Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

You are here: Home / Blog

Blog

Get Inspired For the High Holidays By Reading Rabbi Ora’s Sermons!

by

Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

Those of you who have recently attended High Holidays services at AARC know that one of the highlights are Rabbi Ora’s sermons. Each year, Rabbi Ora conjures up mind-blowing topics that gives everyone food for thought for the year to come. As a teaser for this year, I thought I’d collect some sermon highlights to look back at some of the incredible teachings of the last few years. Whether you will be at our services this year in person or online, you’re guaranteed richly meaningful learning. Just make sure you register to attend as soon as possible!

We look forward to seeing everyone over the chagim. As always, please let us know if you have any questions.

Renew Your Membership at AARC!

by

August 2021

Elul 5781

Chevre,

At this time of year, as our membership cycle begins anew and we contemplate the Jewish new year, we ask you to please reaffirm your commitment and connection to the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation by renewing your membership. 

We are entering this new year of 5782 with both hope and anticipation after more than a year of upheaval and unprecedented physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual stress. As the landscape of the pandemic shifts, there is a lot we still do not know. But there is a lot we do know. We know that our community has continued to stay connected. We know that as individuals and as a congregation we have been strengthened by our connections. And we know that we will continue to be a caring and connected community.

AARC has worked hard to ensure that we continue to be a source of strength and support for our community. Our Rabbi, our staff, our Board, and our many many committee members, volunteers, and lay leaders have stepped up to keep us connected and growing. We have all responded to COVID-19 with changes to our individual and communal lives, and we enter this year with a strong commitment to continue our work to keep our community healthy, safe, and vibrant. With every Shabbat service, every mishpacha meet-up, every class, every workshop, every song and niggun we sing, we have a chance to connect more richly to one another.

We trust that you find these connections meaningful, and we hope that you will choose to renew your membership. If there are ways that our congregation can better serve you, or ways you would like to become more involved, please reach out to us at info@aarecon.org. If you have financial concerns about renewing your membership this year, please contact treasurer@aarecon.org. 

We are committed to staying connected. Your support makes all this possible.

We look forward to being with you, whether in person or online, during the High Holiday season and throughout the year.

B’Shalom and wishes for a sweet new year,

Rebecca Kanner & Rena Basch

Co-Chairs of the Board of Directors

Connections, by Marge Piercy
Connections are made slowly, sometimes they grow underground.
You cannot always tell by looking at what is happening
More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under your feet.
Penetrate quietly as the earthworm that blows no trumpet.
Fight persistently as the creeper that brings down the tree.
Spread like the squash plant that overruns the garden
Gnaw in the dark, and use the sun to make sugar.
Weave real connections, create real nodes, build real houses.
Live a life you can endure: make life that is loving
Keep tangling and interweaving and taking more in, a thicket and bramble
wilderness to the outside but to us it is interconnected with rabbit runs and burrows and lairs.
This is how we are going to live for a long time: not always.
For every gardener knows that after the digging, after the planting, after the long season of tending and growth, the harvest comes.

Bass Dieve’s Dvar Torah

by

Hello, I’m Bass and I have a few subjects to touch upon in this speech. I’ll also have you know, I have many pages of notes so this might take a few minutes :-). I’ll be going over all sorts of things, like: questions about god, what the different darknesses man, the perception of idols, and even some loopholes I found in the Torah about them.

Just real quick, a summary of my parasha is: The people of Israel get to mount Sinai, we
receive the 10 commandments from god, and god tell us all of the things were not allowed to worship. 

Now that I’ve summarized the Parasha, I want to ask, why does God have as much power as God does? Well because God is God, because God is powerful, I do agree that God has a lot, but I feel like a bit of that Power comes from the mystery we experience.  For example, how we don’t have a gender for god, or a physical form and that God is beyond human understanding. Humans can’t comprehend things without physical form, so your guess could be as good as mine. Does God’s  power come from the Mystery in and of itself? Or does it come from our human limitations? We remain in a constant wonder about God’s mysterious Power. That is the nature of human “unknowing”. 

My tutor Sarah has encouraged me to ask another key question. Is it possible to feel close to and in awe of God at the same time? I would say yes because, I’m sure there are people who are far away that many of us look up to, for example a musician, but you may feel close to them because you may resonate with their music, or they might have some of the same experiences as you. An even better example is your parents, most of you look up to them with awe, while having a close connection with them as well. That is why I think you can feel close to and in awe of god at the same time.

