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RSVP to “Lesson of the Homeland” and the Stories We Tell: A Conversation with Anat Zeltser

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Anat Zeltser is the Ken Burns of Israel. Over the past 25 years, she has made deeply researched and thought- provoking films about Israel’s  identity,  history, culture and politics. 

On Sunday, April 26, the AARC and wider Jewish community will have the opportunity for a conversation with her about her work. Gilad Halpern, a journalist and media historian will lead a conversation with Anat, and there will be time for questions from the audience. 

Both Anat and Gilad have been Fellows at the University of Michigan’s Frankel Center this year and will soon be leaving town. This event is a rare opportunity to meet and learn from “the best documentary creator in Israel,” (according to one of her reviews); another Israeli critic describes her work as  “mesmerizing, informative, and profound.” 

We ask that participants come having watched the first part of her series “Lesson of the Homeland.” A link is here. It’s about 30 minutes and has subtitles.

Please RSVP below for the conversation.

Event Address: Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, 2935 Birch Hollow Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48103.

Time: 12:00 – 2:00 pm, bagels, fruit and coffee/tea available.

Gilad Halpern, Moderator
Anat Zeltser, Documentarian

Reimagining Torah Study: Moving from Zoom to In Person by Rabbi Gabrielle Pescador

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2nd Saturday April 11th, after services, 12:00-1:00 pm, JCC and on Zoom. With bagels and coffee!!

For the past couple of years, we’ve held a monthly “pop-in” Torah study session on Zoom.  The intention was simple: to create an accessible space for Jewish learning, reflection, and conversation.

Although participation has been modest, we are hearing from individual members and from our Annual Members Meeting about a strong desire for deeper intellectual engagement and for a place to wrestle with big questions: textual, spiritual, philosophical, moral and ethical. 

Perhaps the issue is simply one of timing – 3rd Wednesday evenings at 7 pm may not be ideal or convenient.  Or perhaps people are longing to gather in person rather than on Zoom. 

So, we are pleased to announce that, beginning in April, we will be moving our study session from 3rd Wednesday on Zoom to the 2nd Saturday of the month, following Shabbat morning services.  The study session will take place at the JCC and will begin at 12 pm.  This will be a hybrid offering – in person and on Zoom.  [Please note that we will not have a Torah study in May or June due to B-mitzvah events.]  To sweeten the deal there will be BAGELS and coffee!!

This change is also responding to another clear yearning: many of us want to engage more directly with what is happening in the world—socially, politically, ethically – through a Jewish lens.  The 2nd Saturday Torah study will invite that kind of discussion, as our tradition does not shy away from diving into complexity and asking difficult questions. It invites argument, nuance, and wrestling—machloket l’shem shamayim, disagreement for the sake of heaven. It asks us to think, to question, to challenge, and to be challenged. 

This shift is not meant to replace broader opportunities for political conversation or engagement in our community. A healthy community needs a variety of gathering opportunities.  We are complex people who need different things at different times.  And many of you have stepped up to facilitate and organize gatherings that address those needs.  I hope that continues. 

At the same time, I think it is important to emphasize that our Shabbat services are, and will remain, a space for healing. They are not designed to be arenas for debate or for the release of political frustration. In a world that is already loud, reactive, and polarized, the sanctuary allows us to hold something different.  A place for prayer, music, quietude, and re-centering. 

I also hope we continue to make room to simply be together, to enjoy one another’s company, to laugh and to connect.  That matters too.

I am grateful for all the lay leadership, for the generous feedback and the multiple voices that shape this community. 

Let us continue to build this community together, and lean into the multifaceted spirit of our evolving Jewish tradition. 

Chag Pesach Sameach,

Rav Gav

Creative Spirit at the AARC Beit Sefer

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Thank you to Rabbi Gabrielle Pescador for this article, which appeared in the April 2026 Washtenaw Jewish News. See page 7 HERE


 


 For the past several years, the children and madrichim (teen leaders) of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation Beit Sefer have taken on an unusual and joyful responsibility: they write their own Purim spiel.
 
Yes — the entire thing.
Not just acting it. Not just rehearsing lines written by adults. But imagining, scripting, adapting, and producing their own interpretations of the Book of Esther.
 
At first glance, it might look like a fun educational exercise. And it is. But it is also something deeper.
 
