One of the funny things about being a congregational president is that most of my congregants seem to feel like I actually live at the synagogue. (A close second are the ones who act like it's my day job. Hint - it's not my day job.)

I live in Baltimore, Maryland, and my youngest is a freshman at Baltimore Polytechnic Institute (known as 'Poly') locally.

Baltimore - for those who aren't local - has a system called 'city-wide school choice' for middle and high schools. Students can apply for any middle school or high school in the city, and Poly is one of the best public high schools in Maryland (and frankly in the country), with a concentration on STEM. My son is very interested in pursuing a career in the space, and his maternal grandfather's an alum, so he was very motivated to apply there.

Poly is also a participant in "The Game", an annual game against their rivals at Baltimore City College High School (also an extremely good, academically competitive public high school), which is one of the longest-running football rivalries in the US. And because we live in a mostly-Christian country... high school football is on Saturdays. My wife and I think it's important for him to experience high school fully, so we planned to go to the game as a family.

BUT, none of the staff at the synagogue who know how to run the AV systems were available this morning. So I ran out to synagogue - in my blue jeans and navy blue shirt - just to make sure the live stream and sound system were working, and planned to come straight back so I could take the kids to the game.

And everyone was like, "Why are you dressed like that?" "Aren't you staying for services?" "What do you mean you're not staying?"

My dudes. Yes, I come to services most Shabbatot. But I also have a life away from the synagogue.

Though, honestly, I could've stuck it out a bit more at synagogue, because surely prayers would've avoided the lopsided shutout loss that the Poly Engineers suffered today.

Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Conservative peer and human rights campaigner Baroness Helic makes an impassioned call for support for the restoration of a landmark shul

Shabbat shalom, everyone.

It's our third Shabbat together! This is a weekly thread where we come together at the end of the week to share.

Tell others about yourself. Say something that's alive in you, your thoughts, feelings, something on your mind.

Whatever this Shabbat looks like for you, you’re welcome at this table.

If you're intimidated, one sentence is plenty, or more if you feel like sharing. The thread will be here afterwards if you want to come back to it.

It's our third weekly Rugela Bake!!! This is the time when we round up all the new and exciting changes to the site and present them to you.

• We have search!!!- You asked for search, you got it! Now on the top of the page you can search for stories from the past! We'll be improving the search as time goes on, but several of you asked for search, and now you have it!
• Read More- We now set the size of the stories with a "Read More" link. This makes it easier to browse the home feed and see everything without one or two posts taking up all the space!
• The notification icon shows one line per post or comment- Before, each reply or star got its own notification line. Now we collapse them per post/comment, making your notifications less crowded.
• Hover time- On places where time was displayed, it was displayed in relative time, eg "5 days ago". Now when you hover over one of those times, you'll get back the actual date/time.
• Better Youtube Support- We now preview Youtube links better, specifically we can grab descriptions and a higher quality preview image.
• Settings improvements on mobile!- Turns out some of you use your phones to browse the Internet and the settings page wasn't working well. Now it works better with a side scroll.
• No more toasts!- We wanted to remove toasts for accessibility and now they're gone!

Some smaller but still important changes:

• Sort by label on the home page- Last week we introduced being able to sort stories, but some people said they couldn't find the feature, so we added a label.
• Accessibility labels- We've been hunting the site down for places we're not as accessible and filling in the gaps. We did a lot of work this week on accessibility labels.
• Editing a post no longer re-notifies people you already mentioned- If you mention someone in a post and then you edit the post, they won't get a new mention.
• No notifications on deleted items- If someone created a mention on a post, a reply, etc. and it's deleted, you won't get a notification for it anymore.
• Preview protections- It was theoretically possible to submit a URL with your private credentials ala @avi:mysecretpass into a Link Post where people would see it. We try to prevent that now.

Hope you like the improvements! Be sure to send your ideas to suggestions@rugela.com and stay tuned for next week's update!

As I'm sure everyone is already aware, Patrick Stewart has passed. He had many roles, primarily in the theater as a shakespearean actor, as well as various roles, eg Dune, Excalibur, and of course Hunting Elephants, the 2013 Israeli film.

But of course the role Stewart is best known for is Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the Starship Enterprise. Star Trek: TNG meant so much to me that I can't imagine myself without it. It's a core part of who I am.

