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September 11 “B” There: Annual BBQ, Beit Sefer, Book Club

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bridge
Footbridge over the Huron River at Island Park

How could our little congregation plan so much for one day? But so be it: on Sunday September 11, there will be something for everyone in the congregation, and our friends, too.

Our annual BBQ picnic is a very nice time for all ages to relax together, introduce new people to the congregation, reconnect after summer travels. AARC will provide drinks, charcoal and paper products. You bring something to grill, a side dish to share, and your summer stories! The BBQ will be at a new location this year at Island Park, with a footbridge over the Huron River, a playground, a nice shelter and lots of exploration space, it’s a terrific place for our picnic. Plus it’s the place we plan to have tashlich this year, so we’ll all know how to get there! September 11, noon to 3pm.

  • First day of Beit Sefer/ Religious School for kindergarten-7th grade, 10-noon at the Island Park. Parents meeting 10:45-11:45.
  • Book Club 9:45-11:00, discussion Wise Aging, at Greg and Audrey’s home. Details here.
  • Annual BBQ: This year at Island Park. noon to 3pm.

 

Liberty’s Secret, New Film by Andy Kirshner

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Jaclene Wilk in Liberty's Secret
Jaclene Wilk in Liberty’s Secret

AARC member Andy Kirshner will premier his new film, the musical Liberty’s Secret, on September 22, at the Michigan Theater, for one night only.  Andy wrote the screenplay, lyrics and score and co-directed the movie with choreographer Debbie Williams. The movie-musical, which has been more than eight years in the making, was shot entirely in Southeast Michigan and over 150 Ann Arborites participated as extras, including a few faces very familiar to AARC.

“I love old musicals — like those by George Gershwin, Meredith Wilson, Leonard Bernstein, and Frank Loesser — but frankly, the gender politics of the musical-theater classics are terrible,” Andy says. “So I wanted to write a musical that would capture some of the same tap-dancing, jazz-inspired joy of an earlier era, but where the women weren’t tamed by men. I wanted to write a traditional musical that was non-traditional.”

Liberty’s Secret might be just the feel-good relief we’re needing in this tension filled presidential election season. Both a charming romantic comedy and a pointed political satire, Liberty’s Secret follows the rise of Liberty Smith, the squeaky-clean daughter of a “family values” preacher who becomes the symbolic centerpiece of a socially conservative presidential campaign.  When ingénue Liberty falls in love with her (female) spin-doctor, the result is a cable news catastrophe.  A kissing video goes viral, and a confused Liberty must choose between the life she knows, and the love she has always dreamed of – while all of America watches.

Advanced tickets are available online at http://bit.ly/2ajGOsg for what is anticipated to be a highly popular event.  Tickets are $10, or $8 for students.

Andy_KirshnerThough we in AARC think of Andy as Eli’s dad and Stephanie’s partner, he is also known as Professor Kirshner, who is jointly appointed by the UM School of Music, Theater, and Design’s innovative Performing Arts Technology Department and by the Stamps School of Art and Design. He is an award-winning composer, theater artist, and filmmaker whose work has been commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts, Artserve Michigan, Meet the Composer, and many others.  More information about him can be found at www.andykirshner.com

A trailer for the film is available at www.libertysecret.com

 

Reflections on Tisha B’av

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By Rabbi Nathan Martin*

Earlier this summer I had the opportunity to both teach and participate in a Hazon conference that brought together over 25 Jewish organizations doing innovative environmental work. In one study session in particular I spent time with a group of 40 other participants excitedly cramped in a yurt studying the Jewish calendar. The teacher, Zelig Golden, the Director of Wilderness Torah, noted that Tisha B’Av, the day in which Jews honor the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and other historical tragedies, coincides with the hot dry period of summer. (This year Tisha B’Av is commemorated one day late, on August 14, so as not to conflict with Shabbat.) Zelig argued that this is not accidental; it made sense culturally to mark human tragedy at the time when the earth enters one of its least productive moments. The outer barrenness corresponds to our inner brokenness. Similarly, the month of TisGreen sprout in parched earthhrei which includes both Rosh Hashannah and the harvest festival of Sukkot, 40 days after Tisha B’Av, can be understood as the moment when we are gathering together new growth, nourishment, and possibility.

