This article on Musical Creativity at AARC appeared in the December 2024 Washtenaw Jewish News. See page 8 HERE.
Musical Creativity at AARC, in the December 2024 Washtenaw Jewish News
Blog
Beit Sefer’s Mock Kabbalat Shabbat
After weeks of preparing blessings and ritual objects, Beit Sefer students and their parents gathered this past Sunday to stage a mock Kabbalat Shabbat. Throughout the morning, students braided miniature challah loaves, placed candles in their candlesticks, and filled plastic wine goblets with grape juice.
Rav Gavrielle was gracious enough to lead alongside Head Teacher, Morah Emma Shimovich. The pair, with Emma strumming her guitar, guided families through the blessings and various Shabbat songs and prayers.
The concluding activity allowed students to spend time crafting blessings for their parents, which they then read aloud to the group. We all swayed to our familiar priestly blessing as the morning closed out, and we continued to go about our Sundays.
Many thanks to Rav Gavrielle, Morah Emma, and all of the Beit Sefer families for making our mock Shabbat a success!
On Continuity of Care
Young Jewish children sit at tables in the childcare center at the Joodsche Schouwburg in the Amsterdam Jewish quarter, 1942. Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Hilde Jacobsthal Goldberg
Over the past week, I have processed the election results both privately and in community. I was especially grateful for our Second Saturday Shabbat Service, where I could connect with our community and be held by the sounds of our liturgy. As I parse through my feelings, my worries and fears always come back to the children in my life.
I spend my weekdays in the Duck Room at the JCC, a toddler classroom of 13 brilliant and beautiful souls. I feel so honored to be trusted with their care, to see them forming words and learning how to use their bodies. More than anything, I treasure the deep, loving, trusting connections I have built with them and their families.
When the Ducks were dropped off last Wednesday, I exchanged quiet looks of sadness, anger, and fear with their parents. A few of them said they wished they could just stay home and be with their kids. I certainly hugged them extra tight throughout the day.
Although it was a sad day for many of the adults, it was business as usual for the toddlers. Their routines and rituals are what keep their world round. I was, and am, grateful to the presence that these children require. They keep me much too busy to allow my mind to wander to matters of dread and despair.
My thoughts have also been with our class of Beit Sefer students in this time. Their relentless energy, curiosity, wit, talent, stubbornness, and playfulness give me hope and solace.
We will be staging a mock Kabbalat Shabbat this Sunday, using ritual objects made and decorated by the students, and led by Rav Gavrielle. When the future is unknowable, I hope the practice and passing down of traditions may help us feel rooted in safety and security.
Finally, I think of my niece, at almost three months old, and what the world has in store for her. There are infinite paths of fear and doubt that I could go down. Thankfully, however, there are just as many of strength and perseverance.
In grieving and in growing, as we stand on this precipice, I come back to the priestly blessing we sing at the end of services. May all of the children in our communities, both near and far, know safety, health, courage, and ease.
Words for a Pre-Election Shabbat
Dear Ones,
With our deep concern about the outcome of the upcoming election, I thought it would be helpful to create a special ritual for entering this particular shabbat.
After lighting the Shabbat candles, let each of us sing Shalom Aleichem, the liturgical poem in which we traditionally call in the ministering angels and angels of peace. In reciting these words tomorrow evening, let us call in what Abraham Lincoln referred to as “the better angels of our nature” — the spirit of empathy, compassion and interconnection, of family, friends and community. Let us sing Shalom Aleichem with all our hearts, and use our holy imagination to form a resounding chorus of households that activates the angelic potential of our community so strongly that it magnetizes the angelic potential of all the citizens of this country.
Then for a chatima, a final blessing, let us offer the prayer below, based on the magnificently crafted language of the founding fathers of this country:
We the People of the United States pray for a more perfect union, to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity for the United States of America, and for all the people who dwell on this Earth. And let us say Amen.
Shabbat Shalom & Shalom Aleichem (Peace be upon you).
