Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

You are here: Home / Blog

Blog

When Is a Killer Not a Murderer? by Elizabeth Brindley

by

**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

by

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!

by

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

by

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

by

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

Tu Bishvat Seder 5786 by Elizabeth Brindley

by

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of participating in my first ever seder. AARC joined Pardes Hannah for their second Tu Bishvat Seder at the Leslie Science Center, where we explored the four mystical worlds of the Kabbalists. Rav Gav and Rabbis Elliott Ginsburg and Aura Ahuvia led us on a winding path through these worlds, using delicious fruits a grape juice to illustrate their meaning.

Before this I had never had much interaction with Jewish Renewal. In fact, this may have been the first. But Rabbi Elliott and Rabbi Aura were warm and knowledgeable, and their community members friendly and welcoming. I learned too that Rabbi Elliott had been a teach of Rav Gav’s at ALEPH, and they remained friends after her ordination. I can’t imagine how proud a teacher must be to work alongside a pupil like that. It was beautiful.

The first world we explored was Assiyah, the physical world, is represented by the element of Earth, the winter season, and the physical aspect of ourselves. Oranges, pistachios, pomegranates and walnuts are eaten with a glass of pure white wine (or, in our case because insurance, white grape juice.).

Brief aside here: I am glad that my first Seder was one where we use grape juice instead of wine. I had absolutely no clue that this was a thing at seders, and I don’t think anybody would have thought to tell me about it ahead of time because why would it occur to them that I would not also know this? Also, the juice seems like it just would taste better mixed together later in the seder being juice rather than wine, but maybe that’s just me. Anyway.

After Assiyah, we meandered through Yetzirah, the realm of water and spring, of emotions and creativity, are represented by foods with edible outsides and inedible centers. Dates (my favorite!), olives (my second favorite!), cherries, carob, apricots and plums all represent this realm.

B’riyah represents the third world, of air and summer and the intellectual. For this we ate the entirely edible — berries, berries, and more berries for me. I’m sort of a berry crazy, and it was only because I was around basic strangers that I didn’t use my little goblin hands to just scoop all of them from the seder plate straight to my mouth.

We ate nothing as we spoke about the fourth world, the world of Atzilut. Fire and the fall season represent Atzilut, which is the realm of the spiritual and the mysterious.

The moon was full and bright and silver, and we could see it through the window behind the rabbis as we sang and danced and prayed together. As we learned together. As I surreptitiously stuffed more and more berries, pistachios and dates into my mouth. I will not forget my first seder, and thanks to my heads up about the cups of wine, I will remember future ones too.

I’m so pleased to have had this first experience with you all.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁהֶחֱיָנוּ וְקִיְּמָנוּ וְהִגִיעָנוּ לַזְּמַן הַזֶּה.

Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, Melech haolam, shehecheyanu, v’kiy’manu, v’higiyanu laz’man hazeh.

Blessed are You, Adonai our G-d, Sovereign of all, who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this moment.

Connections to Reconstructionism by Carol Lessure

by

I am fond of saying that I was a Reconstructionist Jew before I ever heard of such a thing. 

Why do I say that? 

As I grew up in a small Jewish community in Evansville, Indiana, I often found myself questioning and also doing things my way. At that time, we had two synagogues serving a small Jewish community.  Evansville wasn’t a deserted island but as the joke goes, there was the shul we attended, and the one that we didn’t. 

As the Jewish community continued to age and shrink during my childhood, the two synagogues merged religious schools when I was in elementary school. I recall asking the reform Rabbi (of the shul we didn’t attend) why we couldn’t chant the Shema in his class. I came to learn that congregants didn’t chant anything at his synagogue but rather the service songs were sung by a musically trained, non-Jewish person accompanied by piano behind a screen. I failed to connect to the Rabbi or his services. 

By the time I was in high school, the two congregations fully merged after the two Rabbis retired. I remember it was challenging to meld reform and conservative traditions to the satisfaction of the majority of members. I taught in the religious school, led the local Jewish youth chapter, and ran children’s services on high holidays. I was involved and often did things my own way. 

The new synagogue became known as Temple Adath B’nai Israel and hired a new Rabbi and one of the first female cantors. Even today, the Temple website doesn’t make a strong connection to any denomination and seeks to include Jews from many different backgrounds. That is consistent with my own memory of the early years when the new congregation sorted out what traditions were most important and how to honor the needs of all its members. 

At college, the Hillel didn’t really suit me – so I rarely went to there. One year, I wanted a Passover seder that was more meaningful – so I wrote my own Haggadah and invited Jewish and non-Jewish friends to celebrate with me. The four sons became the four children, the Haggadah included Miriam and the midwives Shifra and Puah along with Moses and the plagues. We no longer read the traditional Talmudic style Haggadah that discussing what ancient Rabbis thought about the story in the Torah and the meaning of various phrases. The old Haggadah always seemed to me to be the opposite of what we are asked to do at this holiday – to share and tell the story of Passover. My “reconstructed” Haggadah has gone through various iterations over the past 40+ years. It is now assembled into spiral bound notebooks so that we can add and change sections as we find new songs and readings that are meaningful to our family. 

As a young adult in DC, I didn’t affiliate but continued to seek out Jewish spaces. For several years, a friend and I did Jewish community hopping visiting various Havurah-style services for Shabbat. When my friend married and became involved in a congregation in Maryland – that was my first introduction to Reconstrutionism. After she divorced, we continued our seeking. I still have a copy of “Chaveirim Kol Yisraeil – a Project of The Progressive Chavurah Siddur Committee of Boston” a prayer book that was used by one of the congregations that we attended. 

