The current controversy brewing in the Hillel universe is only the latest example of a Jewish community polarized over how we can or can’t talk about Israel. The guidelines, developed by national Hillel in 2010, were designed to provide a basis upon which a local Hillel could prevent overtly anti-Israel groups from speaking under the […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Featured, Megatrends Book Tour
I recently had the opportunity to spend some time at the annual gathering of Ohala, the rabbinical association of the Jewish Renewal movement, and at a shabbaton led by students studying at Aleph, the rabbinical training program of the movement. Although I knew quite a few people at the conference, I came as an outsider. I […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Featured
This morning I attend a keynote address by Rabbi Sid Schwarz, whom I have known since that PANIM interdenominational rabbinic student retreat I was blessed to attend all those years ago. He’s now involved with Clal (the Center for Learning and Leadership, the parent organization of Rabbis Without Borders), and has most recently published Jewish Megatrends: Charting the Course of the American […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Featured
Truth or Consequences was the first game show ever aired on commercial TV in the United States, appearing first as a pilot in 1941. It seems an apt phrase to describe the dilemma facing us today as we try to get a younger generation of Jews to have an affinity with Israel and the Jewish […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Featured
At the recent national convention of United Synagogue, Rabbi Ed Feinstein was reported to have said “the house is burning down” as a way to signal to Conservative congregations that the hour is too late for synagogues to think about modest changes in the way they do their business. Since the 2000 publication of my […]
America has become a society that breeds spiritual malaise. Among the chief causes of this malaise is the erosion of our country’s civic fabric. One need only think back to the weeks following the 9/11 tragedy to recall the overwhelming sense of American common purpose: Residing in the heart of every American, that commonality made […]
sid.schwarz Sermons and Speeches
Two years after John F. Kennedy was elected Senator from Massachusetts, he wrote a book called Profiles in Courage that would win a Pulitzer Prize and also help propel this handsome young senator into the White House three years later. Kennedy, a history buff, chose to profile eight political figures whose courage while in office […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Featured Fellowship program
Organizations throughout the American Jewish community are painfully aware that the strategies and programs that may have been effective for a previous generation will no longer meet the needs of the younger generation of Jews who have been raised in a dramatically different world than that of their parents or grandparents. Indeed, many of those […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Megatrends Book Tour
Jewish Megatrends: Rabbi offers a new way to think of ourselves: “tribal,” and “covenantal” Gary Rosenblatt New York Jewish Week, 5/22/2013 Rabbi Sidney Schwarz recalls the exact words of a comment from a liberal rabbinical student that disturbed him profoundly. “We were at a retreat, and he said to me, ‘I didn’t go to […]
sid.schwarz Articles, Megatrends Book Tour
Rabbi’s Message for American Jews: Change or Die Interview with Lauren Markoe posted on the Religious News Service (RNS) Rabbi Sidney Schwarz, ordained in the liberal Reconstructionist tradition, sees a divide between generations of American Jews that could spell disaster for the community. One generation he calls “legacy” or “tribal” Jews — those who built […]