Love,
Rav Gabrielle
Link to Shalom Aleichem (Nava Tehila): https://youtu.be/xt0ZoWfYMUk?si=RgS2kH-WNXaLOFVX
Text for Shalom Aleichem:
Shalom aleichem mal’achei hasharet
Mal’achei elyon mimelech mal’achei ham’lachim
Hakadosh baruch Hu.
Bo’achem leshalom mal’achei hashalom
Mal’achei elyon mimelech mal’achei ham’lachim
Hakadosh baruch Hu.
Bar’chuni leshalom mal’achei hashalom
Mal’achei elyon mimelech mal’achei ham’lachim
Hakadosh baruch Hu.
Tzetchem leshalom mal’achei hashalom
Mal’achei elyon mimelech mal’achei ham’lachim
Hakadosh baruch Hu.
Emma Shimovich joins AARC as Beit Sefer Head Teacher, in November 2024 Washtenaw Jewish News
This article appeared in the November 2024 Washtenaw Jewish News.
Cedar’s D’var Torah
Words by Cedar Adams
Shabbat shalom and good morning everyone, thanks for coming to my Bar Mitzvah.
My Torah portion is called Ki Teitzei and is from the Book of Deuteronomy. Ki Teitzei is about laws, containing 74 of the 613 mitzvot. The words ki teitzei mean “when you go out,” in reference to going out to war and how you should behave if you take captives. The laws in my portion are generally about how to act properly with respect to familial relationships, ethics, sexuality, and forbidden mixtures.
One of the mitzvot with a positive message is that fathers cannot be killed because of their son’s actions, and vice versa. This is a helpful mitzvah because it stops people from being unfairly punished. Another example of a helpful mitzvah is that if you find something lost by someone else in your community then you should bring it back to them, or (if you do not know the owner) keep it at your house until they claim the lost object. The Torah says:
“If your fellow Israelite does not live near you or you do not know who [the owner] is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your peer claims it; then you shall give it back.” (Deuteronomy 22:2)
While many of these mitzvot are helpful, with some it is worth questioning if they are in fact good deeds.
My aliyah ends with a mitzvah that I struggle with. Here the Torah tells us that if your son is disobedient, rude, and refuses to change his ways despite parental intervention, take him out to the village elders where you will publicly declare that he is disobedient and ungrateful. Afterwards, all the men in the town will stone him to death. The Torah states:
“If a householder has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town … Thereupon his town’s council shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all Israel will hear and be afraid.” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
This is wrong because nobody deserves to die just for being disobedient. The Torah describes the disobedient son as “wayward and rebellious,” but I would like to question exactly what that means. There are many different reasons for a son to be considered disobedient, and different parents would have different explanations. “Wayward and rebellious” could mean many things, depending on who you ask. For example, a parent might think their child is “wayward and rebellious” for dressing as the opposite gender would, even though today that is normalized. I think a more reasonable solution would be to have someone try helping the son, or having someone help the son and the parents resolve the conflict.
The second mitzvah that I’d like to discuss concerns “The child of the unloved wife.” The Torah portion states that If you have two sons, one from a loved wife and the other from an unloved wife, and the son from the unloved is the firstborn, you still need to give him double the inheritance of the younger son. This law does not include daughters. The Torah says:
“If a householder has two wives, one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, but the first-born is the son of the unloved one— then he wills his property to his sons, he may not treat as first-born the son of the loved one in disregard of the son of the unloved one who is older. Instead, he must accept the first-born, the son of the unloved one, and allot to him a double portion of all he possesses; since he is the first fruit of his vigor, the birthright is his due.”
(Deuteronomy 21:15-17)
Even though they are trying to be fair by making sure the law is followed despite the father’s views on the sons, the biblical law of giving your oldest son double inheritance is unfair because a person shouldn’t get more money just because of birth order and gender. This law is not all bad; it is good to not have favoritism, but I think it would be better if all the children got the same inheritance. The mitzvah protects favoritism in that it says not to give less inheritance to the child of an unloved wife, but reinforces favoritism by stating that the oldest child gets double inheritance.
