The HaNefesh Blog
HaNefesh – 7 Elul 5780
HaNefesh: Breathing New Life into the High Holy Days Enjoy this inspirational video featuring Jewish thought leader Naomi Ackerman. Naomi Ackerman, the founder and executive director of The Advot Project is an experienced actress, consultant, and...
August 13, 2020 | 23 Av 5780
High Holy Days 2020/5781 are going to be like nothing we have ever experienced. We are going to be “virtual” and with our new community, HaNefesh. These High Holy Days, we each bring our heart and soul forward to create our new year. We are blending together...
HaNefesh Issue #8 (It’s our Brit Milah Issue)
This is our 8th issue of the HaNefesh and Jew By You Newsletters. It’s awesome to see how far we’ve come in the past two months. We have celebrated Shabbat, enjoyed Torah study, and sang out during Havdalah. We have mourned with the Fidel family and wish Mazal Tov to...
Do Not Separate Yourself from Your Community
In Pirkei Avot, Hillel teaches us, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” Yet here we are in the middle of a pandemic where we are being told to separate ourselves. How do we separate ourselves without really separating ourselves? How do we...
Have a Community? Good to Have a Brit!
A group of people with shared values and vision come together to create a community. This is HaNefesh. We are a group of people with the shared values of creating an open and safe Jewish community where all can come, explore and express their Judaism without fear of...
Lettuce Know
July 9, 2020 | 17 Tamuz 5780know.... I had a great conversation this week about how to be a part of HaNefesh community. (quick grammar note: Ha=The, Nefesh=Soul. If I say, THE HaNefesh Community, I am saying, the THE soul community and that just sounds odd to my...
Yes, AND…
Yes, AND… We’ve talked about how you can support HaNefesh financially, now let’s talk about how you and HaNefesh can work together to build our Jewish community. I’ve been asked if we are going to have different committees and opportunities for HaNefesh. My answer has...
Come Be A Disrupter with HaNefesh
Come Be A Disrupter With HaNefesh! Amy Asin taught us at the URJ Biennial in December that if we only seek to improve or transform what synagogues do, then they will not exist. If we want Judaism to exist tomorrow, we have to disrupt the system as we know it....