Thanks to Hannah Davis for this article in the March 2022 Washtenaw Jewish News. Congratulations to Idelle Hammond-Sass on winning the Shmita Prize in the ritual object category.
Idelle Hammond-Sass wins Shmita Prize for Ritual Object
Blog
Learn to Leyn
By: Deb Kraus
So what is leyning? Wish I had time to look up why chanting torah is called leyning, because I’ve always wondered. Like many things in this corner of the Jewish world, and very unlike me in general, I haven’t questioned much about why. I’ve focused on the how’s.
This course, which I just decided to call L2L, is designed for people who know Hebrew at least phonetically, and want to learn to chant. Maybe just to know, or to help your kids someday with b’mitzvah. Maybe to participate in a torah service. Maybe even to have an adult bar or bat mitzvah!
So, back to what is leyning. If you look in a chumash or even at some of the prayers in our siddur, you will see funny little symbols that aren’t vowels. For example, check out the shema or the v’havta or ma tovu, or any prayer in the prayerbook that originated as torah. How can you tell a prayer originated as torah? This is getting circular, but you can tell if there are those funny little symbols around the words that aren’t vowels. (and you can always check under the line to see where in Torah this is from).
Those funny little symbols around the words that aren’t vowels are called trops, and they are the most efficient little musical indicators of how to chant that I have ever seen. There are about 24 used regularly (and about 4 that show up quite rarely) and this class is going to teach you what they are and how to sing them.
My plan would be to convene soonish, maybe mid March, and start to learn some of the basic trops, the ones that are used over and over (there are maybe 4-6 trop combos that comprise about 75% of all the torah). I envision us as a group committing to covering a torah service sometime at a fall Shabbat morning (we have some latitude about which month, as long as it’s the second Saturday, so we can choose a torah portion we want to dig into) and all of our learning would be on the few lines that you personally will commit to (I mean, you don’t have to do this, but I think it would be good if at least some people do). Then we will work weekly until we have it learned. If people want to make this a b’nai mitzvah, I think we could make that happen!
I am willing to do this gratis (the hav has given me so much and I am lucky enough to not have money concerns) but do want people who are willing to commit for the full ride. I mean, things always come up that are unanticipated, but short of that, I will assume that you want to do this and have time. I’d also like to do this only if we have 3 or more committed people. I would also love to meet in person (my house?), COVID permitting, since singing on line is such a pain.
In case you don’t know me, my credentials for doing this is teaching over 55 kids (and one adult) for their bar/bat mitzvahs over the last 20 years. I myself learned how in conservative Hebrew School in Florida, but never had a bat mitzvah, first chanting from a tape Rob Dobrusin gave me at my aufruf in 1993. Who knew it would turn into a side gig that would give me so much joy?
If you are interested, send me an email at drdebkraus@gmail.com. Thanks!
AARC Hybrid Zoom/In-Person Services Returns to the JCC!
It has been a long two years since we last held indoor services at the JCC, and the long awaited moment is here! We are excited to announce that we will be holding indoor hybrid online/in-person services beginning Friday, February 25th at 6:30! The in-person service will be held in the lounges at the Jewish Community Center of Ann Arbor. The Zoom link will be sent out via our weekly mailer or you can email us for the link.
The service will have an interactive Zoom offering for those who do not feel comfortable attending in person. This will allow online attendees to connect with each other via chat and submit names to be read out loud for Kaddish and Misheberah. We are asking folks to sign up to attend virtual services so we have an idea of who is coming for the first few services. To attend online, please sign up here.
There will be some changes to in-person services in the first few months. In order to maintain COVID safety, we will not be having a potluck after the service. There will be childcare but we will not be having pizza before services for the kids. One important new addition to services is that we ask that you please sign up in advance to attend. This way we can keep track of who is coming for contact tracing purposes. To attend in-person services, please sign up here.
Please email us if you have any questions about our upcoming hybrid services!
Please be sure to review our full Health and Safety Guidelines for indoor events below:
Please also read the Brit Briyut:
AARC Mitzvah Corps – an Essential Ingredient of a Caring Community
“Mitzvah comes from the root word tzavta, which means connection. There are 613 mitzvot, and therefore, 613 way to connect to G-d.”