When we read some of these laws, one might wonder how often they were actually put into place. Right now I’m talking about questionable laws from the past, but there are still many laws today that are worth questioning. For example, there is a lot of fighting right now about abortion. I think in a way it connects to my Torah portion. In my portion there is a law about taking female captives which states that if you go to war and take a female captive you wish to marry, you must cut her hair and let her nails grow out (to make her less attractive), then wait a month to decide whether you want to marry her or not. If you decide to, she will become your wife; but if you decide not to, you send her out on her own (and don’t sell her into slavery).
Like with anti-abortion laws, the woman has no control over her body and what will happen to her in her future. In the Torah portion, the male captor gets to change her looks and choose the female captive’s future; with abortion laws, primarily male dominated governments are choosing whether females are forced to have children (even though many times they are teenagers, in poverty, or simply don’t want to be forced into parenthood). I think many times when people look back on these old texts and present these wrongdoings, we look at them to judge the actions of our ancestors, while often not observing how this carries over to our lives.
I’d like to thank my family for travelling all the way here and for being such a wonderful and supportive family, especially my grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins. I’d like to thank my great aunt for being here on Zoom. I’d also like to thank my friends and the congregation for being here. I’d like to thank my parents for always loving me unconditionally and supporting my dreams, no matter what those are. Finally, thank you to the rabbi for teaching me, which I know must have been a lot of hard work.
Yom Kippur Sermon 5785
The Torah Reading on Yom Kippur discusses the instructions to Moshe and Aharon concerning the priestly service of atonement for the Children of Israel on Yom Kippur. The reading begins with the acknowledgement of the recent death of Aharon’s two sons, Nadav and Avihu who were consumed by Divine fire, an acknowledgement that Aaron is in the early stages of mourning and likely reeling from the shock of losing two children on the same day, in the same moment, in such a shockingly dramatic way.
In an earlier chapter, we learn that right after the dramatic deaths of Nadav and Avihu, Moshe instructs Aharon not to mourn nor be distracted from his priestly duties and reminds Aharon that his job is to distinguish between the profane and holy. Aharon has to be impeccable regardless of his personal circumstances.
Aharon responds to Moshe’s instructions with silence – vayidom – from the root DaMaM. Aharon said nothing. It is interesting to note that in biblical Hebrew there is another verb with the same root letters in the same order, that means “to wail,” which points to the possibility, or even likelihood, that Aharon had to wail in silence.
Many of us know what that feels like, especially now. To wail in silence.
Compare Aharon’s response with Moses’s grief after losing his sister Miriam, the story of Moses hitting the rock that many of us know so well.
The Gemara tells us that Miriam’s well had sustained the Israelites in the wilderness. After her death, the well disappeared, and the Israelites became thirsty and complained bitterly. As a result, God commanded Moses to speak to the rock to yield its water. But Moses couldn’t keep it together. He does not follow God’s directions; instead, Moses insults the Israelites and calls them “disobedient rebels” and hits the rock twice with his staff. Moses allowed his emotions to take over, which took him off his game, and for that he was severely punished and could not enter the Promised land — even after dealing with Pharoah, leading the Israelites out of Egypt, crossing the Red Sea, after receiving the Torah on Sinai, even after leading the Israelites through the desert for 40 years.
Being impeccable, remaining centered no matter what, is hard enough at the best of times, when everything is running smoothly, but when we are upset, angry and especially grieving, it seems nearly impossible.
So, what can we learn from holding these two biblical narratives together?
One thing is that life goes on, regardless of what we’re going through. I remember how devastated I was when my father died, and then when my mother died a few years later, I thought I couldn’t feel any worse, but I was so wrong. I cried and cried and cried, to the point that my husband worried about me and challenged me: “Do you want to go into the grave with your mother? Is that what you want?”
Although his words stung, they affected me deeply. I realized that I couldn’t stop living because my mother died, because I no longer had parents. Yes, I loved, adored and missed them, but I realized this is my time to live.