I'd seen Star Trek as a child. I was especially fond of the Animated Series, but it wasn't very meaningful. Next Generation was. It started airing when I was 11, and I remember watching it at age 12. It was appointment viewing for me. I watched every episode. The show was aspirational, and Picard was aspirational.

He was a deeply moral man, a philosopher king of sorts. There were many types of episodes but my favorites were the ones where Picard had to use his mind to get out of a predicament. Measure of a Man Devil's Due, Darmok, and Masks were my favorite types of episodes.

They showed a man who had to use his mind, and his moral fortitude to get out of a dilemma, even at the cost of his own life, or even the cost of war.

I was deeply shaped by this character and by extension, the man who portrayed him.

Do you have memories of Star Trek to share? Do you have other films with Patrick Steward that meant something to you?

Yes, Natalie Portman, from Black Swan, Léon, Star Wars and Thor, is a Jew.

She was born in Jerusalem and is a dual Israeli and American citizen.

And if her acting career wasn't enough, she is a Harvard University graduate where she published papers on psychology and interned with famous legal scholar Alan Dershowitz.

Definitely one of ours!

Buchanan grew up believing deeply in God but almost entirely outside organized religion. His parents didn’t want religion in the house, but his grandfather gave him something simpler that never left him. One day, he called his grandson over and told him to look outside.

I went to services at our partner congregation on Saturday.

Now, I've been telling everyone at our congregation as to how similar the services are - I've sat through one bar mitzvah there in the last few years - but this was the first time I've gone over to actually sit on a regular Shabbat morning and enjoy the services. (And for those who actually haven't guessed - most Shabbats, I don't end up sitting in a pew, but rather I'm playing greeter.)

So.. the services were like 85% the same as ours, another 5% close and... we'll have to figure out the other 10%. It was nice to just daven for once.

On the other hand, I have to say that it's beautiful how warm their congregation was to those of us who'd come to visit for the morning, and I felt very welcome. My wife came away from it saying that she could definitely imagine being there for services on the regular.

Point of humor though - my counterpart at their congregation grew up at ours. His mom and aunt were my wife's hebrew school teachers when she was little, and they came over to meet us when we were in the sanctuary. And his mom takes one look at me after I introduce myself and goes, "Oh, so you're the one my son's spending more time with than his wife lately."

I love these people.

First Nemoy, now Koenig... Only one original Jewish member of the Enterprise bridge left...

What did you read over Shabbat? Or just generally what are you reading?

Revered today as one of Judaism’s greatest thinkers, Maimonides once faced fierce opposition over his legal rulings and philosophy, with critics accusing him of heresy and his books burned. How did the medieval scholar become a central authority across the Jewish world?

Shabbat shalom, everyone.

Welcome to the second Shabbat together! This is a weekly thread where we can come together at the end of the week.

Tell others about yourself. Say something that's alive in you, your thoughts, feelings, something on your mind.

Whatever this Shabbat looks like for you, you’re welcome at this table.

One sentence is plenty, and the thread will still be here afterwards.

The second Rugela bake!

There have been a large number of behind the scenes changes this week, so less visible changes to you all, but still a lot of wonderful updates

• The home feed has a sort menu - This is something several of you asked for. You wanted to sort by most Active posts (default) and Newest. Now you can!
• No more jittery home page - We had a feature that inserted random stories on the home page. That's gone and the home page feels more stable now.
• You can now star a post from the home page - Several of you asked for this. Now it's there!
• Links in posts and comments render better. - There was a bug in the renderer. That's fixed.
• Link previews work for more sites. - Some sites weren't giving link previews. We now support more sites!

Some smaller but still important changes:

• Phasing away from toasts - This is a bit more insider, but when you change a setting, it won't show the temporary notification thing on the side anymore. Those things are unpleasant, and less accessible, so they're going away. Most of them are gone already.
• Profile tabs work better now - There was a bug around tabbing that's fixed.
  The settings menu link is labelled "Settings". - The old phrasing of "Personal Profile" was confusing.

Hope you all enjoy the changes! Be sure to send your suggestions to suggestions@rugela.com and stay tuned for next week's update!

This week has gone by so fast, I'm ready for a break.

In anticipation of tomorrow (Shabbat) he's a video of Frum It Up's Shabbat dinner prep.

I find her videos chill and somewhat inspiring. I hope you do too!

Rugela offers ways to filter out content based on Content Warnings.

What are your thoughts on them?

Useful? Not useful?

Too broad? Too narrow?

Do you wish we covered topics we don't?