Now about idolatry – a central theme in my Parsha.  Idolatry is basically the worship of a physical object as a god. Judaism also prevents worshipping an artistic representation of god. What about other religions that have deities like Hinduism and Buddhism? We have many statues in our house of Ganesh and Buddha. Does this mean we are worshipping idols? I don’t think so because we have them just to appreciate the teachings they represent, but others may disagree. You can appreciate an object without worshipping it. Like my books. I love them and admire them on my shelf, but they are not gods and deserving of worship.
 
And from that idea I want to talk about, how does idolatry help or hurt us? As for helping, I think that having a higher being to look up to is reassuring in a way. Because you feel like someone’s there for you, helping you, encouraging you, with everything you want to do. As for cons, some people take it too far, saying that “god wants me to do this, so cooperate or be punished”. So I think that it helps you as long as you don’t use it to oppress others. Idolatry is mistaking the creation of God for the Creator, and elevating a part of creation to a Divinity.

And what about polytheism? The Torah emphasizes one God only but  why is having multiple gods bad? On the one hand, gods are worshipped since they seem to sponsor or create bad things, like gods of war, or gods of famine, that ravage the land, but on the other hand, there are gods like gods of seasons, and gods of harvest as well. In one way polytheism makes sense because there is a deity who is in charge of all different aspects of the world. But the early Israelites rejected that and said that one God is in charge.

And if God is One, can God also be Many, including many aspects of the Universe? Including male and female? Can we refer to God as “they” rather than “He” “She” or other names? Does that make sense even when the Shma emphasizes “Ehad” or “one” One? In my conversation with My rabbi, we discussed the pluses and minuses of using “They” for God as a non-binary Being, but I’ll get back to that very soon.

Something I would like to quickly touch up upon is how all is one yet separate at the same time. We are all separate because we are all different from each other, in our own unique ways, yet we all end up being one because, we all trace back to 1 place, like this person was born from this person and this person was born from this person, and so on. But we’re all connected in ways, even if it’s small, like, we have brown hair, it can all be traced back to the same origin. It’s really cool if you think about it.

Now about the Shma – here is the famous verse in the Torah that signals that there is really only One God, And here we’re also getting back to the they /them theme. The translation is: Hear, O Israel: The lord is our god, the lord is one. But on the note of the lord is one, that’s singular, but so are they/them pronouns, I prefer to think of god as androgynous, but people like to genderize god, but saying they can still mean 1 person, for example if someone goes by they/them, that does doesn’t mean that they are multiple people, they just don’t identify as male or female. There are also different perspectives in the shma. The first part, here o Israel can be thought of being said from 1) the whole world, 2) The People of Israel, or 3) God. The second part is, the lord is our god. That would be from the perspective of the people of Israel. And the final part is the lord is one, which i would say, is in the perspective of god, saying it to the land.

One of the most amazing sections of my Parsha included a description of the Revelation of God’s word coming from Mt. Sinai but with an emphasis on Darkness. This interested me. In the very first section, it says: And the mountain burned up with fire up to the heavens, with darkness, a cloud, and opaque darkness. I find it very interesting how they list off different types of darkness, i think that’s because they don’t want to exclude any type of darkness, like for example it can be dark, but that darkness can be very dark, like midnight is a lot darker than 9 oclock, so you can see how those are different types of darkness, so something could happen in one type of darkness but not the other, so that’s why I think they listed off multiple types.

Now finally, the loopholes! I found two in my Torah portion, the first one is in verse 16, which states: Lest you become corrupt and make for YOURSELF a graven image. Which i found very interesting, they easily could have just taken out yourself, or substituted it, but they chose not to, so technically you could make it for someone else. The second one in verse 18 says: The likeness of anything that CRAWLS (it’s saying what you can’t make statues of Btw) which can be up for loose translation. You could easily say, well, anything that walks crawls the earth, but that’s not our definition of it. We think of it as anything that walks on four legs, mainly bugs or insects, but they could have said, anything that’s on the ground in general, so technically you could make an image of a kangaroo or a Monkey.

Now for the very last thing, I promise. I would really like to thank each and every one of you for going out of your way to be here and celebrate with me in these difficult times. It means so much to me. On top of the bar mitzvah, we’re moving to Switzerland in 6 days. It’s been really stressful to have both of these big life events happen at once. I’ve been working for the past year on this, and it’s been really hard, yet fun and rewarding. I’ve learned how to read Hebrew, sing and decipher prayers, and think critically about religion and torah, as well as just have a good time being a Jew. 

This concludes my speech, thank you all for listening and being a part of my bar mitzvah day.