– Rabbi Zushe Greenberg
I appreciate this definition of mitzvah, which goes beyond doing a good deed or following a commandment, and adds connection as an essential ingredient. The AARC Mitzvah Corps strives to create for its members a feeling of connection and support that can then be brought forward to meet the needs of members of the congregation with compassionate caring. Towards that end, we hold quarterly meetings that begin with a personal sharing of a blessing and a challenge since we last met. In this way we have supported each other through health challenges, losses, changes in career or living situations, family stresses. Through that feeling of being connected it is easy to feel moved to connect to others when they are in need. Connection is the heart and soul of our mission – “to mobilize support when needed” and our vision – “to create a non-judgmental community in which it is natural to ask for and receive help.”
Much of what we have mobilized to do has been to help individual members in need. This has encompassed needs that arise from joy – setting up the worship and celebration areas for a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, and needs that arise from sorrow – helping the bereaved host a Shiva. We have organized meal chains for families bringing home a newborn and for individuals moving through significant illness. We have provided rides to medical appointments, and organized daily support calls during these times of increased isolation created by the pandemic.
Currently, we are interested in receiving input from the community on several important factors as we move forward into 2022. We have created a survey that will take just a few moments of your time so that you can tell us what you might be available to offer, what you might use the offerings of the Mitzvah Corps for, and whether you want to join us. Please help us out by going to either of these links:
https://forms.gle/QgFCfDuVUYrc5kGV6
Thanks for your time and support,
Anita Rubin-Meiller, Mike Ehmann, Caroline Richardson, Sharon Haar, and Idelle Hammond-Sass
B’Yachad: Reconstructing Judaism’s 2022 Conference!
From Reconstructing Judaism’s Website:
“Join us from March 23 – 27, 2022 for B’Yachad: Reconstructing Judaism Together. Over these four days, both in person and virtually, we will learn from and with experts, scholars and lay leaders. We will engage in conversations, ask questions, and listen. We will pray together, sing together, dance together and celebrate all that we do every day in our communities to reconstruct Judaism.
B’yachad will be an opportunity for you to reconnect with friends from conventions past and to form new friendships, as well as to deepen your sense of belonging to this community of communities. If you choose to give your time, energy and resources to this gathering, we hope you will be transformed—perhaps by an encounter, a powerful teaching, or a song that touches your heart. You will leave with many takeaways — resources, some answers, and even more questions. We will know that we have been successful if you return home excited about all you experience and inspired to share what you learned here that can strengthen your own community.
Come back to this website often. Check out the schedule. Have you seen the information about Through A Reconstructionist Lens: An Adult B- / Re- Mitzvah program? It is not too late to participate – and plan to be with us in March 2022 as the program culminates and we celebrate some notable anniversaries.”
Observing Holocaust Remembrance Day
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On this day in 1945 the Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated. To commemorate this liberation, we observe Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom Hashoah on the 27th of January. This day reminds us how the forces of hatred and fear can incite sectarian violence that ripples through generations. This day reminds us to honor the people affected by genocide around the world, and pledge to stop genocide whenever it arises. It is important to take a moment in our busy life and remember the violence that was inflicted on our ancestors and others effected by genocide.
If you are looking for a way to observe the holiday, the United States Holocaust Museum will be posting speeches from Holocaust survivors and stories about those who were lost. The event will be posted here on their website to be viewed at your convenience. Their website also provides a wealth of resources that one can browse to reflect on the music, culture, documents, art, etc. from the lost communities of the Holocaust.
If you are a parent looking for resources to teach your kids about the Holocaust, this essay in Parenting Magazine by Tyler Gidlin provides ample motivation to make sure we teach our children wisely about the Holocaust. According to Gidlin, “A recent survey of Americans between the ages of 18 and 39 found that 23 percent of respondents said they believed the Holocaust was a myth, or had been exaggerated. Nearly half of all respondents said they have seen Holocaust denial or distortion posts on social media or elsewhere online. And worst of all: 1 in 8 (12 percent) said they had definitely not heard or didn’t think they had heard about the Holocaust.” It is a tough topic to broach to be sure, but as we get farther removed from the generations who experienced it first hand, it becomes more important to hold onto the lessons that were learned during this terrible event in our history.
The Reconstructionist movement provides a wealth of resources to reflect on the holiday including prayers, rituals, and readings. You can find them here on Ritualwell. Here is an excerpt from the website, a poem by By B. E. (Betti) Kahn:
Ritual
By B.E. (Betti) Kahn
So many voids
the world full of them.
Unknown relatives
in mass graves.
Or did they survive?
Still lost to family here.
Their bones, in the vast
ritual of music unplayed,
like violin bows taut.
All our unstrung lives
saved by utterance.
