You’re Covered: God’s Presence is Closer Than You Think

By Allison Josephs With four kids, ages seven and under, my husband and I have been exhausted for basically seven years straight. We’ve found that the best way to manage our sleep deprivation is by taking shifts and fortunately, the division of labor comes naturally in our house. When darkness falls on nights that he [...]

Life In The Fast Lane

In a blur of colors and a roar of engines, the Formula Ford race cars sped around the race track at the Riverside International Raceway in California. Hitting 125 miles an hour, George Gottlieb* pulled his car away from the pack. Lap after lap, the other cars tried to keep up with him but to [...]

What Should Baalei Teshuvah Do To Increase Their Chances of Acceptance?

Acceptance and Rejection are big concerns of Baalei Teshuva. What should Baalei Teshuvah do to increase their chances of acceptance? What should Baalei Teshuvah avoid doing to minimize the chances of rejection? Is it even possible for Baalei Teshuvah to increase their chances of acceptance? Submitted by Derech Emet http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DerechEmet/

BT Martyrdom: There’s Really A Name For It!

My personal life calendar operates around the great upheaval through my discovery of Yiddishkeit. If that is “year 1”, then 10BC (Before Change) was my Bar Mitzvah, and 5AD (After Discovery) was when I got married. This being the case, there were other notable events which had far reaching consequences as well. And, like they [...]

Lincoln and the Jews

From Abraham Lincoln and the Jews: Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, whose 200th birthday we are observing, was a protector and friend for the Jews “In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity.” At the outset of the Civil War the Jewish Community faced official discrimination as [...]

Have You Dealt With Relatives Trying to Make Your Kids Less Observant?

A recent article in the new Torah oriented magazine, Ami had an article about a BT family, where the children we’re drawn off-the-derech by the wife’s parents. Have you ever heard of similar situations? Have you ever heard of or dealt with parents who try to influence their grandchildren to be less observant? How would/did [...]

Three on Kiruv and Ba’alei Teshuva

By Jonathan Rosenblum This year’s Association of Jewish Outreach Programs (AJOP) convention included a broader than usual spectrum of kiruv workers across the Orthodox spectrum. For instance, Hart Levine, a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, described in one session a project he initiated while an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania of Orthodox [...]

The Challenge of Learning Time Allocation

By Ilene Rosenblum Compared with 2009, in 2010 I was a total Torah study slacker. On the one hand, I know that I need to, well, cut myself slack. I’m a working woman, and a kallah at that! It would seem though, that now, more than ever, would I need some structure and guidance that [...]

Beyond BT Oneg in Kew Gardens Hills – February 11th

Our next meet up event is scheduled to take place Friday February 11th from 8:30pm to 11:30pm in Kew Gardens Hills at 141-43 72nd Crescent. There will plenty of food, friends, L’Chaims and short divrei Torah. It will be a great time and if you’re in Kew Gardens Hills, please stop by.

Teleconference: Thurs. Feb. 10th – Safe and Secure; Keeping Your Children Protected from Pedophiles

Join Rabbi Yakov Horowitz and Rabbi Avraham Mifsud for a 30 minute live telephone parenting conference call entitled: Safe and Secure: Keeping Your Children Protected From Pedophiles In this call, you will learn practical and age appropriate ways to teach your children about safety and personal space. Helping your children understand appropriate personal boundaries is [...]

Creating a Consciousness of Connection

One of the problems we face is a lack of support and connection. There are many different needs: jobs, housing, spouses, advice, friendship and in our increasingly busy world there seems to be a shortage of people to turn to. A first step is to try to create a consciousness of connection and caring. We’re [...]

Facebook, Transparency and the Next World

Like everybody and his old chum from 10th grade biology, I’m on Facebook. Thanks to Facebook, reconnecting with people from the past has never been easier. Type in the name of someone you knew at any phase of your life – elementary school, summer camp, your first job out of college – and quite likely, [...]

Ten Topics for the Beyond BT Oneg Meet Up

As you know we’re planning a Beyond BT Meet Up on Friday February 11th from 8:30pm to 11:30pm in Kew Gardens Hills at 141-43 72nd Crescent. There will plenty of food, friends, L’Chaims and short divrei Torah. It’s open to BTs, children of BTs and friends of BTs, and people who want to be friends [...]

What Can We Learn from the Sephardim Regarding BT Acceptance?

David Landau, year 1993, in his Piety and Power in Chapter 28, page 247: Since the Sephardic society is less rigidly categorized in its observance than Askenazic, the teshuvah phenomenon triggers far less social and familial tension. Most Sephardic families are traditional to some degree, and so Chazara BiTeshuvah does not entail quite so sharp [...]

Popular Posts

• Financial Realities in the Frum World
• Looking at Intermarriage
• How Can We Avoid Alienating our Families and Breaching Our Values?
• Healing the Rift within Orthodoxy
• Using the G-word in Reference to Non-Jews
• A Case for Modern Orthodox Kiruv
• UnInspired
• Are BTs Treated as Second Class Citizens?