Merger versus acquisition.

This is one of the big discussions at the synagogue, and has been for years leading up to what's going on now. My predecessor and I were always adamant that we'd not go down this road - that any other congregation that would want to join with us (given local history) would see it as an acquisition and we'd be swallowed up.

So it's very fair game when my congregants ask me why I keep asserting that this is a merger, not an acquisition. It's a very fair question.

In a merger, you don't lose your identity. Our name is part of not just the legal name of the new congregation, but the everyday business one.

In a merger, it's about coming together. Like a marriage, we might be moving into their 'house', but we're bringing our things with us, and what we'll use on a daily basis is a combination of both congregation's 'things'.

In a merger, it's about finding ways to work together, to use the best from each side. The new bylaws are based on theirs, but with copious input and language from ours, and has the recent revisions we made to be more inclusive.

In a merger, you talk about 'joining with', not about 'them and us'.

And I'm very blessed that our partners in this, the congregation we are joining with to form this new congregation, are all about finding the wins, having the discussions, and building together.

With demographic shifts, synagogues sometimes need to close or congregations merge with one another.

What that happens, what happens to the donated artwork? Congregation Temple Beth-El in Great Neck, NY is dealing with that very question.

If you like watching pods

How can Judaism help us get free?

In our moment of polycrisis, this is an urgent question for those of us invested in Judaism. Many formations and organizations have emerged to attempt to offer alternatives to the stultifying and content-less (except for pro-Israel work) identity-based Judaism on offer from an increasingly less mainstream “mainstream.”

“The Faithful: Women of the Bible” is a three-part biblical TV “event” that explores the lives of Sarah and her handmaid, Hagar; Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, and her relationship with her sons; and the complex relationship of sisters Rachel and Leah, the wives of Jacob.

Weitz and Mendelsohn talked to Kveller about how this show came to be, their approach to recreating biblical times, and who they’re hoping to portray in upcoming seasons.

This is the first in my installments of the "Rugela Bake", a list of the improvements, big events, or changes to Rugela.

This is the first one, as we opened the beta to a few select users on October 14th!

Some other big changes this week:

• The home feed now puts stories with active conversations at the top
• Content warnings are easier to read and open
• Link previews look cleaner
• The Action Bar (the star and reply buttons) got a big refresh
• When you post a link, you now paste the link first (vs the title first)
• The site's own pages read better
• A friendlier page for broken links
• A new Values Statement replaces the old placeholder text

My nephew's Bar Mitzvah is coming up very soon.
I've crocheted him a kippah for his special day, which, I'm glad to report, he loved.

It's fairly common in my Moroccan family to make a kippah for a loved one for special events.
I'm looking for ideas, are there any other crafts/items people make for loved ones for a Bar Mitzvah?

It's Canadian Thanksgiving and on the cusp of opening Rugela up to a closed beta, I wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude to the amazing Jewish community on Babka Social that's helped inspire this site.

Babka Social was my first foray into Jewish social media, a Mastodon server with the goal of being a place where, as one Babkan called it, we could be "Unapologetically Jewish".

But for me, it's been so much more than just means of expression. It's been a home. I launched Babka after experiencing antisemitism on the Fediverse, the network of servers that make up Mastodon, Pixelfed and other online spaces. The Fediverse can be a very welcoming place, as long as you fit in as a very specific kind of person.

If you're outside that group, it can be a very hard, cold, even cruel place, and so after almost a year of working on a plan, I launched Babks Social in November of 2022 in order to give Fediverse Jews a home.

Little did I know that less than a year after I'd launch, that site would become critically important to Jews who found that they needed connection and community.

And through that site, I found myself meeting people I'd never have met otherwise, including and especially Jews of Choice who felt unhappy and uncomfortable in many Jewish spaces, as well as LGBTQ+ Jews who felt similarly alienated.

Babka has given them a place to be Jewish, and given me some important friendships.

Rugela, when it launches soon, will be this and more. I have put years of my life into this site and I know what it came become, and none of it would would be possible without its roots in Babka.

Afro-Caribbean Jews didn’t really have a chance to form our own connections and spices and twists on it. It’s more been a sense of survival, just hold on to Judaism enough so that you can pass it on to the next generation.

"What I'm saying is we're an opinionated and expressive people" summarizes us beautiful, and with that, our traditions ground us in how to have a disagreement while staying grounded and together while engaging in thoughtful debate and disagreement.

Aaron spent this past summer in Israel on a Birthright sponsored trip, making more fitness content and partnering with a clothing brand. He plans to move there in the next two to three years after graduating. “It’s where I’m meant to be, where Jewish people are meant to be,” he says, noting that Israelis are welcoming and outgoing, but also have no filter, a trait he says he shares. “Israeli culture is saying what’s on your mind, doing whatever the fuck you want to do.” Most importantly, though, he wants to highlight Israeli athleticism, which fewer people are aware of.

He’s part of a small but growing contingent of young people, mostly men, posting fitness content to social media that centers their Judaism, either jokingly or inspirationally.

From the "Did you know that ___ is Jewish" dept...

Her name was Evelyn Berezin, and she was one of the great pioneers of the computer age who spent most of her career as the first — or only — woman in the room.

For decades I'd used Emacs and various knowledge capture systems, Muse, org-mode, and eventually denote. But Silverbullet is where I'm at now.

Shoutout to Silverbullet and to all the second brains everywhere!