AARC Members Plan for a Robust Winter of Programming

What a blessing it is to belong to a community whose members take ownership of the collective and are truly accountable to one another. On November 15, almost every AARC household gathered for our Annual Membership Meeting, this year on Zoom, in order to honor the multitudes of volunteers over the last year and make plans for the year to come. The meeting format serves as evidence that AARC members are the rubber that meets the road when it comes to working together to build up this community. It took nearly the first half of the meeting to simply thank everyone who had made contributions to the congregation in the last year! In the second half, members split into groups to brainstorm ways to make our programming during this winter even better.

Several programming ideas came up more than once. These are summarized below, each accompanied by a sign-up genius so that members can continue to organize to implement their ideas. If you have another idea that you would like to add to this list, please email Gillian or comment below.

• Provide more congregation-hosted gatherings for members to celebrate Jewish holidays and provide opportunities for Jewish learning. Rabbi Ora and staff are working on upcoming Jewish educational programs, but members are needed to help host social and/or holiday gatherings. In that vein, we encourage a different household to host each night of Hanukkah this year. The format is very flexible: you can simply light candles and share a story, or you could host a game night, a discussion group, an art activity … the only limit is your imagination! Sign up here to host a night of Hanukkah. We will create a Zoom link for you on our congregation Zoom account at your requested time.

• Establish additional community gatherings that accommodate different schedules. Many of us have been participating in weekly Mishpocha groups, where members come together to share their lives and provide meaningful community connection during this time of isolation. One suggestion was to form a new Mishpocha group that meets later in the evening to accommodate parent schedules. If you would like to sign up for this group, please sign up here. If you would like to suggest a different time for a Mishpocha group, please email us and we will add another sign-up genius.

• Put together an AARC Social Justice Working Group. This group would be self-directed initially in deciding how to pursue social justice work on behalf of our congregation. If you would like to participate in this Social Justice Working Group, please sign up here

• Open up an Israel/Palestine discussion and/or working group. This may or may not include the formation of a Beit Din (court of ethics) for the Ann Arbor area. Some members suggested we must work harder to engage with the political issues happening in the Middle East. If you would like to be a part of this Israel/Palestine Working Group, please sign up here.

• Create an AARC Mutual Aid Working group. This group would pair up members who could exchange services. For example, a therapist might be willing to exchange therapy sessions for having their driveway shoveled. Erica Ackerman volunteered to set up an online forum for members to list their needs and match them up. Sign up here if you would like to be a part of organizing the Mutual Aid Working Group.

• Increase diverse forms of social contact. As Rabbi Ora and staff will be focusing on religious events and education, it would be helpful if we could form a committee to plan and implement some social events for everyone. Some ideas thrown out during the meeting were game nights, sing-alongs, socially distanced hikes, and meditation classes. If you would like to help facilitate AARC Social Hour, please sign up here for the Social Hour Planning Group.

Thank you to everyone for generating enough ideas to keep us busy for months to come! The comments will be open on this blog. If you would like to add another idea, please do so below or email Gillian!