This calendrical cycle that we travel through may not always correspond to our inner state. We may not always feel a sense of brokenness on Tisha B’Av and we may not always feel a sense of renewal on Rosh Hashanah. But these calendar moments do have an important inner logic. By setting aside a particular day of communal mourning on Tisha B’Av, the rabbis created an opportunity to have the Jewish community as a whole acknowledge the multiple layers of loss and oppression it has experienced over the ages. Allowing ourselves to feel heartbreak in the heat of the summer can perhaps allow us to step more deeply into a harvest of renewal and possibility in the Fall.

So as we prepare to enter this High Holiday season, I invite each of us to take some time this month to acknowledge the losses we have experienced as a people. What have we lost? How has it impacted us? How might you mark this ‘dry’ time?

May our dwelling in the loss, even for a short period, allow us paradoxically to let it go in order to create space for a more hopeful future. May we see and realize that all of us are part of the blossoming Jewish people. And may we come together on Rosh Hashanah carrying with us not only a reckoning of our past mistakes but also a deepening commitment towards our flourishing as a Jewish community.

*Click here for more information about Rabbi Nathan, who will be leading AARC’s High Holy Day services this year.

And click here for more information about our High Holy Day services, including times, places, and other details. Services are ticketless and open to all.  Please join us.  (Rosh Hashanah starts on the evening of Sunday, Oct. 2; Yom Kippur starts on the evening of Wednesday, Oct. 12.

Blessing for the Body

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Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner was kind enough to send us the poem she read during Shabbat with us, to give us permission to share it here.

Blessing for the Body Woman's shadow on a wall
Ora Nitkin-Kaner

All you have is your body. An assembly of limbs and a floating skull and a ribcage to hold all that softness.

All you have is your body. Your feet carrying you from threshold to threshold, set, sturdy, asking for no praise.

All you have is your body. Your elbows that slip over holy pages, that hold open doors for the next person and the next. These bony sentries, their slivered tenacity insisting on your place in the world.

All you have is your body. Your knees that bend, bob into bodily praise, then raise you up again, ready to meet God, ready to meet the day.

All you have is your body. Your heart, your first organ that is with you til the last. Your heart, that carries the lessons of accumulated loves – and losses that only scratched it or losses that caused it almost to stop.

Bless your heart’s chambers, all fluid and muscle and flux. Bless your heart’s beat of open and close and open. Bless your heart for how it blooms unabashedly like a peony on the tenth of May, like a hothouse flower that has no memory of the word frost. Bless your wise heart.

Bless your vivid brain, and its many hungers.

Bless your gut, how it is fed by memories that precede you, how it offers up truth and fear and waits for you to decide which is which.

Bless your hands, articulate, angry, gentle. Carrying you into the world

All you have is your holy body.

May it be for you a blessing and a vessel. May you uncover its many truths. May it acquaint you with stricture and with freedom. May you treat it as a beloved. May it move you through darkness and always, again, into light.

 

AARC 2016 High School Grads

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Four AARC members, including my own daughter, graduated high school this year. They will be heading off to college in another month. Myisha, Eli, Jonas and Marley had a variety of high school experiences and are each embarking on their own unique path.

myisha grad 3Myisha Kinberg-Cowan graduated summa cum laude (just let me kvell for a second) from Washtenaw Technical Middle College and Washtenaw Community College with a Liberal Arts Transfer Associates Degree. She’ll be heading out to Portland, OR to attend Lewis & Clark College. She plans on majoring in computer science.

eli kirshnerEli Kirshner graduated from Ann Arbor Skyline. He received the “Equality SLC” award for fair-minded contributions to his school and to the greater Ann Arbor community. He will be attending Oberlin College in Ohio in the
fall.

Marley and Jonas graduated from Washtenaw International High School. Marley will be going to Macalester CollegeIMG_0344 in St. Paul, MN. Jonas will be going to Michigan State University honors program. Jonas will be performing as Jay in “Lost in Yonkers” at Ypsilanti’s Riverside Arts Center, from August 25th to September 3rd. It’s a great theater – come and enjoy! (Why yes, MSU move-in is August 28th…).

