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On February 16, Westchester Day School announced that Rabbi Dani Rockoff will be the new head of school, beginning July 2022. In a letter to the community, WDS stated, “This decision received unanimous support of the Head-of-School Search Committee, the professional leadership, the Board of Trustees and our esteemed local Rabbinical leaders.” Rabbi Rockoff currently serves as K-12 Judaic studies principal and school rabbi of the Denver Academy of Torah. “When I heard about the WDS opportunity, I was very excited,” he said. “My whole career has been devoted to Jewish communal work wit...

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 sayi...

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) Advertisement (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 f...

The TikTok video of Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld receiving a shot of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine isn’t racking up Cardi B numbers, but it has reached an impressive 400,000 views. “I saw an advertisement that they were looking for people for their clinical trial,” Rabbi Herzfeld, 46, said. “I am not a doctor or a nurse, but I wanted to see what I could do to make a difference. So I volunteered” Herzfeld, spiritual leader of Ohev Sholom in Washington, D.C., also posted videos and images of his vaccinations across social media, just in case anyone missed the point — get vaccinated.