Last year, I talked about the challenges of being confined during the Passover holiday. This year, however, we are beginning to see the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. One would naturally hope this Passover is a celebration of our liberation from both spiritual and actual confinemen… More Headlines
Across denominations and across the United States, Jewish families under financial pressure from the coronavirus pandemic are deciding that synagogue dues are an expense they can cut.
“More congregations are seeing declines in members than are seeing growth,” said Amy Asin, vice-president of Strengthening Congregations, the synagogue advising arm at the Union of Reform Judaism. “We don’t know whether or not it will be long-term. Are they simply taking a year off, or are they not coming back?”
The evidence so far is mainly anecdotal, but rabbis and other Jewish professionals are saying the same thing: Congregants are struggling, so their synagogues are, too.
How the pandemic has scrambled the rabbi hiring process December 29, 2020 4:54 pm Rabbi Adir Yolkut, who is doing a yearlong rabbi-in-residence program at Temple Israel Center in White Plains, N.Y., says it s been hard to assess the intangibles of prospective jobs given the impossibility of in-person visits. (Emil Cohen/Marry Me A Little Photography)
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(JTA) When Andrew Pepperstone drove to Kansas in late July to start his new job as rabbi at the Hebrew Congregation of Wichita, it was the first time he’d ever been to the city.
“My entire search for a new pulpit job was conducted during COVID-19,” he explained, so all his interactions with the Conservative congregation had been virtual.