“Letters for Life” offers practical guidance from the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson
The post Author Researched 20,000 of the Rebbe’s Letters, Here’s What He Learned appeared first on Jewish Journal.
BERKELEY, Calif. (RNS) — Like many fast-growing organizations, Chochmat HaLev tracks new relationships using customer relations management software. Brittany Berman, Chochmat’s “community weaver,” logs newcomers’ interests and schedules digitally generated follow-ups. After meeting someone in person for coffee, Berman connects them to at least one other person at Chochmat.
“If someone meets you and asks you to reflect on your experience, then there’s a chance to make meaning,” said Berman. “And once meaning is made, then there’s more buy-in.”
The process is essential for sustainable growth, said Chochmat’s board president, Estee Solomon Gray, who spent years working in the tech world.
One of the keys to Berman’s work, too, is the small-group meetups she organizes, as well as events such as intergenerational Shabbat dinners. While it has a wide constituency among its tech-world neighbors, with more than a few non-Jewish members, Chochmat HaLev is a Jewish Renewal synagogue.
At a time when loneliness has been described as an epidemic — not least, some say, because of how our tech isolates us — Chochmat HaLev has been using technology’s approach to making connections between people to build community.
“This building is infrastructure,” said Solomon Gray, gesturing around her in the courtyard of Chochmat, a former Baptist church in the tiled-roof Spanish colonial style. “But there’s another whole kind of infrastructure that is the relational infrastructure,” she adds, “which is a fabric, a mesh of relationships in which you are living together, co-creating together.”
Chochmat’s approach has been working, almost tripling its membership to 350 since 2022, many of them younger people with ties to Silicon Valley and to Burning Man. Given that attendance has declined across the broader U.S. religious landscape (though recent data shows that has leveled off) and the trend toward disaffiliation with volunteer groups of all kinds, from religious institutions to Elks and, famously, bowling leagues, Chochmat is an outlier.
Close to sundown on a February Friday, people of all ages crowded the sidewalks in a residential corner of Berkeley for Chochmat HaLev’s Kabbalat Shabbat service, welcoming the Sabbath with songs. Many attendees were wearing some combination of flannels, beanies, yarmulkes, K-95 masks or puffer coats. Packing into the synagogue, for the next two hours they joined in a dance-filled, ecstatic worship service drenched in Jewish mysticism.
Zvika Krieger, the community’s spiritual leader, addressed the roughly 300 people sitting in chairs or standing around the fringes of the room. “Whether you encounter the divine through singing and dancing and prayers, maybe through wisdom text and ethical wisdom, maybe through silence and meditation, or maybe it’s a struggle with this whole idea of God altogether, you are so welcome here at Chochmat HaLev, and you are in good company,” he said.
When the music began, low at first, the energy in the room also built gradually. As melodies from the strings and voices swelled, then accelerated, people leapt from their seats, grabbing each other’s hands and dancing along the perimeter of the sanctuary. Afterward, members gathered in the courtyard for a potluck, or oneg, and lingered late into the evening.
“I never would have imagined that I would want to spend my Friday nights at a Jewish event,” said David Steuer, a 56-year-old raised in a Reform Jewish community in Wisconsin who joined Chochmat in 2022. “It feels miraculous. I really look forward to coming here.”
Krieger, a 41-year-old, queer, sex-positive rabbi with prior experience at Meta, TikTok and the U.S. State Department, is no small part of the success of Chachmat since being hired three years ago. He helped revive the synagogue’s long history of ecstatic dance and introduced the OpenLev program — soulful coworking time throughout the synagogue, free for members, with a suggested donation of $36 for nonmembers. The program intersperses the workday with meditation, yoga and Jewish rituals for things like celebrating milestones or grieving job loss.
He also hired Berman, who facilitated conversation groups on topics such as Israel and Palestine, all as part of nurturing a close-knit spiritual community that’s also deeply embodied.
“We’re in a loneliness epidemic right now,” said Krieger. “People are hungry for connection, and there are also a lot of spiritual seekers who are looking for meaning, looking for purpose, but traditional organized religion has rubbed them the wrong way, or it’s just stodgy or sterile or too conservative for them.”
