Perhaps the congregation’s Website says it best: "Temple Emanuel of North Jersey On The Move…"

The Conservative congregation expects to move to a permanent facility in Franklin Lakes by summer, following about a dozen years of nomadic existence between its original home on 33rd Street and Broadway in Paterson and temporary quarters in Oakland, as it sought to establish roots in northwest Bergen County.

Citing the escalating cost of construction, Temple Emanuel leaders recently abandoned plans for a new building on a 15-acre plot in Franklin Lakes the congregation bought for about $1 million, opting instead to enter into contract to buy the Union Reform Church on High Mountain Road there, said Seth Lipschitz, board president. The deal has been financed through a combination of donations, pledges, and proceeds from the $2.25 million sale in February of the historic art deco Paterson building. The property was sold to a developer who plans to convert the space to medical offices. Services were last held in Paterson about a year ago, said Lipschitz.

When you buy food certified as kosher, how do you know that the manufacturer offers its workers a fair wage and benefits package; provides safe working conditions; doesn’t pollute the environment; engages in honest business practices; and, in the case of meat, treats the animals humanely before and during the slaughtering process?

And should you care?

I tell Jews, ‘Buy two copies of the book: one for themselves and one for their Christian neighbors,’" said Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn about his newly released "The Jewish Connection to Israel, the Promised Land: A Brief Introduction for Christians" (Jewish Lights Publishing, Woodstock, Vermont, 2008).

Simultaneously dedicated "to the millions of Jews throughout the millennia who dreamed of Zion but were never privileged to live there," and "to Christians everywhere who understand the meaning of the Holy Land to the Covenant of Abraham," this slim volume takes readers on the journey that began with the biblical birth of the Jewish people around 1,700 BCE and concludes with Israel’s contemporary existential struggle and the Jewish people’s ongoing need to defend her.

Without the vocal and visible presence of American Jewry mobilized behind it, our country’s historic support of the Jewish state could be in jeopardy, Dr. Arnold M. Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, told The Jewish Standard in a recent telephone interview.

Eisen fears that "if we don’t do something right now to strengthen the North American Jewish connection to Israel, in a few years, we will have a problem with American government support for Israel."

Hence, said Eisen, who will be the guest scholar at the Jan. 20 opening symposium of the Jewish Learning Project at the Bergen County YJCC in Washington Township, strengthening that relationship "is most urgent item on the Jewish communal agenda."

Rabbi Shmuel Goldin is accustomed to dueling perspectives, a result of a family history emblematic of the Jewish immigrant experience in the early 20th century.

In the dedication that opens his new book, "Unlocking the Torah Text: An In-Depth Journey into the Weekly Parsha," Goldin credits the influences of his paternal and maternal grandfathers, both towering Judaic scholars in their day, but with divergent world views that Goldin said melded his own into a blend of tradition and modernity. "They didn’t see eye to eye," he observed, adding, "I like to think my gestalt is somewhere between the two."

To be an observant Jew, do you have to believe the moon can talk?

This question, posed one day by Rabbi Shmuel Goldin, left a roomful of rabbinical students at Yeshiva University scratching their heads.

But, rather than giving them an answer, Goldin used the question to examine the difference in Torah study between midrash, considered an accepted interpretation of a text, and pshat, or what is understood to be its plain meaning.

As commutes go, his daily trip to and from his home in Bergenfield to his job in Fairfield, Conn. isn’t too bad, said Rabbi Dr. Eugene Korn, the new executive director of the Center for Christian-Jewish Understanding at Sacred Heart University.

As Abigail, Steven, and Elana Leichman of Teaneck prepare to fly to Israel on Monday, they will be joined there by a number of others from this area — singles, couples, and families — moving this summer or in the upcoming months.

The local olim include 40 singles and 38 families; 85 percent identify as Orthodox and 15 percent say they are Conservative, Reform, or otherwise religiously affiliated, said Dena Wimpfheimer, a spokesperson for Nefesh b’Nefesh, which facilitates aliyah. Their average age is 34, she added, primarily members of young families. They also represent a range of professional experience: physical therapy; real estate; teaching; database and network administration; law; sales; finance/banking; psychology; accounting; and marketing.

In the beginning, there was a survey.

If prayerbooks can be said to be mirrors of the communities that give rise to them, then it is fair to say that Mishkan T’filah, the Reform movement’s new siddur, due to hit the pews this fall, is a reflection of 21st-century Reform thought and sensibility. Which is no surprise, given that its publication is the culmination of a decades-long quasi-democratic process. Multiple voices — men and women, traditional and contemporary thinkers, rabbis and cantors, and laity — had input, said Rabbi Elyse Frishman, spiritual leader of Barnert Temple in Franklin Lakes and the editor of Mishkan T’filah.