-
Shop at Amazon?
Click the logo below and a percentage of your purchase will automatically help support our online congregation.
Premonitions and Predictions for 2011
Happy New Year!
At Congregation Beth Adam and OurJewishCommunity.org, we have a tradition of expressing our premonitions and predictions for the new year each January. We ask you to predict things for the coming year, and Rabbi Barr and I seal up the predictions and read them the following year. The one rule is that we ask you not to predict deaths.
We’ll be reading last year’s predictions at our streaming Shabbat service tomorrow night (12/31/10) at 6 PM Eastern Time. If you miss them during the service, catch the archive or stay tuned for a future blog post.
It’s time to start making your new predictions for 2011! Email your predictions for the new year to me at rabbi@ourjewishcommunity.org. Next January, we’ll read the list of predictions during our Shabbat service webcast and I’ll post the list here on my blog (all of this is anonymous). Let’s see what we expect to have happen during the next 365 days! Then we’ll find out if we were right!
So, start sending me emails with your predictions– and have a wonderful New Year!
Jewish Christmas Twitter Observations: JewMas and JewXmas
So, I didn’t have a whole lot to do on Christmas this year other than eating Chinese food and hanging out with friends. So I spent more time on Twitter than usual. I decided to do some searches for terms like Jews + Chinese Food and Chinese Food + Movies to see if this really is as big a phenomenon as I had always assumed. Turns out it is.
A few observations from my non-scientific Jewish Christmas Twitter Observations:
1. Lots of Jews eat Chinese food on Christmas, but so do a fair amount of Christians. E.g. they do Chinese food Christmas Eve and then “Christmas Dinner” Christmas day. So, nobody should assume everyone in a Chinese restaurant on Christmas is Jewish.
2. Looks like a fair amount of people are using the term Jewxmas on Twitter while others are using Jewmas (that one has made it into Urban Dictionary!).
3. What struck me as most interesting was the large number of people who tweeted that they are a “good Jew” because they were eating Chinese Food on Christmas. I’m certainly okay with the definition of “good Jew” as “one who eats Chinese food on Christmas.” It suggests there’s a strong cultural and communal element to being a “good Jew” – and that we’re creating new traditions that our ancestors couldn’t have imagined. That’s a great kind of Judaism.
Merry Jewmas / Jewxmas!
Online Book of Life
Happy Belated Hanukkah! We have a much belated gift for all of you – our fabulous participants in our online Jewish community!
This year, in the 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur we posed a question for reflection each day. Hundreds of people responded, mostly on Facebook.
We’ve now compiled some of the most thoughtful answers (though there were many!) – and here they are. If you have difficulty reading it here because it’s a bit small, click here for a larger version (which you can also download as a powerpoint if you would like).
We like to think of this as our community’s Book of Life! Enjoy.
Porcelain Unicorn: Very Sweet Video
Have you seen the “Porcelain Unicorn” video? It’s a very touching short video produced for a contest Philips hosted (it won the grand prize). I’ll simply embed the video here – it needs little explanation.
Planning for Hanukkah 2011
We want you!
Hanukkah 2010 ends tonight, and I hope you all had a fabulous holiday. It’s kind of weird that it’s only December 9th, and Hanukkah is over.
Rabbi Barr and I are already planning for Hanukkah 2011. For the past two years, we’ve filmed our Hanukkah candle lightings from around the world – videos brought to you from a different place each evening. For next Hanukkah, we want to invite all of you to participate! So don’t put your menorahs away yet!
If you are interested in making a video of a candle lighting, please email me ASAP. We’ll send you a reading (and tell you which night of Hanukkah it’s for). All you need is a flipcam or video camera and a friend willing to film you while you stand somewhere interesting and recite the readings and blessings (with a menorah in the picture). We can give you more tips if you are interested. We would love to have videos submitted from people around the world!
So, it’s never too early to start planning for next year. You can even film the video today and we’ll save it for next year! Please email me if you’re interested.
Happy Hanukkah!
Hanukkah Candle Lighting Night 8 – 2010
Where in the world are Rabbis Baum and Barr?
Tonight Rabbi Baum is lighting the Hanukkah menorah under the sea in the Bahamas.
If you are interested in submitting a video candle lighting for 2011, please let us know!
Hanukkah Candle Lighting Night 7 – 2010
Where in the world are Rabbis Baum and Barr?
Tonight Rabbi Barr is lighting the Hanukkah menorah at the Grand Synagogue in Stockholm, Sweden.
Each night join our rabbis for our Hanukkah candle lighting around the world!
Hanukkah Candle Lighting Night 6 – 2010
Where in the world are Rabbis Baum and Barr?
Tonight Rabbi Baum is lighting the Hanukkah menorah alongside the lights of the Las Vegas strip.
Each night join our rabbis for our Hanukkah candle lighting around the world!
Hanukkah Candle Lighting Night 5 – 2010
Where in the world are Rabbis Baum and Barr?
Tonight Rabbi Barr is lighting the Hanukkah menorah at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.
Each night join our rabbis for our Hanukkah candle lighting around the world!
If the video doesn’t play below (if it says it’s private), please click here to watch it.
Hanukkah Candle Lighting Night 4 – 2010
Where in the world are Rabbis Baum and Barr?
Tonight Rabbi Barr is lighting the Hanukkah menorah at the Hague in the Netherlands, standing at the grave of Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza.
Each night join our rabbis for our Hanukkah candle lighting around the world!
-
- — Watch Video-Streamed Holocaust Panel about bystanders
- — Our Holocaust page is up - including an online panel discussion event on January 27th
- — Baum's Blog on Lisa's Adoption of Judaism
- — Baum's Blog on Coco the Clown, Conversion, and Online Community
- — Barr's Banter on Hypocrisy
- — Join us for streaming Shabbat every Friday at 6 PM Eastern Time