Mazel tov to all of you and your families!

 

The Curious Case of the Too-Tall Traveling Torah

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by David Erik Nelson
Rabbi Druin points to a distinctive lamed in the AARC torah. Photo by Stephanie Rowden
Rabbi Druin points to a distinctive lamed in the AARC torah. Photo by Stephanie Rowden

Here at the AARC we are blessed with a very weird Torah that gets a tremendous amount of love.

Most Torahs rarely travel more than a dozen feet at a time, from ark to torah table. Ours gets hauled through the JCC, chauffeured to b’nei mitzvah venues, and schlepped across town to the Unitarian Universalist building for High Holidays. It is a remarkably well-loved—and notably well-traveled—oddball of a scroll. It is also old, a little delicate, and very unwieldy. Our traveling Torah badly needed a traveling case—something with wheels and handles, easy to maneuver, and able to protect our scroll from a sidewalk stumble, fender bender, or sudden downpour.

Anyone who’s been called to the AARC bimah (such as it is) has no doubt noted our scroll’s large Kabbalistic script (embellished with many little hooks, hats, and curly tails)—a relative rarity among “high use” Torahs like ours.  This calligraphy is a hallmark of Torahs crafted in the last great center of Kabbalistic learning, in Prague.  You may have noted our Torah’s age—the scroll is almost certainly several hundred years old.  If you’ve ever done hagba, you have first-hand experience of how unwieldy it can be to handle. But few folks point out how extremely tall the thing is.

Notes, measurements, and rough sketch
Notes, measurements, and rough sketch

Most Torahs are about two feet tall, in accordance with suggestions made by Moses Maimonides back in the 12th Century, and might weigh around 30 pounds. Ours—in accordance with the fashion of the Kabbalists of Prague—is almost four feet tall. I have no clue what it weighs, but I know it is a bear to haul up over your head.

As Amazon shoppers, you no doubt imagine that there is a robust, highly competitive global market for Torah travel cases. Thus you will be shocked (shocked!) to learn that there is a very limited selection of torah-specific travel cases for 47-inch tall Torahs.

In fact, that selection is limited to zero.

"The Vault" Hardside Golf Travel Bag
“The Vault” Hardside Golf Travel Bag

For that matter, there is a very limited market for travel cases for anything that’s four feet tall, a foot wide, and just shy of eight inches deep. No instrument case is long enough and wide enough, no gun case is deep enough, even cases for synthesizers and keyboards either fall short or are far too large—and either way, they are extremely expensive and heavy.

Fortunately, golfers love to travel. Two companies make bare-bones, hard-sided, lockable, wheeled, extra-large cases to protect those precious clubs. Our ancient, mystic Torah fits perfectly in one of these cases. Appropriately enough, this product is named “The Vault.”

And we now own it.

With the addition of a padded, custom-crafted foot-hold, The Vault holds our well-loved Torah snug as a bug in a rug. When not in use, the case tucks perfectly into the back corner of the official “office” (storage closet) of Ann Arbor’s only Reconstructionist congregation.

Now our Torah can wander in style.

Ready to roll!
Ready to roll!

Keys to Learning at RRC

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Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Wyncote, PA by Richard Quindry

This weekend, July 22nd-24th, AARC members and friends will be having a Shabbaton (a weekend of prayer services and learning) with Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner, who was ordained this year at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College (RRC). I thought a little background on RRC might be of interest to folks. For this blog I wrote to several rabbis who were ordained at RRC asking them to comment on the education they received.

RRC, a seminary to train rabbis for Reconstructionist Jewish congregations was founded in 1968 in Philadelphia and moved to its location in Wyncote, PA in 1982. The College’s five to six year program of study for rabbinic ordination has changed since 1968, but is still structured around focusing on a different historical period each year, building a deep understanding of Judaism as an evolving religious civilization. This developmental approach encourages the students to enter into a dialogue with  previous generations of Jews who addressed perennial human issues in the context of their own times.