Previously published in Poetry Super Highway, Annual Yom Hashoah Issue, 2010
May their memory be for a blessing.
Members of the Reconstructionist Movement Grapple With Tough Israel/Palestine Topics
Last week, a handful of AARC members attended a lecture by Rabbi Rebecca Alpert titled ‘Reconstructionism without Zionism.’ The event was the beginning of a series of lectures hosted by a coalition of Rabbis and members of the Reconstructionist community that are concerned about the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The series was not hosted by the Reconstructing Judaism official body or the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. The lectures will occur bi-weekly and cover a range of topics including Decolonizing Jewish Liturgy, Rethinking Israel Education: Teaching Jewish Kids to Think Critically about Israel/Palestine, Becoming an Abolitionist: Antiracism and Antizionism and more. To learn more about the upcoming lectures, check out the coalition’s website here.
The lecture was opened with an appeal for all participants to sit with their uncomfortable feelings about Israel, be curious about what feels challenging, and remain open to hearing divergent viewpoints. Rabbi Brian Walt invited everyone to take part in a prayer to open the lecture:
Barukh atah Adonai Elo heinu melekh ha’olam asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav v’tzivanu lirdof tzedek v’shalom l’chol yoshvei tevel.
Blessed is the Source of Life that makes us holy through mitzvot, calling us to pursue justice and peace for all.
If you want to read Rabbi Alpert’s lecture, you can find the source info here from an article she published on Rabbi Brant Rosen’s blog. In her lecture, Rabbi Alpert argued that we need to redefine what it means to be Jews in diaspora. She maintained that how Mordechai Kaplan related to Israel in the post-WWII era needs to be subject to ‘transvaluation’ in the same way that we have transvalued (or redefined) other concepts within Judaism such as the assertion of Jews as the ‘chosen people.’ Rabbi Alpert concluded by urging the Jewish community to consider the ethical implications of war and occupation.
Upon the conclusion of her lecture, the floor was opened up for 45 minutes questions. It was clear during the Q & A that participants had a lot to say about the subject of Zionism, and Rabbi Alpert’s opinion on the subject. The level of emotion and the fact that over 280 people attended the lecture demonstrates our communities’ need to grapple with this issue. The coalition hosting the lecture provided this space for discussion in the form of a Google group after the lecture.
If last week’s lecture is an example of the level of passion on the topic, we are in for an engaging series of lectures and discussions!
To attend next week’s lecture, sign up here.
The Interesting Intersection of Tu B’Shvat and Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Often times the long list of social justice issues that need addressing seem like an insurmountable mountain to climb. But when social justice movements converge, it provides unique opportunities for us to collaborate and scale these high peaks of injustice together. Racial justice and environmental justice are not mutually exclusive; in truth, you can not have one without the other. The intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Tu B’Shvat are full of meaning and lessons to be learned if we study them together on this double holiday!
This Tu B’Shvat Seder written by Rabbi Arthur Waskow provides a wonderful opportunity to explore this relationship. This Seder explores climate change, our communal responsibilities to each other, the battles over fossil fuel pipelines running through native communities, and more. If you are planning a Tu B’Shvat seder this year, it is worth a look! Rabbi Waskow says, “But there is a life-giving way, a sacred way, a way of love: At the same moment when we honor the rebirth of trees, the rebirth of the Tree of Life, we honor the birthday of Martin Luther King and the rebirth of the energy he symbolized.”
Hazon has made a few Tu B’Shvat Haggadahs that provide interesting insight for us this year. Here is a family Tu B’Shvat Seder. This Seder asks meaningful questions that families can discuss together and provides a shopping list for ritual objects that you will need! This Hazon Seder from 2019 would be a good one to use this year because the holiday coincided with MLK Day that year as well; it focuses on the moral imperatives of our time as a segue into the double holiday.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day is often used to beautify communal spaces. It is not uncommon to find people cleaning parks or rivers on MLK Day. Combining a social justice environmental project is a great opportunity to celebrate MLK’s legacy of taking action to make our world a better place and celebrating nature and trees for Tu B’Shvat. Here are some service opportunities in our area that speak to these double meanings:
- MLK Day of Service at Barton Nature Area. Help to restore the Barton Nature Area hosted by Natural Area Preservation.
- Listen to Malik Yakini’s presentation on his Food Justice work in Detroit at University of Michigan’s MLK Symposium.
I hope that your MLK Day and Tu B’Shvat is full of meaning and purpose this year. If you take part in any of the activities shared here, please take a picture and share with us!!