In Reconstructionist Jewish education, we don’t simply hand children inherited forms and ask them to replicate them. We invite them into the creative process of Judaism itself. We encourage them to see that Jewish tradition has always been a living, evolving conversation.
 
The Purim spiel — historically irreverent, satirical, and playful — is the perfect vehicle for this.
 
Over the past few years, our students have:

  • Set the Purim story in modern times
  • Played with contemporary political satire
  • Reimagined characters with surprising nuance
  • Written jokes only their generation could write

In doing so, they’ve learned something essential: Jewish ritual isn’t static. It is something we participate in shaping. For example, the setting for this year’s spiel started out underwater and ended up on the beach. It incorporated a running tongue-twister gag about a Shushan shoe store. It reimagined Haman’s defeat not as a hanging but as a demotion from palace advisor to shoe shiner.
 
Our madrichim, too, become co-creators. They guide, encourage, and sometimes gently redirect, and resist the urge to control. The result is not always polished, but it is authentic. It belongs to them.
 
In a time when so much of Jewish identity can feel inherited rather than chosen, giving our children authorship matters.
 
Purim itself is a holiday of reversals — hidden identities revealed, power structures flipped, laughter used as resistance. When our students write the spiel, they are not only retelling the story. They are enacting it. They experience what it feels like to speak boldly, creatively, even subversively within Jewish tradition.
 
Perhaps most importantly, they experience joy – and not as passive entertainment, but as active participation. When they stand on stage delivering lines they wrote themselves, they are not just performing Judaism. They are practicing it.

Beit Sefer director Shlomit Cohen notes:

“I’d like to pay homage to Marcy Epstein, a teacher in the U-M Comprehensive Studies Program and a past director of the AARC religious school. As director, Marcy led the families in a workshop on writing the Purim Spiel. This is a tradition that continues to be going strong and is passed on from student to student. As the current director, I wanted to honor this successful tradition, so I allowed the space for the students to write and run the show with a highly dedicated parent, David Speyer.”


In both the Friday night service and the children’s Purim Carnival, the children, dressed up and with noise makers in their hands, sang a quote from Pirkei Avot:
 “Mi Shenichnas Adar Marbin Be’Simchah” 
”משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה”
Translation: “When the month of Adar enters, we are joyous.” – We had a very happy Purim indeed!
 
“Learning about our traditions, interpreting them in meaningful ways, and emphasizing joy and creativity are key to the AARC Beit Sefer experience,” says Shlomit.

About the AARC

The AARC is a caring, inclusive and music- and art-loving community of people who want to practice and study Judaism, or simply be around people who share a commitment to Judaism’s values. The AARC’s spiritual leader, Rav Gavrielle Pescador, is known for her warmth, her collaborative spirit, and her incredible voice and harp playing. You are invited to visit https://aarecon.org/ or email info@aarecon.org to learn more about the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation.

To learn more about the AARC Beit Sefer, where K-7th graders enjoy interactive, creative group activities as well as individual attention, please visit https://aarecon.org/what-we-do/learning/religious-school/  

When Is a Killer Not a Murderer? by Elizabeth Brindley

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**Update: It came to my attention that I edited out a line that provides some really important context. I know the FBI has since stated that the Temple Israel attacker killed himself, while initial reports stated the guard on duty fired the lethal shot. I don’t trust Kash Patel, so I made a deliberate choice to stick with the initial narrative. You are allowed to feel how you feel about this choice.


It’s no light thing to take a life, even when it is your duty in a dangerous situation, or for a justified cause.  Killing another person is complex, and throughout Torah we see that the legal and social consequences can be as nuanced as the cause of the crime.  The Torah does not say “you shall not kill”.  It says “you shall not murder”.  So what’s the difference?  Do we know anymore? 

The difference seems to be based on intent:

  • Murder (retzach) is intentional – you lay in wait for a victim, or plan their demise, or otherwise plan the act of violence.  We’re told to punish murderers by court execution.  
  • Manslaughter (shegagah) is accidental – you didn’t mean to kill the person, but you’re still directly responsible for their death.  Say you’re chopping wood and the head flies off and kills someone – that’s all you, my guy.  You’ve got to flee to a sanctuary city now! You can’t come back until the High Priest dies.  