RELATED: The radical, irreverent and inclusive religion of Burning Man
Rabbi Ron Wolfson, author of “Relational Judaism: Using the Power of Relationships to Transform the Jewish Community,” agreed that people are a more powerful draw than programming or liturgy. “As wonderful as a religious service might be, and I’m sure the worship services at Chochmat are fantastic,” he said, “the bottom line is, people will come for a program or even a worship service, but they’ll stay because of relationships,” he said.
He added that Chochmat’s growth strategies fit a playbook embraced by many successful Jewish communities in the last decade. Indeed, Wolfson pointed out, Chochmat’s small groups and its welcome to the unaffiliated echo the tactics of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church, a multicampus evangelical Christian megachurch in Orange County, south of Los Angeles.
“Rick’s mantra is always, if a new person can feel connected to five to seven other people, quickly, they’ll feel like they belong,” said Wolfson.
At a recent coworking session at the synagogue, a therapist, a professional clown and development director were among the 30 or so adults in attendance. Krieger offered a blessing for overcoming writer’s block, inviting attendees to touch the sanctuary’s ark (where the Torah scrolls are kept), then open its doors as a symbol of opening a portal to creativity, inspiration and “birthing energy.”
“I really like the idea of trying to bring divine into work, and not compartmentalize so much,” said Allyson Greenlon, a newer member who began attending Chochmat after long hiatus from Judaism. “I started a job around the same time I started coming here, and that job’s been exhausting,” she said. “I want to resist my life circling around my job.”
Ben Poretzky, a 32-year-old with a background in the corporate world who began attending in 2022, partnered with Krieger to develop the concept for OpenLev. Poretzky said participants appreciate the “gentle co-regulation” that comes from working alongside others, and the “sacred co-snacking” that occurs via in-depth chats at the snack table.
Several participants have reported finding roommates, work connections or even romantic partners through OpenLev, and the concept has grown so popular that it’s spawned imitators as far away as Brooklyn, New York.
Chochmat’s growth has come amid the flurry of layoffs in the Bay Area, and Krieger noted that former tech sector workers have lost not only jobs, but their sense of belonging. “What might it be like to have a community that is resilient, so that if you either get fired or you leave your job, you don’t lose all your friends? Your workday community can be constant even as your work life changes,” he said.
Krieger said he’s not interested in leading a mega-synagogue. He hopes to cap the Kabbalat Shabbat services at their current size — 300 people feels like the right number to be able to know who you’re praying with, said Krieger — perhaps adding more services. Nor does he want, he says, to be put on a pedestal as a “guru.”
That self-awareness, experts say, could make Chochmat’s acceleration sustainable long-term. “There’s always a masked fragility, even in growing congregations,” said Mark Mulder, director of urban studies at Calvin University and co-author of the book “The Church Must Grow or Perish: Robert H. Schuller and the Business of American Christianity.” “As long as you have money coming in, as long as you have a charismatic person, as long as you have the right constituency in your area, there’s a stability. But if you lose one of those three legs of the stool, even these fast-growing places can collapse quite quickly.”
Longtime members point out, however, that innovation is part of Chochmat’s DNA. Founded in the 1990s by Rabbi Avram Davis and Tikkun magazine co-founder Nan Fink Gefen as a meditation center that trained Jewish spiritual leaders, it fused Eastern spiritual practices with Jewish mysticism and dance. A 2010 Forward article dubbed its prayer services “a Jewish rave.”
“When they started it, it was, ‘How do we take all the best parts of the crazy, ultra-f–ing Orthodox and include it in our Berkley world?” said Shoshana Phoenixx, who has been part of Chochmat since the 1990s. “Let’s smoke a lot of dope and drink a lot of slivovitz and teach meditation.’ So, I got wasted every Shabbat for the first 10 years of Chochmat at the rabbi’s house.”
Its anti-institutional legacy lives on in members who prefer to call it a “spiritual community,” rather than a synagogue, an edge supported by newer, younger members and, they claim, its rabbi.
“Zvika brought in younger people he knew, and the families are back,” said Andrew Utiger, a former Catholic lay pastor who served as Chochmat’s first non-Jewish board member. “It’s always been an amazing community. There’s just been different iterations.”