When I moved to Ann Arbor, my friend and I met up to attend the Havurah Summer Institute around 1996 – a gathering organized by the National Havurah Committee. It was an amazing experience with people from a wide variety of practices from around North America. It was there that I met Evelyn Neuhaus who made the annual trek east to the Institute each summer.  She was affiliated with the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Havurah – aka “The Hav” – while I attended home-based monthly services with a Havurah of 30 somethings that included Beth Israel congregants and unaffiliated Jews including AARC member Sarai Brachman Shoup who I knew from grad school.  

Soon after, I started lurking around the Hav – attending High Holiday services at the Quaker house on Hill Street. I still recall standing next to Rena and Jeff Basch in 2001 – holding their infant son Ari – for a communal Aliyah for Parsha Vayeira on Rosh Hashana. I was pregnant with our first child, Avi. We were all delighting, like Sarah, in new beginnings. 

Within a year or so, Jon Engelbert and I became members. We found our Jewish home with the Ann Arbor Reconstructionists. Nearly a half century later, AARC continues to be our Jewish home. 

Reconstructionist Judaism encourages me to think about and find connections to our ancient Jewish traditions in a way that brings meaning to my modern life. I am grateful to have this community.    

Carol is 2nd from right, with friends at the 2025 AARC Retreat at Camp Tamarack

Tu B’Shevat as a Bridge: Growing Jewish Connection Across Communities

by

This article was written by Rav Gavrielle Pescador for the Feburary 2026 Washtenaw Jewish news.

At a time when many Jews feel fractured—by politics, by ideology, or by communal boundaries—Tu B’Shevat offers a powerful counter-narrative. Known as the “New Year of the Trees,” this holiday invites us to slow down, notice what is growing, and remember our shared roots. More than a seasonal marker, Tu B’Shevat centers values that are urgently needed right now: interdependence, renewal, gratitude, and care for the earth and for one another.

This year in Ann Arbor, Tu B’Shevat is being celebrated not by any one congregation alone, but through collaboration across the local Jewish community. On Sunday, February 1, 2026, community members of all ages will gather at the JCC from 10am to noon for a daytime Tu B’Shevat celebration that brings together multiple organizations and perspectives.  There will be a variety of arts/craft/planting activities in the JCC Newman Lounge.  Shlomit Cohen, the director of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) Beit Sefer (religious school), is part of the community-wide programming for Tu Bishvat. “One of the activities that we are excited to offer is bringing the different colors from nature and making colorful fun tie-dye with the children,” comments Shlomit.

Later that evening of February 1, at 7:00pm, a different kind of collaboration will unfold. Clergy and members from the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal communities will come together to lead a joint Tu B’Shevat seder. Drawing on traditional ritual structures while inviting creativity, song, and reflection.
What makes this collaboration especially meaningful is Jewish Renewal and Reconstructing Judaism have a lot of affinity.  Both are deeply engaged with tradition, yet embrace the opportunity to reinterpret it in light of modern life. Both emphasize ethical responsibility, spiritual depth, inclusivity, and a Judaism that speaks to the heart as well as the mind.



At the same time, their differences add texture to the collaboration. Jewish Renewal often foregrounds embodied spirituality, music, mysticism, and ecstatic prayer while Reconstructing Judaism emphasizes historical consciousness, democratic process, and thoughtful engagement with evolving Jewish civilization. When these approaches meet, and they often do, the result is not dilution, but enrichment providing multiple doorways into shared Jewish life.

Rabbi Elliot Ginsburg of Pardes Hannah, Ann Arbor’s Jewish Renewal chevre, notes “the Seder for Tu Bishvat invites us to experience an expansive understanding of the divine life-force while helping us appreciate the deep ecology of our own lives. The Seder Tu Bishvat historically draws on kabbalistic understandings of divinity as a Tree of Life with its roots in the Infinite. In this model, earthly life may be seen as leaves and fruit on the tree, energetically connected to the Source. From an ecological perspective,Tu B’Shevat, with its imagery of roots and branches, soil and fruit, reminds us that healthy ecosystems depend on diversity. So do healthy communities. When Jews gather across lines of denomination and ideology, we model a Judaism that is resilient, relational, and alive.“

In a season when public discourse so often pushes us toward division, these Tu B’Shevat gatherings invite something else: to come together, to plant seeds of connection, and to celebrate what can grow when we choose collaboration over separation.  |

Rabbi Aura Ahuvia, who has strong roots in Ann Arbor’s Reconstructionist and Jewish Renewal communities, states: “I’ve felt a rising need for community with every passing month. The news, social media…it all feels oppressive and manipulative. I’ve been seeking the salve of simple connection, to be reminded that when we come together, in-person, as ourselves, we’re capable of enjoying each other’s company and even solving our problems together. Celebrating life as it reawakens within and between us feels like exactly the right thing to do right now.”
 
 

Why I chose the AARC

by

Those were terrific blogs in the Why I Chose Reconstructionism series from Elizabeth Brindley and Dave Nelson. Now apparently it’s my turn.

For me, it’s a matter of valuing the caring, thoughtful community that our family has found over the years at the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC).

Here are a few photos that show the special connections and spiritually enriching experiences that our Recon community provides.