I also learned the situations in which killing another person is permitted or at times even required, which are probably as unsurprising to you as they are to me: 

  • Self-defense – You are permitted and at times even obligated to stop a violent attacker (“rodef”, meaning pursuer).  “If someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill them first” is from Sanhedrin 72a, and it’s probably the most metal one-liner I’ve ever heard in any of my decades.  
  • Immediate threats – If a burglar breaks in in the middle of the night, you can assume he’ll kill you if you interrupt him, and kill him first.  That kind of thing.  
  • Court Executions – Also not murder, but the bar for evidence to justify the action is very high.  Under modern rabbinic law, it pretty much can never happen, if I’m understanding right.  
  • War – Also not murder, but it does carry weight and can only be done under strict approval.  Apparently King David was denied rebuilding the temple because he had “spilled too much blood.”  

While researching this I found one of the most metal quotes I’ve ever heard, and was shocked to find out it came from the Talmud! Senhedrin 72: “If you someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”

The Golem & The Guard

When I was in my undergrad, I wrote an essay linking the story of the golem with the criminology theory of violentization, and the roving packs of young Jewish men that patrolled the streets of Jewish neighborhoods in Chicago around Prohibition and World War II.  They did this to protect the neighborhoods and residents from outsiders with ill intent.  I’m not talking organized neighborhood watches – I’m talking teen thugs taking matters into their own hands.  I imagine a Gangs of New York or Many Saints of Newark situation, but with more garlic and lox. 

(Note: It has been almost 10 years since I wrote this paper.  I may be paraphrasing and approximating quite a bit.) 

These gangs formed in response to violent actions from non-Jews and hostile governments.  A Russian pogrom around 1920 started a wave of antisemitic attacks across the world, and the first of these teen gangs started to defend against the threat of local antisemites getting funny ideas.  A similar wave of antisemitism rose during World War II, with a similar response from teenage Jewish boys in the ethnic neighborhoods.  

Violentization is a criminology theory developed by Lonnie Athens, and describes a multistage process by which people transform from being nonviolent citizens to violent offenders. Athens poses that it occurs in five stages: 

  • Brutalization, or violent subjugation, wherein authority figures coerce the subject or there’s an element of personal horrification (like maybe watching your neighborhood get bombed or your friends and neighbors put in camps.)
  • Defiance, when the subject realizes they are being brutalized, and try to seek help for their crises 
  • Violent Dominative Engagements, where the subject begins using aggression, intimidation, or superiority to establish dominance
  • Virulency, which is a marked willingness to use violence to attack another with minimal provocation
  • Violent Predation is the most intense stage of this process, and is marked by a lack of remorse and focused intent to harm the target.  Personality disorders with violent behaviors can fall into this.  

It seems kind of obvious to me to have the stages laid out like this.  You witness repeated violence against yourself or your community, you start acting out to try and ease your suffering in other ways and when it doesn’t work, you escalate to more aggressive means.  The longer that those means are ineffective, or the brutalization continues, your violent anger increases and increases, and eventually you’re desensitized to it.  

So how does the golem come in?  It was a creature made specifically to do violence – a Jewish construct that wasn’t a Jew.  In a way the Jewish gangs, violentized as they were by the antisemitic policies and actions, were golems. The golem wasn’t a murderer, because it only harmed those who would harm the Jews.  I’m sure they were not considered the most adherent of Jewish boys, likely giving up Jewish values or observances, maybe in order to do the work of protecting their neighborhoods when the police would not. 

The guard who killed the Temple Israel attacker was not a murderer.  At that moment, he was obligated to protect the staff.  But that does not mean the act was without weight – I sincerely doubt the guard is a sociopath.  He was likely traumatized just as the staff and students and community were. But perhaps he was a bit like a golem – not Jewish, per se, but an instrument of our protection, and a damn fine one.  The act was appropriate  – he did what the Sanhedrin quote suggested and shot first to avoid having himself or the people in his charge killed.  Lives were saved by this violent act, as much as we abhor it.  

A very important figure in our story was also a killer – Moses! This year while reading the portion, there was a line that struck me – right before he kills the taskmaster, he looks around.  He checks for witnesses.  That’s an element of premeditation.  It’s literally murder.  But it does not stop him from being a powerful instrument of G-d’s power and presence.  It doesn’t stop him from being a leader that the entire community turns to for guidance.  It doesn’t stop G-d from explicitly choosing him for a great task that would lead an entire people out of slavery.  But maybe it did stop him from being permitted into the Promised Land.  While paying your debt to society may mean that you lose certain privileges, like dying in the Promised Land for Moses, or being separated from your family and community for a prison stay – it should not also mean that you are only ever seen as your crime.  

