Adolescence

Bella Bogart

Bogart is a rabbinical student in the ALEPH smikha program. This Guide was done as a project for the class on EcoJudaism taught by Rabbi Arthur Waskow in 2009.

Resources, Suggestions and other Tidbits
for Creating an Environmentally Conscious Simcha

Entrances to Holiness are everywhere
The possibility of ascent is all the time
Even at unlikely times through unlikely places
There is no place on Earth without the Presence

Mazal Tov, Family!   Read more »

By Heather Borshof, Emma Gottlieb & Ariana Silverman
[The authors are rabbinical students at Hebrew Union College in New York This project was part of the course on Eco-Judaism taught by
Rabbi Arthur Waskow in 2008.]

Description Of Overall Cirriculum

This is a Confirmation/Shavuot curriculum consisting of five parts:
1) A text study on the Book of Ruth (see Appendix A)
2) Planning a dish to prepare for Erev Shavuot following Confirmation/Shavuot services
3) A site visit to trace one ingredient of that dish to its source (See Appendix B)   Read more »

By Rabbi Arthur Waskow *

So another physician has been murdered for making it possible for pregnant women to actually use their constitutional right and their moral responsibility to choose whether to give birth or abort the fetus.   Read more »

ELIJAH’S COVENANT:
BETWEEN THE GENERATIONS
AT BAR/BAT MITZVAH/ CONFIRMATION TIME

[This practice was developed by the “Green Menorah” project of The Shalom Center.)

Immediately after the completion of the Bat/Bar Mitzvah aliyah and the return of the new bat/bar mitzvah to her/his seat in the congregation, the rabbi, chazan, or other congregational leader asks everyone under 13 to walk up to the front of the congregation and to turn and face those who are 13 or older.   Read more »

Rabbi Arthur Waskow, 4/14/2004

On the Shabbat immediately before Passover, we traditionally read the last passage of the last of the Prophets, Malachi, that ends:

"Before the coming of the great and awesome day of YHWH [Yahh, the Breathing Spirit o   Read more »

Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Bar/Bat Mitzvah: Teenagers, Synagogues and Sex

The Talmud defines the real moment of (male) adulthood as the appearance of two pubic hairs, and then says since we don't like to check individually, we name 13 years plus one day as the time.
But this earthy origin of bar/bat mitzvah is forgotten today -- perhaps I should say "repressed." I think it would be a mistake to igmore this powerful time of bodily change, and a mistake to leave it repressed.    Read more »