Capturing Learnings as the AARC enters the High Holiday Season

by

Written by Rebecca Kanner and Emily Eisbruch for the Washtenaw Jewish News

Hybrid Shabbat, July 2021

Lots changed during the COVID 19 pandemic, including, for many of us, how we worshiped and how we socialized.  What a joy to experience the happy reconnections in the summer of 2021, as vaccines enabled the resumption of many in-person events.  Now, on the brink of the New Year 5782, the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) is taking stock of lessons learned during the pandemic and taking steps to capture and continue some of the positive innovations.

Aziza celebrating Tu B’Shvat

As one example, the pandemic inspired an increase in creative outdoor activities for the AARC Beit Sefer (religious school).  A Tu B’Shvat program centered on Ann Arbor’s champion trees and a bike/hike relay experience connecting Beit Sefer families are two examples.  “The healthy connection with the outdoors, and focus on Jewish environmental education is an emphasis we plan to continue,”  says Beit Sefer director Clare Kinberg. “For the upcoming school year we have plans for a monthly Beit Sefer program at The Farm on Jennings, a farm providing a diverse selection of certified naturally grown produce and flowers, owned and operated by AARC member Carole Caplan.”    

At the congregational worship level, we recently invested in state-of-the-art equipment to deliver hybrid worship experiences that are meaningful both for in-person and online participants.  According to Seth Kopald, who is a Board member and part of the AARC’s Tech Committee, “We bought quality equipment so everyone will hear and see things clearly, and hopefully it will help those on Zoom engage on a deeper level. We really want people to feel a part of the services and other events. We are together even when we are apart.”  In July, the AARC was pleased to convene an outdoor Kabbalat Shabbat service and to kick off using the new sound system, with the event streamed live on Facebook.  

In another innovation, color-coded name tags (using green, yellow or red circle stickers) were offered for those in-person at the July Kabbalat Shabbat. The colorful stickers were applied on name tags to indicate an individual’s comfort with hugs versus handshakes versus socially distanced smiles.  The stickers provide an easy mechanism for people to signal their level of readiness (or not) for friendly physical connection.   The congregation will decide whether to continue offering the stickers moving forward. 

Mishpocha groups, formed during COVID to facilitate AARC members keeping in touch, have proved highly successful.   AARC members serve as hosts for small groups that meet weekly or biweekly on Zoom, providing a cohort for check-in, support, and even sometimes for sharing music, poetry and short stories.  The friendships and new bonds continue as we emerge from the pandemic, and the Zoom check-ins may also continue.

Here’s a friendly reminder that High Holiday services are a great time to check out the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation. Our live-streamed services are open to all.   For more details, we invite you to visit the AARC website at https://aarecon.org/ or reach out to Gillian Jackson at aarcgillian@gmail.com. 

To see this article in the September 2021 Washtenaw Jewish News, scroll to Page 8 here.
https://washtenawjewishnews.org/PDFs/WJN-09-21-web.pdf

Update on AARC’s Beit Sefer Religious School From Director, Clare Kinberg.

by

This is my seventh year as Beit Sefer director and I’m very excited to let the curriculum of the past years take a rest (it’s a shmita year after all) and plant some seeds of a new program that centers outdoor, environmental and experiential learning. 

The Beit Sefer will still meet weekly on Sunday mornings, but one Sunday each month will meet out at Carole Caplan-Sosin’s farm on Jennings where we will learn Torah straight from nature. On the other Sundays we will focus on Hebrew, t’fila (prayer) and finishing our monthly creative projects begun out at the farm. Of course, stories and songs will round out each of our gatherings. 

We will return to meeting at the JCC when we aren’t at the farm, but we will learn outside under the tents as long as possible, and in the spring, as soon as possible we’ll be outside again. At all times we will follow COVID safety measures, including wearing masks.

Last year, the AARC Beit Sefer/religious school spent a good deal of time learning on Zoom, but we also did many activities outdoors. It was inspiring to break down the walls. The contemporary movement for outdoor Jewish learning has created many resources: books, lesson plans, and curricula. “Hazon: The Jewish Lab for Sustainability” website has over 500 excellent lesson plans that use Jewish traditions, rituals, and texts to teach compassion for all life on earth and environmental responsibility. While our AARC Beit Sefer will not be inventing the wheel of Jewish environmental education, we will be creating a dynamic new program.

Over the course of the school year, we will visit The Farm on Jennings nine times, on the second Sunday of each month. Each month will have a different theme based on the yearly cycle of trees as taught in Rabbi Jill Hammer’s The Book of Days: A Companion for All Seasons. The themes of our Sundays at the farm will include “Seeds,” “Roots,” “Branches,” “Leaves,” “Flowers” and “Fruit” and each will include learning from a song, psalm or blessing, exploring fields, trees and crops on the land, and a creative craft or project. 

