Shabbat shalom, everyone.

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

Let us know something 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.

The legal process for getting this merger across the finish line is weighing on me.

It feels weird - even with some of my transition committee - to have to remind them that I actually have another job. I'm full-time employed outside of the synagogue, and I have two teenage sons (one of whom is significantly disabled), and synagogue work is on top of that.

So a lot of time this week's been spent with our M&A attorneys, talking about how we actually get this across the finish line in compliance with state law.

Another pair of synagogues in town merged about ten years ago, so we have their example to follow... but there, they didn't have much opposition - both synagogues were in a hint of crisis at the time, whereas ours is a little more one-sided. Their leadership, to be fair, hasn't been as responsive to our outreach for lessons-learned, and the movement's been honest that they don't know the idiosyncrasies of our state's laws.

Though hopefully today's phone call will at least finish hammering out the process for voting, and leave us clear to move towards that last legal obstacle.

It's nearly Shabbat and that means it's time for a Rugela bake. This is a big one folks!

• The context bar!- On the home page on desktop, there's a sidebar to the right showing recent comments. That new bar is the Context Bar. We have lots of big plans for it. For now, it shows recent comments at a glance. On mobile, the context bar is available as a page in the hamburger menu.
• Formatting help- If you're writing a new post, the context bar shows up and shows you how to format posts. Yes, we support lots of Markdown here, and if you're unsure of how to use it, the context bar is there!
• Notifications show up automatically!- As you use the site, notifications show up automatically. No need to reload the page anymore! Notifications also change the title bar of your browser too, letting you see your notifications at a glance!
• Context Filter Switch- If you have context filters because you don't want to see violence, antisemitism, etc. you can now flip those off temporarily by going to your avatar menu and flipping the switch! Turning them off won't remove them from your settings, so you can turn them off temporarily and then put them back up when you want. This means you can have a sneak peak at the full stream without losing your normal filters.
• Refreshed look on stars and reply- We're trying a little cleaner look on the starring and reply interface. We think this looks a bit cleaner.
• Improved Search- Now when you search, your search results have highlighted results! That makes it easier to see why something matched
• Context bar on search- We even put the context bar on searches! On the search screen the context bar shows you how to use search more effectively.
• Sharing a Rugela link now gives you a page preview- If you post a link onto a chat site or another social media site, they can now get a page preview for the link!
• If you make a report, you can get a response- If you make a report over context, a moderator can now respond back to you about the outcome.
• If you are reported, you'll get a response- If someone reports content about you, you'll now get notified about the outcome.

What do you think?

What's your favorite new feature? Do you like the new look? Prefer the old look? What do you think of the context bar?

What's something you wish was a little different?

Reply below with your thoughts! Or as always, you can send your feedback to suggestions@rugela.com!

I'm partway through Judaism as a Civilization and I've been thinking about the relationship between Kaplan's beliefs and the Reconstructionist movement.

I'm curious, of those folks who belong to a congregation that has a denomination- what does that denomination mean to you? Do you feel a greater connection to your synagogue or its movement?

Sholem everybody !
I am a French teacher of history, geography, and political science; I’m delighted to be here to see this adventure begin. I sometimes use a translator to express myself, as English is not my native language—please bear with my "Franglish" :-) I also run and write for an educational account on the social network Mastodon— hcommons.social/@CultureContreAntisemitisme—which focuses on countering antisemitism. It is in French and, unfortunately, difficult to translate, as it relies on humor and wordplay (though it also contains a great deal of history). See you soon!

Sefaria has a new AI librarian tool to help readers sort through the countless books and material they have.

On the one hand, having a specifically trained AI assistant for Jewish texts seems like a boon.

On the other, there's a risk, especially in a Jewish context, of taking the richness of our history and flattening it through summarization that loses dissent, glossing over details, or not encouraging independent exploration.

What do you think?

I've seen countless Zombie Simpsons essays. They usually focus on the poor writing, weak storylines and other obvious issues with the Simpsons starting around season 9. This video essay is different in that it focuses on the atmosphere around the Simpsons when it launched and how that influenced the Simpsons as a point of culture, and what happens when the parody outlives the original.

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.

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?

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.

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!

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...