In Torah, we are taught to choose life – bacharta bachayim l’maan tichyeh – “choose life in order to live,” while we carry the memory of loved ones, while we carry grief. Both personal and collective grief, and this year we know about collective grief all too well.
Let’s face it. This past year has been a living nightmare. And yet we are here, in this sanctuary. That, in of itself, is an act of hope. This is our time to do the best we can, to do teshuvah, to live and to be together and find meaning in our tradition, in our lives.
Another thing we can learn from these two stories in Torah is that we should not be expected to be perfect. Moses who the rabbis say was the highest prophet, the most adept, in closest communication with God, had trouble keeping it together. He is the one who loses it and hits the rock. Yet, he instructs his brother not to mourn, to carry on and be impeccable. Moses did not go into silence. Frankly, Moses was a bit of a kvetch. He would complain to God and to the Israelites. He did not keep silent. But his brother Aaron, the high priest, did. Vayidom. He wailed in silence and carried on with his holy business in impeccable detail. But at what cost to himself? We can only imagine.
Uvshofar gadol yitakah, v’kol k’mama daka yishama – when the great shofar is sounded, when it cries out, a small quiet voice can be heard.
As the thunder of grief is screaming in our ears, let it not stifle that small quiet voice within. Let it not snuff out our inner spark. Let us not go into the grave with those we have lost, because WE ARE HERE. Hinenu. And as we step into hinenu, let us not carry the burden of perfection, as individuals, as a community, as a country, as Jews. It is too much to bear and it is unattainable.
As we grieve, let us make room for hope. We can do both. We’re here to day to do teshuvah, to try to transform, to try to forgive ourselves and others, to try to be more compassionate, interconnected human beings in the midst of this ongoing hurricane. We’re here to try to do this sanely, with compassion, generosity and hope.
Within the extreme polarities that are battering us day after day, my teacher, Lori Lipten, tells us that we must “learn how to live within the paradox of embodying authentic power and vulnerability; hope and despair; birth and death; love and fear; wisdom and unconsciousness; resentment and forgiveness; trust and doubt; reaction and responsiveness; distraction and presence; calm centeredness and anxious control; us and them; mine and yours.”
As we learn to dance within these contrasts, we can touch the beauty of something far different than we believed was possible. We do not need to war with either side of these contrasts to wake up and evolve.
Let us not allow our grief to make us cynical. As 20th century Talmudist and Jewish philosopher Rabbi Soloveitchik wrote, “grief and lament have their place, but they cannot, must not, be given the final word.” The artist Nick Cave puts it a bit differently. “Unlike cynicism, hopefulness is hard-earned, makes demands upon us… Hopefulness is not a neutral position either. It is adversarial. It is the warrior emotion that can lay waste to cynicism.”
So let us be warriors for hope that is fueled by love, generosity and compassion that is not undermined by the tyranny of cynicism, the tyranny of fear, nor the tyranny of perfectionism.
G’mar Chatima Tova – May we all be sealed for a good and fulfilling life in the coming year. May we be safe, healthy, courageous and hopeful.
Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5785
In today’s Torah reading, we learn that Sarah has trouble conceiving, and instructs Abraham to be with her handmaiden Hagar, who then gives birth to Ishmael. Hagar lords motherhood over Sarah which makes Sarah resentful, and although years later, Sarah miraculously gives birth to Isaac, she still feels insecure and starts scheming to secure Isaac’s status in the family hierarchy, and has Abraham banish Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness with limited provisions.
Today’s Haftarah also pits two women against one another over fertility issues, Hannah and Peninah, the wives of Elkanah. Hannah can’t bear children, which devastates her. Peninah, on the other hand, is fertile, and lords this over Hannah. Elkanah tries to reassure Hannah and tells her that she is worth more than 10 sons, but Hannah cannot be consoled, and prays intensely, with bitter tears. She bargains with God – if God gives her a son, then she will offer him for priestly service.