Our Beit Sefer year will begin with a trip on August 29 to the Barn Sanctuary in Chelsea, a refuge for abused and neglected farm animals. Last year we did a virtual tour, and this year we will start off the year with an in person visit to celebrate, a bit late, Alef Elul, the first of Elul, which is the Jewish New Year for Animals where we learn deeper and deeper compassion for all creatures. 

The full schedule for the AARC Beit Sefer will be available soon, as will an enrollment page on the AARC website. Please contact Clare Kinberg ckinberg@gmail.com with any questions.

Elul Events and Resources 2021 (5782)

by

Throughout history we as Jews have leaned on our traditions to lead us back to ourselves in times of trouble or uncertainty. The month of Elul is one of those traditions: a time of cheshbon hanefesh or an accounting of the soul.

Elul has come at a perfect time this year; many of us are carrying a heavy emotional load due to the current state of affairs. Elul encourages us to take time to look inward and prepare for what’s to come. In this spirit, we are offering a multi-modal Elul experience:

LEARN: “How Do We Emerge from A Long, Dark Time? Or, What the Book of Jonah Can Teach Us About This Moment,” Sunday August 15, 4-5:30 pm. ON ZOOM.

Many of us know how Jonah came to be swallowed by the whale, but what was it like inside the whale, and how was Jonah changed once he emerged from his period of isolation? Join Rabbi Ora for a close read of the book of Jonah, a snappy and surprisingly funny prophetic text that can help us navigate this latter stage of the pandemic with a little more ease, lightness, and hope. Zoom link will be emailed to members the week before the event. If you would like to attend and do not receive our mailers, email aarcgillian@gmail.com

LISTEN: Songs of Return, A High Holiday Community Playlist

Our community playlist features gorgeous niggunim, new melodies, and High Holiday favorites to get us in the teshuvah mood. Listen and enjoy, and add your favorites tunes so we can all hear them. To listen, all you need is a free Spotify account. To add music, you’ll need to open the Spotify app on your phone, tablet, or desktop.

BREATHE: Elul Meditation Offerings

A series of pre-recorded meditations from Rabbi Ora and members are now available to stream, below. These themed meditations vary in length and style, and can be listened to on your schedule as many times as you like.

Blessing This Moment (16 min)

Hineini: A Meditation & Chant for Presence (18 min)

Sitting in Divine Light (10+ min)

A Mind-Body-Spirit Integration (6 min)

Gam Zeh Kadosh/This, Too, Is Holy (9+ min)

WRITE: Daily Reflection Prompts

Sign up to receive daily reflection and journaling prompts for the entire month of Elul (August 8-September 6). Created by Rabbi Jordan Braunig, these prompts may serve as “a little more space than we are used to to dig in and do the work of cheshbon nefesh/soul-accounting.” 

SING:

Elul Concert with Joey Weisenberg, Sunday August 8, 3-4 pm

AARC’s Elul programming begins with a musical-spiritual Zoom concert with Joey Weisenberg, prolific composer, author, and director of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute. Between participatory niggunim, Joey will dip into his book The Torah of Music, showing how singing is a spiritual practice accessible for all. Join the song circle to draw strength from our collective voice and lift you into the High Holiday season. This event is co-sponsored by the Ann Arbor Orthodox Minyan and Beth Israel.

Selichot Services, Saturday August 28, 8-9 pm. IN PERSON AT THE JCC.

Our selichot services will ease us into the High Holy Days with beautiful melodies led by Rabbi Ora and members. We’ll lean into some soulful niggunim that will form the aural backdrop to our Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur services, then end Shabbat together with Havdallah. Sign up to attend HERE.

Gather: Annual Summertime Potluck Picnic, August 22nd, 11am-1pm. 

Come spend time with our community and bring some canned goods to contribute supplies to our local food pantry. Bring a dish to pass. Sign up here, COVID guidelines here.

If you have any questions about any of these Elul offerings, please email Gillian.

Details About Our First Hybrid Shabbat Service!

by

The day has come for our first hybrid in person and streaming Shabbat service, and we are all excited for this momentous event! Volunteers and staff have been working hard to make this a safe and enjoyable event for everyone. It has truly been a monumental team effort; many thanks to our board, re-opening task force, tech committee, and event volunteers. See below for details and safety protocols, and don’t hesitate to email Gillian with any questions.

