Upstart Bayarea Blog http://www.upstartbayarea.org Sat, 04 Sep 2010 11:32:16 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://www.upstartbayarea.org/images/M_images/joomla_rss.png http://www.upstartbayarea.org Upstart Bayarea Blog http://www.upstartbayarea.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=111&Itemid=58 One Step Closer to Innovation Two Day Retreat for Jewish Community Professionals, October 24-25, 2010 Join UpStart and your Bay Area Jewish Professional Colleagues for a two day retreat of reflection, Jewish learning, and innovation practice. Engage in substantive and meaningful Jewish learning with the remarkable Rabbi Benay Lappe* Acquire knowledge and skills needed to imagine and implement innovations needed to meet your constituents’ needs Get the inside track on the Jewish innovation field from the UpStart, team, Jumpstart colleague, J. Shawn Landres and a panel of UpStarters Create a Mini-Innovation Lab: share program ideas and directions for the coming year and get collegial feedback in a safe, supportive environment Register Now! Click here. (http://innovationretreat.eventbrite.com/) Questions? Contact: Wendy Kenin (mailto:wendy@upstartbayarea.org), Community Engagement Specialist at 415.536.5918 x301. *Featured at Limmud Chicago 2010, Rabbi Benay Lappe is Professor of Talmud at the Hebrew Seminary of the Deaf in Skokie. Ordained by JTS, she is an award-winning educator known for her unique approach to teaching Talmud, and has served on the Talmud faculties at RRC in Philadelphia, AJU in L.A., and GTU in Berkeley. She is an Associate at CLAL, and Rosh Yeshiva at SVARA, a traditionally radical queer yeshiva in Chicago Wed, 01 Sep 2010 11:29:49 +0100 http://www.upstartbayarea.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=82&Itemid=59 “Knock knock!” “Who’s there?” “Interrupting cow.” “Interrupting Cow who…” “MOO!” I always get a kick out of that one. My sister’s preferred variation is “interrupting starfish,” which ends with an open palm smooshed into one’s face. In his June 29th post “Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow: Key Questions on Jewish Innovation, Interruption, and Sustainability,” Seth Cohen raises the question: “how do we ensure that…Jewish innovation isn’t interrupted?” But I wonder - what founder of an innovative nonprofit hasn’t looked up from her desk and been stopped in her tracks by an interruption, hand smooshed into face and all? Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:30:19 +0100 http://www.upstartbayarea.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=81&Itemid=59 Embedded deep within the Jewish tradition are the earth-based practices and values of our ancestors. So to celebrate Shavuot camping at the sacred Mount Tamalpais in Marin County seemed only natural. Seventy-five people from around the Bay Area gathered for an all-night, Tikkun Leil gathering of learning, song, movement and ritual amongst the redwoods. We began with a dinner of homemade soup made from seasonal, organic, and local veggies and the traditional dairy kugels of the holiday, rolled into evening services at sunset and then began a series of offerings from our community. Candlelit study sessions around long picnic tables with Rabbis Sydney Mintz, Daniel Lev, and other local teachers harkened back to days of old when students and rebbes studied and debated by candle light ‘til dawn. In addition to the more traditional text study and storytelling, we sang and danced in the woods, learned frame drumming around a fire, went on silent meditation walks in the dark and practiced pre-dawn yoga. We came together at midnight for a ritual telling of the story of Moses at Mt. Sinai, Hebrew chanting, and a guided visualization of our own metaphoric journeys of revelation. For those who stayed up for sunrise (or awoke for it), we made our morning prayers at dawn in view of the mountaintop, in a trance induced by prayer, love, and lack of sleep. A communal bikkurim (first fruits) breakfast and closing circle ended our time on the mountain together. It was a time of deep personal reflection and revelation, connection with the Earth and Spirit, and simply a time to celebrate Judaism in a beautiful place amongst loving community. Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:39:21 +0100 http://www.upstartbayarea.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=59 In a recent blog post (http://www.cambridge-leadership.com/index.php/publications/blog/will_you_reset_or_hunker_down/), Marty Linsky, a leadership expert at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, asked, “Will you reset or hunker down?” Will we will treat today’s economic crisis as a “one-time thing,” and wait for it to blow over, or as a manifestation of a larger pattern, that should encourage us to re-think the way in which we interact and function? In the months since his first musings, he has applied the “reset” metaphor to partisan politics, culture, and the nonprofit sector. Sun, 17 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100 http://www.upstartbayarea.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=80&Itemid=59 Tonight, Jews across the world will pull an all-nighter (http://www.myjewishlearning.com/holidays/Jewish_Holidays/Shavuot/In_the_Community/Nighttime_Learning.shtml). Some will sit in synagogue all night long; others will “shul-crawl (http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/38128/dvar-trek-night-of-torah-study-goes-mobile-in-s.f/),” going from one synagogue to another; others will sit in their homes, nibbling on cheese-cake and trying not to fall asleep on their couches; others will camp out on Mt. Tamalpais (http://sites.google.com/site/shavuotonthemountain09/), re-living the ancient Israelites’ experience of receiving the Torah; while others still are undecided (http://estherkustanowitz.typepad.com/myurbankvetch2005/2008/06/sharing-notes-t.html) about how and where – but are excited to greet the dawn. Tue, 26 May 2009 23:00:00 +0100