A 2020 Pew Research Center study that Wolfson cited showed that only 35% of Jewish Americans report living in a household with at least one formal member of a synagogue. While that percentage varies by location, said Wolfson, communities like Chochmat, which center Judaism but welcome members with a range of beliefs, feel approachable to the large percentage of unaffiliated Jews.
That’s especially true in the wake of what many in the Jewish world are calling “the surge,” the anecdotal influx of interest in Jewish religious life since the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The surge has been palpable at Chochmat, where more than 100 new members have joined since the war broke out.
One of those members is Solomon Gray, the board president, who is half-Israeli; in the days after the attacks, she experienced what she described as “smithereens of consciousness.” Long skeptical of synagogue membership, when she walked into Chochmat’s sanctuary doors for the first time in October 2023, she encountered a room full of people who were physically engaged and spiritually present, and her body “went quiet.”
“There is an openness and seriousness of connection and movement and being in this together that I have not seen anywhere before,” she said.
Krieger is careful to note that its community is connected, but not of one mind. Chochmat explicitly welcomes all perspectives on Israel and Palestine, for instance, and Chochmat’s leaders believe that being in community with those you disagree with is a spiritual practice. Krieger delivers short sermons or drashes that feature pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel perspectives, and the congregation formed an eight-week, 10-member dialogue group with opposing views on the crisis.
Krieger has also added a pause during the lively Friday evening services, inviting people to pair up and reflect on that night’s teaching, as well as post-service potlucks, “Ask Me Anything” sessions and talks on topics such as polyamory and psychedelics.
“It’s not about studying texts and religious observance of rituals. It’s about being in relationship with other people as a way of connecting with the divine,” said Krieger. “And deep relationship is not something that just happens on the sidelines; it’s something that you actually have to foster and cultivate as a spiritual practice.”
RELATED: In Chicago, one congregation finds fealty to Israel intolerable
(RNS) — This week’s photo gallery includes Eid al-Fitr, natural disasters in Asia and more.
The post Photos of the Week: Eid al-Fitr, natural disasters appeared first on RNS.
Livia Tossici-Bolt is awaiting a verdict in her case in which she was charged with violating a “buffer zone” that restricts pro-life speech near abortion clinics. / Credit: Photo courtesy of ADF International
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Apr 1, 2025 / 17:56 pm (CNA).
A bureau of the United States Department of State announced it is “monitoring” an arrest of a pro-life advocate in the United Kingdom who was charged with violating a “buffer zone” that restricts pro-life speech near abortion clinics.
In a post on X, the State Department Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor confirmed that Senior Adviser Sam Samson met with Livia Tossici-Bolt, a pro-life advocate charged with breaching a buffer zone by standing near an abortion clinic and holding a sign that read, “Here to talk, if you want.”
The verdict for Tossici-Bolt, who was charged with breaching a public spaces protection order, is expected to be handed down on Friday by District Judge Orla Austin — the same judge who delivered a guilty verdict to pro-life advocate Adam Smith-Connor for silently praying outside an abortion clinic in October 2024.
“We are monitoring her case,” the bureau’s post on X read. “It is important that the U.K. respect and protect freedom of expression.”
The post referenced comments made by U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Munich earlier this year in which he chastised the deterioration of free speech and religious freedom within Europe. Vance specifically criticized the British enforcement of “buffer zone” laws and the conviction of Smith-Connor.
“U.S.-U.K. relations share a mutual respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the post read. “However, as Vice President Vance has said, we are concerned about freedom of expression in the United Kingdom.”
Tossici-Bolt said in a statement that she is “grateful” the State Department is interested in her case, adding that “Great Britain is supposed to be a free country, yet I’ve been dragged through court merely for offering consensual conversation.”
Her statement was sent out by Alliance Defending Freedom International, which is representing her in court.
“Peaceful expression is a fundamental right — no one should be criminalized for harmless offers to converse,” she added. “It is tragic to see that the increase of censorship in this country has made the U.S. feel it has to remind us of our shared values and basic civil liberties.”
