Blog
Voices: JRC's Congregational Blog
Our Brilliant New Torah Teachers
The B'nai Mitzvah class of 5781 had a year they -- and we -- will never forget. As we pivoted and innovated to make their transition to Jewish adulthood meaningful even in a year of social distancing and Zoom celebrations, these brilliant young people lit up our...
Help Iman and His Family: A Personal Reflection for Rosh Hashanah
On the High Holidays each year, JRC invites congregants to share their personal reflections of the past year. This year, we were blessed with the chance to hear from Iman Amini, the "bonus son" of our congregation's Frolichstein-Appel family, whose family in...
A View of the Past Year
JRC is an amazing, vibrant, dedicated, and participatory community. At last year's annual meeting, we described how JRC had managed to adapt to the unexpected lockdown as the COVID-19 pandemic arrived. Like many other organizations, we tackled new challenges with...
Zooming into My New Job
“Wow. That must have been really hard.” This is consistently the response I get when people hear that I began a new job as a synagogue executive director in May, at the beginning of the pandemic (doesn’t everyone mark time by where an event falls in relation to the...
JRC’s New Website Is Super Duper Reconstructionist
Several years ago, JRC was offered what turned out to be a wonderful gift which came, as gifts sometimes do, wrapped up in a big complicated mess. Isn’t that often how it goes, not just for us as individuals, but for the Jewish people in general? If it weren’t for the...
The Sacred Work of Being a Zoom Gabbai
The duties of a traditional Gabbai vary from synagogue to synagogue. Typically, a Gabbai ensures the Torah service runs smoothly and is available to quickly correct any mishap. The Reconstructionist community uses the term Zoom Gabbai to describe the person who hosts...
We Are Being Led to Where We Need to Be
I wasn’t looking for a community. Certainly not JRC. I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 14 years, and had driven by, but never really thought twice about it. Quite honestly, for the last two decades I’ve worked on Shabbat and hadn’t given that a second thought. Then,...