The Inmates

All this brought me back to the men housed where I work.  We definitely house many people who premeditated their crimes.  We also house people that have long, long histories of crimes of increasing violence. But we also have people who didn’t have good options at all, and who were victimized in many ways themselves.

I had a library clerk for a few months who told me that when he was young, around 8, his mother taught him to use a hand gun.  She worked two jobs and could not afford childcare, and was forced to leave him alone with his 3 younger siblings, in a neighborhood where break-ins and drive-by shootings were commonplace.  He grew up with pressure to join gangs because it was often the only form of safety for young folks in a community that was targeted by police, who ostensibly are meant to protect us, and at risk of victimization by older kids in equally desperate circumstances.  

They had nights where there was no food.  Or nights where their mother bought two large McDonalds and split it among the four kids, but eat none herself.  So when my clerk was old enough (around 11 or 12, he said) he started running for local drug dealers to help pay for groceries and school clothes.  By fifteen he was selling the drugs himself.  He entered the prison system at seventeen when he killed a member of a rival gang in a drive-by shooting.  My clerk told me that that gang had been driving through neighborhoods and menacing them for some time before it escalated to this level.  

I don’t pretend to understand the finer points of growing up in that kind of existence, where violence is constant and expected, and it would be foolish to think that people don’t leave out some incriminating details when telling you their life’s story.  But it really makes me wonder: What kind of choices do people really have, when we allow members of our community to live in neighborhoods that are overpoliced, bombed, or underfunded?  When you need to feed your children, but there are no jobs in your area since the factory closed or relocated to Mexico, sometimes selling drugs is your best bet.  What about when they’ve watched their friends and families and places of worship be repeatedly firebombed or used like human shields? 

As Much of a Conclusion as is Possible

What I like about Parasha Vayikra is that the Torah does not say “if someone transgresses” it says “when.”  It just knows it’s going to happen, because of course it’s going to.  We’re human! Some of our mistakes are very bad and very ugly, but we are going to make them.  At one point in Vayikra we are told that people who cannot afford to bring an offering of animal can bring an offering of a choice flour.  It takes into account the circumstances of the transgressor when deciding the punishment or reparation, and I believe that a merciful justice system would do the same.  

Prisons now do not treat inmates like humans have made mistakes.  We treat them like meat to be warehoused, whose only label is the crime they committed.  Through funding and political avenues, social-emotional education and programming opportunities are regularly denied to high level offenders due to being “the worst behaved” – and they are.  Believe me.  It’s like working in a warzone some days – but they are also statistically more likely to be illiterate, to be from tumultuous homes, to have behavior health concerns, to be outright mentally ill, or to just never have had a trusted authority or adult figure in their life to teach them better skills.  To provide a truly just system, one that made people better and actually equipped them with skills to make their lives better for themselves, instead of traumatizing them in the name of punishment, our duty as society has to shift to recognize that prisons are used as a threat for social control – it can’t actually be a place that helps you under the social structure we have now, which is essentially conform or we’ll throw you in this hell hole.  You’ll eat slop.  You’ll get raped by your bunk mate.  The officers will degrade you and abuse you.  You won’t have any privacy. The minute the cell door slams behind you, you stop being a human in many ways.  

What would happen to our justice system if the attitude shifted to “you have acted poorly – what caused it?  What support can you be given long term that prevents this from happening again?” What could happen to the world if we shifted from viewing one another as enemies, and started to think about what might be causing the bad behavior – and how we can remove that hindrance.

AARC to Join the 5th Annual Fair Housing Awareness Bikeathon in Detroit! – From Robin Wagner

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On Saturday, April 25, 2026, we will have the unique opportunity to grab our bikes, head to Detroit, and take a ride through some civil rights history as a sponsoring organization of the Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit’s annual Bikeathon!

Sharon and I have participated in this event several times and can assure you that it is a great event! Each year features a new route that takes the 100+ riders to various landmarks and sites important to the history of Detroit and the civil rights movement. In 2024, we started off at the Virginia Park Shopping Plaza, built in the 1960’s by the community’s residents who wanted to create positive change after the unrest of 1967. Next to the plaza is the 12th Street Memorial and Gordon Park, which commemorates the family and friends who lost their lives during the Detroit uprising of 1967 in protest of racist abuses by the city’s police department. A docent was there to share that history with us.