Tossici-Bolt expressed gratitude to President Donald Trump’s administration “for prioritizing the preservation and promotion of freedom of expression and for engaging in robust diplomacy to that end.”
“It deeply saddens me that the U.K. is seen as an international embarrassment when it comes to free speech,” she continued. “My case, involving only a mere invitation to speak, is but one example of the extreme and undeniable state of censorship in Great Britain today. It is important that the government actually does respect freedom of expression, as it claims to.”
“Today we run the risk that our organizations, so dependent on the welfare state ... could be easily confused with a very bureaucratic NGO [nongovernmental organization],” said Archbishop Luis Argüello, president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference. / Credit: Spanish Bishops’ Conference
Madrid, Spain, Apr 1, 2025 / 17:24 pm (CNA).
The president of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference (CEE, by its Spanish acronym), Archbishop Luis Argüello, opened the conference’s 127th plenary assembly this week with a deep analysis of Spain’s growing secularization, noting that the time has ended when one could say “I am Catholic because I was born in Spain.”
“The time has passed, settled for centuries, when we said: I’m Catholic because I was born in Spain,” Argüello said, noting that the Church can no longer take for granted that people are converted or initiated in the Catholic faith in today’s society.
During his talk, the archbishop of Valladolid noted the worrying situation that while there are 23,000 baptismal fonts distributed over the country’s 22,921 parishes, many of them “have no water” due to lack of Christian community that can “help the Holy Spirit engender new Christians” and in more populated areas there is “a very weak awareness of the responsibility entailed in having a baptismal font.”
This panorama represents a “large, quantitative and qualitative challenge” that requires discernment, especially considering that in numerous rural parishes it is no longer possible to celebrate the Sunday Eucharist, while in large cities there is a remarkable contrast of schedules and celebrations according to the neighborhoods.
Given the situation, the archbishop of Valladolid added that “it has never been possible to be a Christian alone” and therefore the task of promoting communities “where living the integral formation of the heart” becomes especially important.
In this regard, he emphasized the role of various retreat movements and apostolates such as Emmaus, Ephphatha, Bartimaeus, the Conjugal Love Project, Life in the Spirit, Hakuna, etc. that “make an impact along with the invitation to continue” in the Christian life but that are faced with the difficulty of “transforming an emotional experience into virtue, of finding specific ways to grow that go beyond recreating the the initial impact.”
Regarding the social and charitable work of Catholic organizations, Argüello warned that “today we run the risk that our organizations, so dependent on the welfare state, its rules, and subsidies for the third sector [nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and nonprofits], might offer in a weak way the novelty of Christian love and could be easily confused with a very bureaucratic NGO.”
“The same thing could happen to us in our educational or communications endeavors,” he added.
At the beginning of his address, Argüello offered words of recognition to Archbishop Bernardito Auza, the outgoing nuncio, thanking him for “the work he has done during these five years in Spain,” emphasizing that “many of us here have received, through his mediation, the episcopal commission that the Holy Father has bestowed upon us.”
These words, along with the expression of best wishes in his new role as nuncio to the European Union, drew the only applause during Argüello’s talk.
Auza expressed his gratitude for the farewell remarks and said during his address that he has shared “the joys and sorrows of Spanish society and the Church” and that, over the course of five and a half years, “with the desire to always know and serve you, in the name of the Holy Father, I have strived to do my best wherever I have been called.”
Regarding his time in the various Spanish dioceses, “from Covadonga to Granada,” he emphasized that the brotherhoods and confraternities remind him “how Andalusian the Church in the Philippines is, especially during Holy Week.”
During Monday’s assembly, a group of about 50 people gathered outside CEE headquarters in Madrid, protesting that the conference is collaborating with plans to “resignify” the Valley of the Fallen, a monumental war memorial built as a final resting place for combatants from both sides of the Spanish Civil War.
The memorial was commissioned by Francisco Franco, Spain’s longtime head of state and leader of the winning Nationalist side in the bloody conflict with leftist Republican forces.
The leftist governing coalition in Spain considers the memorial a monument to Franco and his dictatorship.
The controversy over the monument is colored by the fact that Franco supported the Catholic Church, which was caught in the middle and was severely persecuted by elements of the Republican side.
