Jewish prayer is a largely sedentary activity. We stand up, we sit down, we gently bow now and then. Things are a little different at Rabbi Jaymee Alpert’s “Neshama Body & Soul,” a combination prayer service and workout class at Congregation Beth David, a Conservative synagogue in Saratoga. I’m not in great shape, I do…
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Jew in the Pew
Jew in the Pew
Called to the Torah for the first time — as adults
“Today I become a man,” 70-year-old Judy Kraft said to a round of laughter. She was one of 10 adults to become b’nai mitzvah in one blockbuster service at…
Jew in the Pew
Pride Shabbat is this synagogue’s highest holiday
First, there were cocktails. At Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, the historically LGBTQ synagogue in the Mission, in a festively decorated upstairs social hall…
Jew in the Pew
When Moshiach comes, men will clear the table
Think back to the very end of Passover — those final, agonizingly bread-free moments of the weeklong exercise in self-control. What were you doing?…
Jew in the Pew
22 international diplomats, 70 Jews, one seder
When I imagine the platonic ideal of a Passover seder, it is loud, discursive, long and more than a little chaotic. Yet I also know the American seder is…
Jew in the Pew
An adults-only Tu B’Shevat seder — sobering, but hardly sober
Ancient tax day. Kabbalistic metaphor. Zionist agricultural festival. Tu B’Shevat has been many things. In modern America, as the environment became a…
Jew in the Pew
Swapping pulpits for a better world
When Martin Luther King Jr. Day was first observed in 1986, there was resistance and uproar from the KKK and other assorted racists. As a spiritual…
Jew in the Pew
Tradition and transgression at ‘Trefa Banquet 2.0’
Az men est khazer, zol es shoyn rinen ibern moyl. If you’re going to eat pork, eat it until your mouth drips. — Yiddish saying Last night at Brick &…
Jew in the Pew
A well of Renewal in a valley of tech
On a recent Shabbat, I ventured down to San Jose for a Friday night service. It was the first anniversary Shabbat of Ha-Emek, a new, volunteer-run,…