Other sites over the years have included the apartment where Rosa and Raymond Parks lived from 1961-1988, the New Bethel Baptist Church, Congregation Shaarey Zedek (with a tour and talk), the Ruth Ellis Community Center for formerly homeless and at-risk LGBTQ+ youth, the Detroit Association of Women’s Clubs, which fought racial zoning restrictions to build a home for 70 Black women’s clubs with over 3,000 member to focus on community development work, and an amazing Veteran’s Housing building that has become a national model for housing with supportive services.

This year’s ride will begin with a tour of the Ossian Sweet home. Dr. Ossian Sweet, https://ohsweetfoundation.org/, earned his medical degree at Howard University and then moved to Detroit to practice medicine in the Black Bottom neighborhood. In the early 1920s,he and his wife Gladys bought a home on the east side of the city. They were met bys ome 500 white men, women and children who surrounded the home and hurled stones at the house, smashing windows. The Sweets, with their family and friends, feared the escalating violence by the mob and fired warning shots into the crowd. When the dust had cleared, one man was dead and another injured. All eleven people inside the Sweet home were charged with murder. In 1925, Clarence Darrow defended the Sweets in a landmark trial followed by the entire country. The not-guilty verdict is seen as a turning point in our justice system.

Our ride this year—a leisurely 14 miles over several hours—will also take us through interesting stops in Grosse Pointe. The entire ride is escorted by the wonderful members of the 313 Cylones, a Detroit bicycle club that is part of a national association of bike clubs named for Marshall “Major” Taylor, who was the first Black track cycling champion in 1899.

AARC to Join the 5th Annual Fair Housing Awareness Bikeathon in Detroit.docxKey Details:

Saturday, April 25, 2026, from 10 am to 1:30 pm, kick off at the Fair Housing Center’s office in Detroit:

5555 Conner Street, Detroit 48213.

(allow an hour+to get thereand unload yourbike.)

RAIN OR SHINE–so dress for the weather!

HELMETS ARE MANDATORY!

How do I sign up?

So glad you asked!

It’s a great family event, so consider bringing the whole mishpocha!

(I will be bringing my little dog Casper, who sits in a basked on the front of my bike.)

A member of the congregation has already provided the rider fees to cover 20 AARC riders.But times are tough for civil rights organizations like the Fair Housing Center of Metropolitan Detroit. Their federal funding has been severely curtailed, with significant limits placed on their core activity of systemic enforcement of housing rights. So, we ask that each AARC member also make a donation to the Fair Housing Center to participate in the ride.

To Sign Up:

1.Head to this web page to sign up as a rider. You do not need to follow the link to pay the rider fee, since your fee has already been paid.

2. Instead, go to this web page to make an additional donation to the Fair Housing Center. We suggest a donation of at least double-chai ($36) for each adult rider and chai($18) for each child. In the notes section indicate that you are part of the AARC group.

3.Email me at robin.b.wagner@gmail.com to let me know how many you signed up so that we can keep track of our group size and help coordinate carpooling to Detroit for the bike ride.

Let’s help the Fair Housing Center build back up their resources to investigate complaints of housing discrimination and help victims get justice and equal opportunities for housing.

A very fortunate three times Purim celebration!

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by Shlomit Cohen, AARC Beit Sefer Director

Judaism acknowledges the importance of our feelings: the Oy’s and the Ah! moments in our daily life, for example, by giving space and yearly practice to grief, in the month of Av, and to happiness and joy in the month of Adar. 

About the month of Adar – the month of Purim – the rabbis- (חז״ל) wrote:

״משנכנס אדר מרבין בשמחה״
When Adar enters, we increase in joy.

But Jewish writings have also asked the question regarding Adar: how can we order someone to be happy, and to rejoice? Especially in difficult times? 

The answer might be, specifically in challenging times like these, that we need to remind ourselves to rejoice and to be happy, as the Purim holiday teaches us:

  1. To congregate and gather as a community  – the importance of being together! (In contrast to what we all learned during pandemic about the pain of loneliness.)
  2. To make some noise when we hear the name of the wicked man – Haman.
  3. To play music as an expression of joy.
  4. To move and shake our bodies with dancing. 
  5. To be silly – by putting on costumes!
  6. To each delicious food – the sweet Hamentashen and sending the mishloach manot to friends and relatives, and the poor. Caring for the other is a joy!
  7. And even to drink – עד דלא ידע (until one does not know)

Our Purim costumes teach us the importance of being uplifted from the sorrow and pain of life, not by withdrawing from it, but with a sense of humor. And we have a whole month to practice it yearly!