Some of those present outside CEE headquarters carried banners with the slogan “Cobo Judas,” referring to the archbishop of Madrid, Cardinal José Cobo, who is involved in the resignification process.
Near CEE headquarters, a wall was tagged with graffiti with slogans such as “CEE traitors,” “The valley is not to be touched,” “Bishops, you sell Christ for 30 [pieces of silver],” and “Betrayal of the martyrs.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
From United States Members of the Sisters of Charity Federation
As women religious and members of the Sisters of Charity Federation in the United States, we are committed to serving the most vulnerable. United in mission, we embrace our calling to respond to the needs of those living in poverty and on the margins, while also caring for our common home.
We can no longer be silent as we witness abrupt and devastating policy changes that threaten the well-being of our communities, particularly the most vulnerable among us. Our faith, along with the values our country was founded on, calls us to act in solidarity with all people, especially those who suffer injustice, exclusion, and hardship. As members of Congress, you bear the profound responsibility of shaping policies that reflect the moral values of justice, compassion, and respect for human rights and human dignity.
We urge you to recognize your moral authority in making decisions that impact the lives of countless individuals. Your votes and actions matter—they define our nation’s character and determine whether we uphold the principles of decency, fairness, and humanity. Furthermore, we must recognize that we are part of a global community, with shared resources and a deeply interconnected economy. Our nation cannot afford to be isolationist; our policies must reflect our responsibility to engage with and support our shared humanity.
Rooted in the Gospel and the teachings of our Catholic faith, we uphold the inherent dignity of every person, created in the image of God. We call upon you to:
We stand in solidarity with all our sisters and brothers who seek a more just and compassionate world. We implore you to stand with us in advocating for policies that reflect the core values of human rights and human dignity, justice, and peace. Let us move forward together with a commitment to the call to love, to welcome the stranger, and to care for one another.
Sincerely,
Daughters of Charity, Province of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton | Daughters of Charity, Province of St. Louise | Sisters of Charity of New York | Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati Sisters of Charity of Saint Elizabeth | Sisters of Charity of Seton Hill | Sisters of Charity of Our Lady of Mercy | Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth
###
Contact:
James Rowe
Sisters of Charity of New York
6464259107
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RNS or Religion News Foundation.
AGRA, India (RNS) — For 83-year-old Riyaz Ahmed Khan, the ivory-white Taj Mahal is more than a symbol of love. The monument, to him, mirrors his village, Sadhan, located about 25 miles from the monument.
“For generations, Hindus and Muslims have lived together in harmony here,” said Khan, a practicing Muslim and a retired teacher of Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism. “If the Taj is an ode to love, our village has many Taj Mahals in it.”
The 17th-century marble mausoleum on the banks of the River Yamuna in the north Indian city of Agra was built by the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan in loving memory of his wife, Mumtaz Mahal. And in Sadhan, spread over more than 70 acres in plain sight of the Taj Mahal, tolerance of different faiths has endured over centuries. Its 20,000 residents consist of Hindus and Muslims across caste lines, belonging to a farming community that tills lush fields of mustard and wheat.
Historically, residents have shared a belief in a common ancestry that has prevented religious fundamentalism from taking root in the village — even as communal riots have engulfed other parts of India. That rare communal harmony has withstood a rise in polarization across the country that has reached even nearby villages recently.
While Hindus comprise nearly 75% of Sadhan’s population, it’s common to find Muslims with Hindu names in the village, Hindus with Muslim names, mixed-faith families and families that haven’t shunned interfaith unions. That tolerance is nearly unheard of in the country, residents explained.
“People think Taj Mahal is the ultimate symbol of love,” said Kedar Singh, a former wrestler from the village. “But they should see how we’ve made space for love in every form, including our worship practices and interfaith love.”
Singh said the love that has bound the residents together comes from their belief that religious conversions over centuries are a natural phenomenon.
According to oral tradition, large-scale conversions to Islam took place in Sadhan during the reign of Aurangzeb, the last of the great Mughal emperors of India during the 17th century. However, many residents returned to Hinduism in the early 20th century during a pan-India movement to facilitate reconversion of Hindus who embraced other religions.
