at Kona Beth Shalom, a synagogue on the Big Island of Hawaii, where the congregation’s greeting of choice is “Shaloha.” When she wasn’t conducting services or polishing her sermons, the rabbi swam and snorkeled alongside congregants in the nearby Pacific Ocean.

During a recent lesson about biblical patriarchs and matriarchs, fourth-graders at Manhattan’s Central Synagogue Hebrew school watched as role-playing talk show host, “Shecky Bevakasha,” mediated a dispute between Jacob’s two wives, sisters Leah and Rachel. While some students watched the Jerry Springer-like feud play out before them, others observed equally sensational Torah stories, starring Judaism’s forefathers and mothers.

Last fall, as her peers fanned out to colleges across the country, Dana Feldman made what in the leafy Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Ill., was an unusual choice: She headed for Israel to spend the year studying and volunteering.After taking Jewish studies and ulpan classes at Hebrew University during the fall semester, Feldman is spending the second half of her year abroad working with new immigrants at a Beersheva absorption center.

Underage drinking, drug abuse, eating disorders, low self esteem and other parental concerns and realities were confronted Sunday when more than 700 New York-area parents spanning Orthodoxy’s ideological gamut convened at Edward R. Murrow High School in Brooklyn for the Orthodox Union’s Positive Jewish Parenting Conference.Parents hungry for child-rearing advice with a hechsher attended psychologist- and social worker-led workshops such as “Is My Teen Just Being a Teen? Or Help! Do I Need Somebody?”

Here it is. The essential religious message in three words: stuff is inadequate.
 
Materialism is insufficient to explain the world. There is more to you than synapses. The marvelous, multicolored universe is not just an accident of ancient chemistry, or a random collection of molecules. There is an animating spirit that moves the world, barely glimpsed. Soul force comes from within us, but more, it moves through us. Because we only have words, we call it “God.”