And we cannot forget the importance of Jewish humor – our shared way of dealing with reality with a laughing eye. By practicing rituals and observing the holidays, we acknowledge and turn the difficult times in our shared history into a great gathering culminating in a festive meal.

Purim specifically and the month of Adar are great reminders for us to be happy! To have faith in God’s willing, good connections and a brilliant scheme, as Mordechai and Queen Esther teach us. That’s how bad luck can turn into good fortune. “Pur” – luck – can be changed. 

This year the AARC had bad luck or the misfortune of not reserving a space for our Purim celebration in advance. So instead of canceling the holiday all together, we decided to celebrate it twice, even three times!

  • First with the AARC Purim Kabbalat Shabbat – Friday night service on February 27, 6:30pm to 9:00pm
  • Second with a gathering for a Hamentashen baking party on Saturday, February 28 with a potluck at Carol Lessure and Jon Engleburt’s house, a long tradition for over ten years.
  • Third, on Sunday March 1 at Beit Sefer, the AARC religious school. 
    The kids read the megillah – in English! – make noise when the name Haman is said, and act out a purim shpiel (that took them 3 weeks of writing and preparation!). There will be song, dance, a costume parade, a questionnaire/quiz with prizes, Hamentashen… and more

The month of Adar is a truly happy, joyfully time of year! Happy Purim! 

Above: the AARC celebrating Purim in 2024

Above: the AARC celebrating Purim in 2016

Reconstructing Judaism Through the Lens of Dreaming – By Rabbi Gabrielle Pescador

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Reconstructing Judaism Through the Lens of Dreaming

Why questioning, creativity, and shared experience matter to me as your rabbi

By Rabbi Gabrielle Pescador

I recently had a powerful dream that has stayed with me—not because it was comforting, but because it was clarifying.

In the dream, there was an image of a lion hanging high on the wall of an attic. The attic was tall and narrow, almost chimney-shaped, with brick below and white walls only at the very top. A tall wooden ladder was required to reach the image. Facing the image was a small window.

A man and I were standing on the roof peering through that small attic window from the outside. The man shared with me that the previous evening, he saw a terrifying monster lurking inside.

I told him I would investigate the situation and began climbing the ladder. I was cautious and tentative at first, but with each step of ascent, my curiosity grew stronger than my fear.

As I moved from rung to rung, I noticed changes in the light that interplayed with the changes in distance and proximity to the top. These effects played tricks on my eyes and caused the image of the lion to change. From certain angles and degrees of light, the lion appeared animated, almost as if it might leap off the wall. When I finally reached the top of the ladder, however, I could see the two-dimensional image clear and stable in full light.

I shared my experience with the terrified man on the roof. I explained that the image itself wasn’t changing, but our perception of it was, depending on the amount of light and how close we were willing to get to the image.

When I reflected on the dream, I was struck by how explicitly Jewish its symbolic language was.


The lion evokes the symbol of Judah—strength, responsibility, sacred power. The image
functions like a shiviti: a visual practice meant to help us focus on and recognize the Divine Presence in our lived experience. Many traditional shiviti images are flanked by lions for precisely this reason. They are not meant to soothe, but to orient us toward truth and meaning.

The ladder, too, has unmistakable Biblical resonance, pointing to Jacob’s dream of the ascending and descending angels. The rabbinic imagination associates Jacob’s dream with spiritual inquiry and connection. We ascend rung by rung and sometimes need to step back down again. We investigate and then back off for a bit and retreat. The search for meaning has stops and starts, but the ladder remains—stabilizing us on that journey.

And the light—its changes, its timing, its absence and return—may be the most Jewish element of all.


Light, prayer, and living with change

Jewish prayer is structured around shifts in light: morning, evening, Shabbat candles, the Havdalah flame, the waxing and waning of the moon. The same references to light and darkness feel different at Shacharit (the morning service) than they do at Ma’ariv (the evening service). Those references can inspire awe in one moment and fear in another.

Judaism does not deny this instability of perception—it ritualizes it. Prayer trains us to live in liminal space, to notice how meaning changes as light changes, and to remain present anyway.

In the dream, the lion was most terrifying in the dark. That is not a failure of faith. It is a spiritual truth. Awe arises not from eliminating darkness, but from staying in relationship long enough to let light return.


