Rabbi jamie korngold finkelstein meirowitz

More than three dozen of these celebrations have taken place so far, from Los Angeles and New York to London and Jerusalem. Most exciting for Lau-Lavie is to see Jewish heritage refracted through the eyes of a child on the cusp of maturity. For example, at a recent bat mitzva in New York, one of his students took her portion from Leviticus about the induction of the ancient priests into the sacrificial cult and crafted a performance piece about her own initiation into adulthood.

Lau-Lavie puts the emphasis on the entire family, not just the or year-old. As demand for his services grows, he is shifting away from an individualized model toward one of working with cohorts of families whose children are all preparing for the ceremony at around the same time. Once a month, the parents convene to examine their own coming-of-age and Jewish identity issues.

She met Lau-Lavie at a California conference sponsored by Reboot, an organization that uses culture to reach out to a younger generation of Jews. Two-thirds of the families that Lau-Lavie works with are unaffiliated. At the same time, Lau-Lavie works with families who belong to synagogues and whose rabbis are open to experimenting with the traditional ritual.

However, the noncongregational approach causes concern for many pulpit rabbis. This is about your connection to both the past and future generations of the Jewish people. What does this have to do with the Rocky Mountains? Exclamations of wonder and awe are easy to say and hear when standing next to a hanging glacier or a tiny purple wildflower growing up from the parched desert.

And once those words enter our vocabulary and we feel safe using them… they can be used in a Jewish context, too. And not only that.

Rabbi jamie korngold finkelstein meirowitz

Walking up what seemed like a vertical wall of slickrock in Moab, I looked up to find a hand waiting to help me, before I ever had to ask. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikidata item. Works [ edit ]. References [ edit ]. Jewish Lights Publishing. You have been lucky to be partnered with Julie Fortenberry, a talented North Carolina artist.

Were you able to communicate directly with Julie or were the decisions regarding the illustrations left to your publisher, Kar-Ben Publishing? Our publishing house has a wonderful process that enables our illustrators to own their creative process without authors hovering. I love Julie and I cherish her work, but I let Joni and her figure out what needs to happen when illustrating my books.

They will ask me questions if they think my opinion will be helpful but mostly I stay out of that process. This is again where the trust comes in. Joni is a phenomenal publisher and Julie is a talented illustrator. I do not interfere. Children, like your story characters, are challenged when they look for child friendly resources.

How does your picture book fill this void? I started writing kids books because I went to the JCC library to borrow books on Shavuot and although there were a plethora of shelves overflowing with books on Chanukah and Rosh Hashanah, there were only a few Shavuot books and they were not very good. I wanted to fill that void. I mostly focus on the less known holidays because kids need to know about them.

But sometimes my characters have different ideas about what story they want to tell and so we also have a Chanukah story. My rabbinate is built very much along the same lines; I try not to do things everyone else is already doing well. Insecurities mount when someone feels that they will stand out from the crowd. This picture book deviates from your holiday themed stories.