The Wikipedia article on RRC usefully divides the college’s own history into three periods: the founding in 1968 till 1981 when, headed by Ira Eisenstein, it formed a course of study based on Mordechai Kaplan’s ideas ; 1981-1993 when the movement published its first prayer book and incorporated more study of other religions and spirituality within Judaism; and 1993 to the present during which the college has significantly expanded education in community organizing, leadership and pastoral counseling. Rabbi Mordechai Liebling ( ’85), who is now director of RRC’s Social Justice Organizing Program and attended RRC during the middle period, says, “the combination of Arthur Green, Arthur Waskow, and Zalman Schacter was a wonderful balance of the political and spiritual dimensions of Jewish life.”

Rabbi Rebecca Alpert ( ’76) wrote the entry on RRC for the Jewish Women’s Archive, which includes this section on the ordination of women:

The question of the ordination of women to the rabbinate certainly was in the public consciousness at the time the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College was founded in 1968. The women’s liberation movement was asking questions about women’s complete equality that had not seriously been considered previously. Although none was yet ordained, several women candidates were then studying at the Reform Movement’s Hebrew Union College. Despite the open discussion of this issue, the founders of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College decided not to create added controversy by recruiting women for its first class. In its second year, however, when the founders advertised for students, they received one inquiry from a woman. Sandy Eisenberg Sasso was accepted without debate or subsequent controversy. For the next several years, only a few women applied, and all were accepted. Women comprised half the class that entered in 1974, the year of Sandy Sasso’s graduation, and that trend has continued ever since. By 2005, twenty-four out of the movement’s 106 synagogues in the United States had women as senior or assistant rabbis. Women lead four of the country’s twelve largest Reconstructionist congregations, which range in size from 237 to one thousand members. The rabbinical college too has had women as part of upper-level administration and full-time faculty since the mid-1970s. It currently houses Kolot: the Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies, a resource center for curricular and liturgical materials.

An interesting note: Rabbi Shelley Goldman, the last candidate AARC interviewed, wound up taking a full time position as Assistant Rabbi at Congregation Beth-El Zedeck in Indianapolis, IN, where Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso, RRC’s first women graduate, is Senior Rabbi emerita.

A recent graduate, Rabbi Tamara Cohen (’14) has this to say about her education there: “RRC provided me with a feminist, justice-oriented, intellectually rigorous, ritually creative, alive and nurturing Jewish community and learning environment that helped me take the next steps I had long been yearning to take in my leadership, in my spiritual development, in my critical understanding of Jewish history, text, and culture, in my understanding of community organizing and community building, in my personal soul work, and in my ability to be a pastoral presence and support for those in need. It also gave me invaluable teachers and colleagues and keys to continue to study and grow, lead and belong, as a rabbi over the rest of my life.”

Rabbi Nathan Martin, who will be leading our High Holiday services this year and was ordained from RRC in 2006 wrote, “The three most impactful elements of my RRC rabbinical education were: a) the support and guidance I received as I donned my professional ‘kippah’ doing work in the rabbinic field, b) the way in which the community modeled creative access to tradition and sought to live out their values, and c) having a ‘chevre,’ close colleagues, who helped create a container for me to process and live into my emerging rabbinic identity.”

Please RSVP for  Shabbaton events here. You are welcome even if you don’t RSVP, but it sure helps us plan if you do let us know you are coming.

  • Tot Shabbat, Friday 7/22, 5:45 to 6:15 PM, JCC
  • Kabbalat Shabbat & Potluck, Friday 7/22, 6:30 PM, JCC
  • Shabbat Morning Service, Saturday 7/23, 10 am, JCC
  • Family-Friendly Dessert and Havdalah, Saturday 7/23, 8-9:30 pm, home of the Samuel family
  • Adult Learning, Sunday 7/24, 10:00 AM, JCC: (How) Should A Person Pray?

 

(How) Should A Person Pray? A Study of Berakhot with Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner

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Ora-Nitkin-Kaner3The concluding public session of our weekend Shabbaton with Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner, will be an adult (and interested teen!) study session on the topic  of prayer. Rabbi Ora writes, “The rabbis of the Talmud had an uneasy relationship to prayer. They found it to be mysterious, potentially dangerous, and physically and emotionally overwhelming, and they couldn’t decide whether it was better to pray with too much feeling or too little. (The rabbis, unlike Goldilocks, found nothing that was ‘just right.’)”