Event Details:

  • Services will begin at 6:30 at the JCC, 2935 Birch Hollow Dr, Ann Arbor, MI 48108.
  • Services will be on the side of the JCC in between the building and the soccer field. After parking, head to the right of the front doors, you will see the greeters when you round the corner. If you need help with wheelchair/handicap access, please email or call Gillian.
  • Bring a blanket and/or lawn chairs to set up on the JCC lawn. We will have some folding chairs if needed. There are some semi-permanent tents for shade over parts of the lawn; let’s save the shady parts for folks who may have less tolerance for sun exposure.
  • Services will be streamed onto our Facebook page.
  • The amazing Seth Kopald will be running sound over a brand new speaker system so that everyone can hear from various locations on the lawn.
  • There will be childcare provided on the JCC playground
  • If there is a high chance of rain, we will move to Zoom services. This will be announced by Thursday night.

COVID Safety Guidelines:

  • All are welcome at outdoor events, both members and non-members.
  • When entering the JCC’s outdoor area, ALL attendees will be asked to use hand sanitizer and then sign in, providing their name, the names of anyone attending with them, email, phone number, and completing a short health and safety checklist. 
  • If you currently have or have recently experienced a cough, sore throat, aches, fatigue, gastrointestinal distress, or loss of sense of smell or taste, or have had close contact within the last 14 days with someone who tested positive for COVID-19, please stay home and access the service via livestream.
  • If you or someone in your home or social circle is considered at high risk, either for health or reasons of advanced age, we encourage you to keep them safe by staying home yourself. 
  • For vaccinated people, masks are optional at outdoor events.
  • For unvaccinated people, masks are recommended at outdoor events. 
  • People should please feel free to wear a mask if they are concerned in any way. 
  • Color-coded (green/yellow/red) stickers for name tags will be available for helping communicate one’s personal social distancing needs.  The “key” to the color coding will be posted prior to and at every event, e.g. green = handshakes and hugs OK, yellow = elbow bumps only, red = social distance please. 
  • Parents with children are asked to ensure that their children are playing in a low-risk manner.
  • Although there will be chairs available, attendees are encouraged to bring their own lawn chairs or blankets.  
  • For now, food and drink will not be served. However, if you or your children need to eat or drink for health reasons, please feel welcome to do so, but be sensitive to maintain at least 6 ft of distance from attendees who are wearing red stickers.
  • For services, members with AARC siddurim are asked to bring their siddurim with them and return home with them; for those without, siddurim will be available for use. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own tallitot and kippot.
  • With the JJC building remaining closed, a Porta Potty will be available.

A Little Stroll Down Memory Lane!

by Leave a Comment

A few editions of the Havurah’s original newsletter, ‘The Grapevine.’

The cover of the May 2012 Grapevine

Is everyone ready for a trip down memory lane? Aura Ahuvia has very generously donated her archive of the Grapevine newsletter from 2000-2013. Thank you Aura! We have uploaded a few notable ones here for you to enjoy. Feel free to share memories in the comments below.

Grapevine from October 2012- AARC discusses name change and hiring a Rabbi!Download
Grapevine from October 2005- The Hav has its first Friday Night Childrens Service!Download
Grapevine from October 2001- The Hav buys our Torah from EHNTJCDownload

If you enjoyed this and would like to check out the rest of the archive, Margo Schlanger has uploaded it here! You will need to log into the member section of the website to access the archive. If you need help with this, let me know!

July Events at AARC

by

July is an exciting month for us here at AARC! We will be having our first in person hybrid Shabbat Service on July 23rd at 6:30! We will also be having a joyful Saturday service with Etta Heisler and Hannah Davis on July 10th followed by our second summertime social on July 11th. More details below!

Second Saturday Morning Shabbat Service. July 10th, 10:30am-12. Please join us for this lay-led community Shabbat service. This service will be led by Etta Heisler and Hannah Davis. There will be lots of singing and an abundance of joy! Join us!

July Summertime Social and Seed Bomb Station, Sunday July 11, 11AM-1PM: During this social we will have a seed bomb station loaded with native beneficial plant seeds. You can make some seed bombs and throw them around your neighborhood to populate the area with beneficial plants! Of course, if you are not interested in making seed bombs and would like to come just to visit, there will be friends there ready to shmooze! Sign up here.

Fourth Friday HYBRID In Person and Streaming Shabbat Service. July 23rd, 6:30-8pm. This service will be held outdoors and in-person at the JCC. For those not able to attend in-person, we will also be broadcasting the service via livestream. Families are encouraged to bring their own blankets and chairs, but there will be folding chairs available for those who need them.

We look forward to seeing everyone soon!!