Why this leads me to Reconstructing Judaism

I share this dream because it reflects why I am drawn—again and again—to Reconstructing Judaism, and why I feel at home in it as a rabbi.

Reconstructing Judaism is often described as “the intellectual denomination.” And yes—ideas matter. Thought matters. But that label is far too narrow.

What draws me to Reconstructionism is its insistence that Judaism is not sustained by intellect alone, but by the fullness of human experience: imagination, creativity, emotion, memory, art, ritual, culture, and shared communal life.

Mordecai Kaplan emphasized that Judaism is a living civilization—one that expresses itself not only through belief, but through creativity. For Kaplan, culture, art, music, and evolving human experience are not secondary to religious life; they are among the primary ways Judaism stays alive, meaningful, and responsive to the world we actually inhabit.

That insight continues to feel radical—and necessary.

Art, dreams, and communal meaning

Artistic and creative pathways are not “extras.” They are interpretive tools. They help us
metabolize power, change, grief, joy, and awe. They allow us to encounter Judaism not only as something we analyze, but as something we live.

Dreams belong here, alongside poetry, music, ritual, and visual art. They are symbolic languages through which the soul processes truth. They are not arguments to be proven, but experiences to be attended to—especially when they resonate with our tradition’s deepest patterns.

Reconstructing Judaism makes room for all of this. It refuses to reduce Jewish life to certainty or conformity. It invites us to question—not to dismantle Judaism, but to keep it alive. To climb the ladder. To let in more light. To expect surprise not as disruption, but as a way of understanding.

An invitation

I share this not as doctrine, but as orientation.

As your rabbi, I am drawn to a Judaism that is brave enough to keep becoming.

The lion in the dream is not meant to be feared. It is meant to be encountered—with curiosity, with courage, and with awe.

But the ladder may hold the deepest meaning.

A ladder is not self-sustaining. It must be steadied. It must be held. In the shiviti image above, two lions stand on either side, gripping the ladder between them.

We do not climb alone.

We hold the ladder for one another — through study, through art, through questioning, through shared prayer and shared experience. When one of us is afraid of what we see in the attic, another climbs. When the light shifts, we help each other interpret what is revealed.

The ladder remains between us — steady, imperfect, necessary — inviting us upward, together.

That, for me, is the promise of Reconstructing Judaism.

Join the AARC book group with Rav Gavrielle on Sunday, March 15

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The Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) book group got off to a great start in 2026, reading and discussing The World We Knew, by Alice Hoffman, in January, and Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford, in February.

The AARC book group’s Sunday, March 15th meeting is eagerly anticipated as Rabbi Gavrielle Pescador will lead the discussion. The book chosen for March 15th is God Is Here: Reimagining the Divine, by Toba Spitzer. “This book was recommended by our AARC executive director Elizabeth Brindley,” explains Rav Gavrielle.

In a 2025 blog for the AARC, Elizabeth wrote:

“Mah nora hamakom hazeh! – “How awesome is this place!, Jacob exclaims this after realizing he has had a divine encounter while sleeping on the side of the road, using a rock for a pillow. He didn’t realize he was roughing it in the house of G-d, but lo! The phrase from the Torah portion, Vayetzei, first popped out at me a few years ago in Toba Spitzer’s God is Here: Reimagining the Divine. At the time I was new to working in the prison system, struggling to adjust to the environment, and trying to fill the ample amount of downtime I had as a government employee with some Jewish thought. The context Spitzer used it in, at the time, didn’t particularly speak to me, as reading the phrase a dozen times in the Torah portion apparently hadn’t, but this time the phrase stuck. What did it mean to really be here, in this place? Is any place holy if you’re present with it, or are there other conditions to this awesomeness?”

“As I’ve been reading God is Here, I find myself both personally and professionally intrigued,“ says Rav Gavrielle. “The “God-word” can be challenging for so many of us (myself included)—whether because of theology, upbringing, philosophical leanings, or simply the limits of language—and I appreciate the way Spitzer opens things up through metaphor, imagination, and lived experience. I’m excited to see where this will take our conversations.”

If you would like to read the book God is Here: Reimagining the Divine and participate in the AARC book group’s March 15th lunch and discussion, please contact Greg Saltzman at gsaltzman@albion.edu.

photo of Rav Gavrielle leading the AARC book group in January 2025