We all do some Kiruv, this group blog is to make it easier, knowing that others are working on the same goal, sharing strategies, successes, stories etc. This blog is patterned after a women's blog in greater New York City.
Please, sign up only IF YOU WANT to be a part of it, not if you feel it is an obligation.
I'm going to explain what it is I would like to happen, but please feel free to add, subtract or change anything, anytime to suit us all better. Basically, we are a great group of Jewish men, with energy and potential to spread Yiddishkeit to people we know or are getting to know. This little email thingy is for us more than anyone else. It can be our little support group for each other to share ideas, stories, questions...
Ideally everyone should be reaching out to at least one person per week and sharing their experience(s) with the rest of us. Once a week may be hard, so as soon as I know who will be joining this group I will make a list and everyone will share once in a few weeks or whenever they can.
Seriously it can be fun.. I have ideas and I know you probably have better ideas. Together we can make a difference. I will send around a reminder email in a week or so to follow up. Please share your thoughts and comments.
Best,
JS
4 comments:
Great idea, JS, whoever you are! You may consider adding links with good kiruv tools, like LAAish.Com ; Aish.com ; etc.
Well, I guess someone has to start - so here we go.
I was on the way back to NY from LA last week and I sat down next to a guy and I started making some small talk with him about how nice it was to have an extra seat between us so that we had more room. I asked him what he does - he happens to be a movie producer and produced a movie that I have shown tons of times at a camp I ran in NY. We hit it off and spoke for almost 2 hours on the flight to NY.
As it turns out, he is Jewish and lives in Brooklyn but in a part that is not religious at all. He had a Bar Mitzvah and went to Hebrew school. He does not have any strong opinions about religion in any direction.
He actually told me that he is exploring religion again at this stage of his life.
At the end of the flight we exchanged emails and since then we have set up to get together for coffee soon and talk more.
Looking forward to hearing all of your stories!
dm
I am still learning how to manage this blog. I will try to fix things so that we can each start an original post rather than only comment of the first post.
My Kiruv moment for the week was with a patient who didn't seem Jewish, but a nice fellow about 50 and somehow his cultural Judiasm came up (the kippa helps). We talked about the opposite of pain is no pain etc. The main point is that he has been thinking about going on JDate for months and I got him to promise to at least look at the site today and hopefully sign up.
Good luck to you both. Sounds like you both know what to do. Kiruv is really just about followup; Building the relationship. Shattering misconceptions is a biggie also. I think that this blog more then anything is good... (for me anyways) less for getting advise on kiruv... but more for motivating and inspiring each other to do more for Klal Israel.
Torah speaks for itself. We just need to be good role models. Its that simple.
I actually have one question for you all. Im curious about your thoughts. Over the years, the term "Orthodox" has been given a bad rap. Be it from the media, or be it from conservative and reform Jewry who made negative remarks really more out of ignorance. Sometimes I wonder when meeting non-observant Jews is it best to describe myself as Orthodox. My question is, do you think its better to refer to the term "Torah Observant" or "Torah Judaism" instead of using the word Orthodox? Just curious what you think.
Shavua Tov,
Gideon
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