Learn About Clare Kinberg’s ‘Looking For Rose’ Series in the Washtenaw Jewish News
If you have not been following Clare Kinberg’s Looking For Rose series in the Washtenaw Jewish News you are missing out! Each month since December 2019 Clare has explored race, class, history, Judaism and more through the lens of her Aunt Rose’s life. It has been a joy to follow, to read the series, you can click on each issue of the Washtenaw Jewish News here. Learn more about the series in Clare’s own words below.
Clare Kinberg on the ‘Looking For Rose’ Series:
For forty years, beginning in 1975, I tried to find my father’s sister Rose, an aunt I’d
never met. I grew up in St. Louis, in an Ashkenazi Jewish family I had been raised to
believe was completely segregated from African American families. But the separation
was a lie.
I now know that sometime in the late 1930s my Aunt Rose moved to Chicago with her African American husband Zebedee Arnwine. Her young son from an earlier marriage, Joey, remained behind with her mother and siblings. On the day in 2016 when I found
Rose’s death certificate on the internet, I learned she had died at the age of 76 in a
hospital in South Bend, Indiana. Her last residential address was in Vandalia, Michigan,
about two hours directly west of my home in Ypsilanti where I live with my wife Patti and our two adopted African American daughters. Vandalia was founded by abolitionist
Quakers and several free Black families, some of whom had been manumitted prior to
the Civil War.
I found my Aunt Rose’s unmarked grave in a small church cemetery among some of
the oldest Black residents of Cass County. The first time I stood near Rose’s burial plot,
I resolved to write a book about her.
Now, after five years of research and prodding, I’ve met the descendants of her
friends and the people among whom she is buried. I’ve found the places in Texas and
Oklahoma where Mr. Arnwine lived when the area was still Indian Territory, learned how the Underground Railroad shaped southwest Michigan, and unearthed stories of Jewish communities in small town Michigan.
My wife Patti and I moved to Michigan looking for a decent place for an interracial
family to raise our daughters. Unbeknownst to me, my Aunt Rose had moved to
Michigan sixty years earlier. She settled on the shore of Paradise Lake in 1943 when
she was 35 years old. Looking at her decisions through the lens of my own life, I
suppose that Rose and Mr. Arnwine similarly were looking for a place where an
interracial couple could live safely. Patti and I spent so much time analyzing the
demographics of places where we might live, thinking about which Black and Jewish,
interracial and lesbian communities our family would come to call our own. This story is
shaped by the conversations I wish I could have had with Aunt Rose.
Other Worlds and Underworlds: A New Ta Shma Series
By: Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner
Once upon a time there lived in the city of Worms a man called R. Bunem, who assisted in the burial of the dead.
One day an old man died and, as usual, R. Bunem accompanied the body to the grave. The next morning, when R. Bunem went to the synagogue, he saw at the door a man dressed in a shroud and with a wreath round his head. R. Bunem was frightened, for he believed he was a demon and started to run away, but the man in the shroud said to him: ‘Do not be afraid, come here, do you not know me?’
R. Bunem replied: ‘Are you now the man I accompanied to the grave yesterday?’ Then R. Bunem said to him: ‘Why did you come here, and how are you getting along in the other world?’
He replied: ‘I am getting along very well, and am held in high esteem in Gan Eden…If you do not believe me, I will give you a sign which will convince you. When you put the shroud on me yesterday you tore one of my sleeves.’
Then R. Bunem said: ‘What does the wreath on your head mean?’
He said: ‘It is made of good herbs of Gan Eden and keeps the evil demons from doing me harm.’ Then he asked R. Bunem to mend his sleeve, for he said he was shamed of the other spirits, who had whole garments, while his were torn. Then the dead man disappeared.
This story comes from The Ma’Aseh Book, a Yiddish anthology of stories from Talmudic, Midrashic, and early medieval texts published in Basel, Switzerland in 1602. The Ma’Aseh Book contains a fraction of Judaism’s once well-known, now largely forgotten stories of heaven, hell, ghosts, demons, reincarnation, and resurrection.
If you’d like to learn more about these hidden worlds, then our new Ta Shma series is for you! Starting on January 8th, join us on Second Saturdays for a taste of the fantastical with Ta Shma: Other Worlds and Underworlds:
January 8: The Soul
February 12: Resurrection, Reincarnation, and Olam Haba
March 12: Heaven and Its Angels
April 9: Hell and Its Demons
May 14: Dybbuks, Ghosts, and Other Spirits
