Ira youdovin biography

Rabbi Ira Youdovin: Welcome to the Jewish New Normal

Early in the current era of lock-downs, my friend and colleague Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin suggested that American Judaism was having a Yavneh moment.

Yavneh, a small town not far from what is now Tel Aviv, was where the rabbis gathered in the late first century C.E after the Romans destroyed the Temple and expelled them from Jerusalem. Their immediate challenge was defining a format for Jewish worship now that temple sacrifice was no longer possible, which created a crisis that threatened to destroy the Jewish community.

Ira youdovin biography

In their new Jewish expression, prayer, study and doing good deeds superseded slaughtering animals; and synagogues replaced the Jerusalem temple. Their vision re-shaped Judaism into a form that has endured for more than two millennia.

Rabbi Salkin’s point is that we’re undergoing a similar process today.

Attendance at his synagogue’s on-line Shabbat services and, especially, its adult education classes was skyrocke