All are welcome to join us as we study from Talmud Berakhot and deepen our understanding of our rabbinic tradition’s relationship to prayer, as well as our own. No Hebrew knowledge or previous Talmud study necessary.

Sunday July 24, 2016 10-12noon at the JCC 2935 Birch Hollow Dr.

Please RSVP for this session and all of the other Shabbaton events here. You are welcome even if you don’t RSVP, but it sure helps us plan if you do let us know you are coming.

  • Tot Shabbat, Friday 7/22, 5:45 to 6:15 PM, JCC
  • Kabbalat Shabbat & Potluck, Friday 7/22, 6:30 PM, JCC
  • Shabbat Morning Service, Saturday 7/23, 10 am, JCC
  • Family-Friendly Dessert and Havdalah, Saturday 7/23, 8-9:30 pm, home of the Samuel family
  • Adult Learning, Sunday 7/24, 10:00 AM, JCC: (How) Should A Person Pray?

 

Report Back: “Community in Difficult Times”

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community in difficult timesReported by Martha Kransdorf and Sallygeorge Wright

“Community in Difficult Times,” was a Jewish community-wide facilitated discussion hosted by the Jewish Community Center (JCC) on Thursday evening June 30th.  The purpose for the meeting, according to convener Karla Goldman (director, UM Jewish Communal Leadership Program), “was to create a space where people come together in community to be able to process recent events.  The catalyst was the Pulse tragedy in Orlando, which just seemed to combine so many different elements of the recent news: hate crime, hate speech, LGBTQ issues, immigration issues, gun violence and gun control, anti-Muslim rhetoric and terrorism issues in ways that cried out for response and yet no one has seemed to know how to respond.” About 65 people attended, taking advantage of this important opportunity to reflect about the tragedy in Orlando and the ongoing issues in this year’s election campaign.

Goldman, JCC President Prue Rosenthal,  and Hillel Director Tilly Shames, got things started.  They reviewed the meeting’s background and guidelines for the small discussions at each table.  Rabbi Kim Blumenthal helped establish the mood for the evening by leading us in “Hinei Ma Tov.”

We were reminded that each table had a facilitator, and needed to choose a note taker.  We were to respect different opinions, and each person’s privacy.  Individual’s remarks were not to be repeated afterward without permission from the person who made them.  And we could say “ouch” if something offended us.  There were three guiding questions for us to consider:

1)  What brought you here?

2)  What’s in your heart and on your mind?

3)  Is there something about this moment that calls upon us as Jews and as a Jewish community?

Report backs noted the need for education and outreach on issues including guns, mental health, and more. The need for concrete measures to show solidarity with LGBTQ and Hispanic populations were pointed out.  Examples included having social activities that would increase awareness of diversity in the community. People suggested an ad in a newspaper to express our outrage and concern about current developments, and publicity for efforts on gun control.  Final remarks focused on further get-togethers to look at where we might go from here.

The invitation to the meeting was issued by almost every part of the organized Jewish Community in Ann Arbor:  the Jewish Community Center of Greater Ann Arbor, the Jewish Communal Leadership Program, U of M’s Hillel, Jewish Federation of Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation, Beth Israel Congregation, Temple Beth Emeth, Jewish Cultural Society, Hebrew Day School, Jewish Family Services of  Washtenaw County, and the Orthodox Minyan.  According to AARC member Sallygeorge Wright,  the meeting was an important opportunity for people who had never met before, who were involved in different community groups, to find out what each other are already doing and to exchange ideas. Goldman summed up the outcome, “People at the event were happy that there was a way to come together as Jews for issues that were not centered on Jews but which mattered to us as Jews nevertheless.”

Rabbi Sara Adler closed the meeting with a beautiful Prayer for Peace that she had written. This prayer will be published in the forthcoming book, Not By Might, a publication by Rabbis Against Gun Violence and edited by Rabbi Menachem Creditor.

Prayer for Peace
 
God of our mothers and fathers,
God of tenderness,
God of lovers, teachers and children,
may we see the day when love conquers fear
when compassion overrides judgment
and the echo of gunshot is heard no more.
 
Let a great peace wrap its arms around our country,
and hold us tight.
 