“Religious conversions and takeover of religious spaces are causing societies to break up everywhere,” said Taj Khan, a Hindu who said he is proud of his Muslim name. “But what people forget in the process is our shared humanity.”
In contrast, the town of Sambhal, 125 miles from Sadhan, has been witnessing regular breakouts of violence between religious communities since a local court ordered a survey of a 500-year-old mosque last November, after claims the mosque was built on the ruins of a Hindu temple allegedly demolished during the Mughal period.
Moreover, Aurangzeb, who residents say initiated religious conversions in Sadhan, has been one of the latest targets of Hindu extremists, who demand that his grave in western India’s Maharashtra state be demolished.
Over the last month particularly, communal tensions and rioting have seized western India, with some extremists arguing Aurangzeb was a religious zealot who discriminated against Hindus and demolished their places of worship.
“It’s so upsetting to see all the polarization in the name of religion,” said Jameel Jadon, Sadhan’s former village leader. “It runs contrary to what our forefathers wanted since religious differences never mattered to them.”
Jadon said that even though a noted industrialist from Mumbai set up a mustard-colored temple with a green spire in the village in the 1920s to attract more people to return to the Hindu fold, it never flared communal tensions. Since the temple’s inauguration, Hindus have gathered in large numbers to offer their prayers there, while Muslims have peacefully made their way to the adjacent mosque to perform namaz. Sometimes, they’ve even prayed together.
And during weddings and festivals, Sadhan residents take part in each other’s religious and cultural ceremonies, read the Quran and Gita in each other’s homes and discuss ways to resolve disputes amicably during village meetings.
“Faith can bind or break people, so we try not to hurt anyone’s sentiments,” said Shahid Pervez, a Muslim lawyer from Sadhan. “Except male circumcision, halal and burial of the dead, most of our practices are indistinguishable from Hindus’.”
Although women have remained largely in the shadows in the village, they’ve also spoken out against communal violence and targeting of mixed-faith families.
“I was enraged by incidents like the Babri mosque demolition, Bombay riots and Muzaffarnagar riots that fanned the flames of vote-bank politics,” said Farzana Khan, a homemaker who’s a supporter of mixed-faith families in her village, referring to violent incidents in the last few decades.
And when communal riots broke out in the neighboring towns of Agra, Fatehpur Sikri and Achhnera in 2017 over alleged slaughtering of a cow and accusations of a plot to incite Hindu-Muslim riots, Sadhan remained calm.
“We told people that brotherhood matters much more than narrow identity politics,” said Shishya Pal Singh, a Hindu by faith whose family includes several members who follow Islam. “We tied sacred threads at the Fatehpur Sikri monument and led peace marches in the village to remind people of our history.”
Some residents say local leaders in recent years have tried to create communal frenzies or spearhead Hindu conversion campaigns, promising economic gains to attract people to the divisive movements. Harish Rajput, an 18-year-old law student living in the village, said the conversion campaigns in the last decade or so have been geared primarily toward dividing communities and triggering violence. But as a result, Rajput said, some of Sadhan’s youth are becoming more militant.
“Religious nationalists backed by right-wing organizations want to widen their support bases in our villages,” Rajput said. “Some of our young are attaching themselves to them and becoming more conscious of their religious identity.”
This year on Holi — the Hindu festival of colors — some residents said police personnel were stationed in the village to give the “perception” that there could be breakouts of intercommunal violence threatening peace and harmony.
“This is what we need to prevent,” said Ganesh, a 53-year-old Hindu priest who turned his modest ashram into a “space of fluidity between Islam and Hinduism,” where both a Muslim saint and the Hindu goddess Kali are worshipped. Ganesh does not use a caste-based surname.
Ganesh has been undertaking pilgrimages on foot to spread communal harmony in the village by reminding people of India’s pluralistic traditions. Under his care, Muslims recite Vedic mantras while Hindus recite verses from the Quran, he said.
“We need to preserve our age-old love,” Khan said. “Like how the Taj Mahal has seen love and hate over centuries, we will continue on the path of nonviolence and inclusion.”