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by Soozi Waxman This week’s Torah portion is B’shalach from Exodus 13:17-17:18. It begins with Pharaoh letting the Israelites go, then Moses leading them the long way instead of through the land of the Philistines, Pharaoh changing his mind and going after the Israelites, the Sea of Reeds parting and the Israelites crossing on dry land, Miriam with her timbriel singing with the women, and so many more!

Thousands of women and men have been celebrating the 100th birthday of Women of Reform Judaism throughout 2013. The year ended with a phenomenal tribute to WRJ in San Diego on Saturday night when WRJ Assembly delegates joined with URJ biennial delegates to thank WRJ for its 100 years of support for Reform Judaism as well as its commitment to social justice and advocacy worldwide.

by Robin Sobol No matter how bad things appear to be, somehow they will get better. This week’s Torah portion concludes the story of the Ten Plagues by teaching us about locusts, darkness, and the slaying of the first-born. In the previous week’s parashah, Pharaoh reacted to the first five plagues or signs from God by “stiffening his heart.”  After the fifth sign, God began to harden Pharaoh’s heart. In this parashah, the East wind ushered in a swarm of locusts; darkness came to Egypt, but the Israelites enjoyed light; and all the male first-borns were slayed. Finally, Pharaoh faced a difficult choice and let the Israelites go rather than continuing to sacrifice his people.

By Blair Marks In early 1992 I wandered into the sanctuary of Charleston, South Carolina’s historic Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim one Shabbat evening – not out of any urgent spiritual need but rather because I had relocated there, did not know a single person in the city, and needed to “get a life.” I had not previously been active in a congregation, but assumed that I would meet some people, hopefully leading to a friend or two. But what happened that evening was beyond my imagination. The KKBE Sisterhood was hosting the spring interim meeting of District 13 of the National Federation of Temple Sisterhoods (NFTS). Women from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere in South Carolina had converged on Charleston for the weekend. Among them was Susan Coleman Bass, with whom I had been confirmed and had graduated from high school, and whom I had not seen in several years. In those pre-Outlook, pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter days we had simply lost touch, but when she spotted me at the Oneg Shabbat she promptly introduced me to the women of KKBE’s sisterhood…and my life changed in an instant.

by Ellen Petracco This translation was taken from the JPS Tanakh ² God spoke to Moses and said to him, "I am the Lord. ³ I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make Myself known to them by My name YHVH. ⁴ I also established My covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. ⁵ I have now heard the moaning of the Israelites because the Egyptians are holding them in bondage, and I have remembered My covenant. ⁶ Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the Lord. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. ⁷ And I will take you to be My people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I, the Lord, am your God who freed you from the labors of the Egyptians. ⁸ I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you for a possession, I the Lord." ⁹ But when Moses told this to the Israelites, they would not listen to Moses, their spirits crushed by cruel bondage. Just as Mosses is entering a new relationship with God, Women of Reform Judaism is entering into a new century of our organization. All year WRJ has been celebrating our Centennial with our sisterhoods. Our women have been very creative in the different ways that were celebrated.

"When a person refrains from speech, the ideas die, the soul stops, and the senses deteriorate" - Moses ibn Ezra (Shirat Yisrael 12c).

 Freedom of thought is an essential human right. It is at the foundation not only of our Jewish tradition, but also our North American societies and international community. It is not a far extrapolation to connect freedom of thought to academic boycott. Why do I make that connection? Because academia and the intellectual world ought to be a sacred place where ideas are shared and lifted above political conflict. It is surely within the rights of individual professors to share their opinions of their government or that of another nation. But, for one of the largest associations of professors in the United States to indiscriminately boycott Israeli professors and intellectual institutions is a gross misunderstanding of the role of academia. Perhaps the members of the American Studies Association do not realize that they are limiting their own freedom of thought and that of their Israeli colleagues by undertaking this boycott.

By Anna Kislanski (Kehillat Hashachar, Even Yehuda) Over the years WRJ has supported the growth of our Israel movement in many ways, including funding for the World Education Center in Jerusalem, Kibbutz Lotan, and the Israel Religious Action Center. Through the YES Fund, WRJ makes annual grants to the Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ), which in recent years has supported the development and expansion of its inspirational and groundbreaking Mother-Daughter Bat Mitzvah program. The message below highlights why this project is such an important and meaningful contribution to progressive Judaism in Israel. How can one summarize an entire year of maturation, excitement, questions, mother-daughter relations and Jewish identity into one page of a blog, in order to describe what my own daughter, Mika, and I have been through together? Almost half a year since our bat mitzvah, I sit on the couch at home and skim the pictures, greetings and sermons from the class parties, mother-daughter group sessions we joined, and the graduation of the group. I ask myself – were these same events as significant or as powerful for my daughter as they were for me?

by Andrea T. Cannon Parashat Sh’mot – otherwise known as the Book of Exodus – opens by introducing the story of the people of Israel as a nation. A new Pharaoh has come to power. He has forgotten Joseph’s role in saving Egypt and decides to enslave the Israelites as he is concerned that they have multiplied in size and will take control of Egypt.

By Jennifer Schneider By underage I mean under 40. And yet, a lovely group of women was willing to trust the kid in their midst to lead them for a few years. It was a wonderful experience, but the lack of others my age around me was a serious concern to our local Sisterhoods and WRJ. I joined Sisterhood because my mother did Sisterhood. I arranged Oneg trays, compiled mailings on our kitchen table, complained about always being the first family to arrive and the last to leave. Half of my childhood was spent at the synagogue; it never occurred to me that this was not typical. I knew that this is what women did; you joined with other women to support and strengthen your congregation and to support and strengthen each other.