Unite us-- people of all races, religions,
orientations and identities
in a bond of true fellowship.
 
Teach us to respect difference
and take pride in one another.
 
Let us learn that diversity makes us stronger,
that the healthiest forests are filled
with a multitude of species and birdsong.
 
God on High, let us find consolation
and comfort under Your canopy of peace.
 
May the memories of those assaulted by violence
inspire us to mend our broken world.
 
Let us grind guns into garden tools,
bend our weapons into bridges.
 
May we learn war no more.
Come, let us write a new covenant of kindness
an end to the flood of tears.
 
Seal this promise in the sky,
a rainbow to part the clouds.
 

Rabbi Sara O’Donnell Adler is a chaplain at UM Health System. She was ordained by The Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 1999 and received her
Clinical Pastoral Education at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA. Prior to joining the staff of UMHS in 2008, Rabbi Sara worked as one of the rabbis with the
MetroWest Jewish Health and Healing Center in West Orange, NJ.

Is AARC Beit Sefer/Religious School right for your family?

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AARC's Ann Arbor Jewish religious schoolby Clare Kinberg

As Beit Sefer/Religious School director, and with our summer recruitment drive swinging into gear, I’ve been asking myself: What do parents look for when choosing a Jewish religious school? The decision to send a child to religious school is a big one for parents:  it sends a strong message to your child that “Jewish identity is very important to me, and I want it to be important to you.”  Some parents look to repeat their own experience; others are emphatically looking to not repeat their Hebrew school experience; still others are looking for the Jewish education they never had. Parents usually want their kids’ Jewish educational experience to be in a community that reflects them and their values.

And then there are also all the practical matters: Does it fit our family’s schedule? Is it affordable? Experts in the field and my own experience agree that parents have these and many other questions: Who will be teaching my children? How will Hebrew be taught? Will we be expected to attend services with the congregation? Parents are anxious about their children fitting in and about the friendliness of other parents.

So, what can I do to help families decide if our school is right for them? I want to meet individually with each family that might consider enrolling their children in the school and to talk about things like: What are your hopes for your children’s Jewish education? Do you want to be involved by volunteering in the classroom, sometimes learning alongside your kids, participating in holiday celebrations together? Are there particulars of your own family’s beliefs and backgrounds that you want respected?  

I want parents to know that the Beit Sefer teachers and I really celebrate the diversity of experiences of each student and their family and that we will be authentic about our own Jewish practice. I want them to know that we intend for their children to learn Jewish traditions in prayer and practice so that they are prepared to create Jewish practice that is personally meaningful.  With that goal in mind, our curriculum includes instruction on Jewish holidays, history, and values, with an emphasis on social justice. We also teach modern Hebrew and the decoding skills that will prepare children to engage with liturgical texts.

A current Beit Sefer parent says:

As someone who got his fair share of Jewish education (little of it very rewarding, let alone enjoyable, and some of it literally scary), I really like that the Beit Sefer and AARC have led my son to developing an enthusiastic, proud Jewish identity that’s not tribal or elitist.  I think the real sign that we’re on the right track is that my kids are excited to go to Beit Sefer and AARC events, and were bummed when Beit Sefer wrapped up for the summer.

Most of all, I want families to know that our religious school provides a warm, nurturing, welcoming environment for children and for parents. A central goal of the AARC Beit Sefer is to build and sustain community. While the time commitment for AARC Beit Sefer is minimal–one Sunday morning each week during the school year–students and their families are warmly invited to participate in and help to create Shabbat and holiday observances with the AARC community. All children are welcome to attend the Beit Sefer, and to participate with their families in AARC observances, regardless of their family’s formal religious affiliation or membership in the congregation.

From another parent, new to our religious school this year:

We were looking for a place where our son could learn about Jewish history, culture, and language, while being taught enough about the underlying beliefs to allow him to make an informed spiritual decision when he is older. The AARC Beit Sefer was welcoming to our interfaith household, and provided just the sort of nurturing-yet-fun learning environment we were looking for, and our son loves attending.

The AARC Beit Sefer teachers and I are very proud of what we accomplished in our Hebrew school last year. I am excited to share this experience and our plans for next year by meeting personally this summer with prospective families.