Hannah’s way of praying grabs the attention of Eli the priest who notices that her lips are moving but without sound, and so he accuses her of drunkenness. Hannah explains that she is not drunk but rather praying intently. Eli believes her and gives her a blessing: לְכִי לְשָׁלוֹם (lechi l’shalom) – go in peace – and assures her that God will grant her request. And Hannah bears a son.
There is another parallel between the two biblical narratives, regarding making an offering of the son with first-born status. In the case of Hannah, she willingly makes an offering of her son Samuel to priestly service. With Sarah and Abraham’s son Isaac, it is more complicated and one of the most problematic stories in Torah. God commands Abraham to take a knife to Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice. Thankfully an angel intervenes, and Isaac is spared. When Sarah hears that her precious son had almost been sacrificed, she dies of shock.
In comparing the two stories of making an offering of the first-born son, we see differences in the states of consciousness of the two mothers in question. Hannah doesn’t give into the pettiness and jealousy that we see in Sarah’s treatment of Hagar. Hannah doesn’t have Elkanah banish Peninah and Peninah’s children. Instead, Hannah turns to faith whereas Sarah’s faith appears questionable. Upon overhearing the angels tell Abraham that she will conceive a child in her old age, Sarah laughs; it seems that Sarah had given up on her dream and loses faith. Hannah, on the other hand, does not give up, she does not laugh, but cries bitterly and prays.
We read in Talmud (Brachot 32b): “From the day that the Temple was destroyed the gates of prayer have been closed, but the gates of tears are not closed.” The Ralbag of medieval France adds that combining prayer and tears brings one closer to God.
In other words, our feelings count, our tears count, our grief counts.
Through Hannah’s tears, vulnerability and authenticity, she draws closer to God, and to her emotional and spiritual truth. She keeps the conversation going; she bargains and promises to make an unselfish offering in service of the community. No animals, no people were slaughtered or sacrificed on an altar; the power of words and the power of tears were used instead.
Hannah’s story teaches us that our feelings count and asks us to examine how the yearnings of our heart can be turned into offerings. What we want and what we long for, what we are grieving over can crack our hearts open and inspire us toward generosity, sharing and giving. The story of Hannah encourages us to be in conversation with our own hearts and not stifle that inner voice.
The rabbis of the Talmudic period were so affected by Hannah, that they said (Berachot 31) we must all move our lips when we pray. We do this together, as a community. Our individual yearnings, our individual conversations with God, that flow from our own hearts, are held together with the individual yearnings and conversations with God that flow from the hearts of the people sitting next to you, and the people sitting next to those people.
In this space, we yearn as unique individuals and we yearn together. We cry as individuals, and we cry together.
The contrast and parallels between Sarah and Hannah’s stories have a lot to teach us. We can see that our biblical ancestors were capable of evolving from one generation to the next. Through her deep, authentic prayer Hannah makes a tikkun on Sarah’s pettiness and jealousy. Hannah changes the paradigm and breaks a cycle of dysfunction by transmuting her suffering in a more enlightened way, that is not only good for her, but for future generations.
None of us had perfect parents nor perfect ancestors; none of us are perfect human beings. Reviewing our developmental and family history safely, with softness and compassionate curiosity, allows us to see patterns of conditioning and shaping. Some of us may find it useful to do this in a professional therapeutic setting. Some of us may prefer to journal, meditate, go for cranial sacral treatments or Reiki. Some of us do all of that to walk the path of self-discovery, which is work worth doing and doing safely. It is the work of liberation and healing, not just for us, but for the future generations who stand on our shoulders.
Just as our biblical ancestors have evolved so can we. If they can break through cyclical dysfunctional patterns and find healthier ways of acting and being, so can we. These stories invite us to awaken to the dysfunctional patterns that we have absorbed because of personality, ethnicity, culture, history, tradition, and our very religion. These stories charge us to open our hearts and minds, to be bold, to challenge the status quo, and embrace the sacred wisdom of the past while at the same time release what is no longer working.
Hannah, spoke directly to the Source of Being. She did not go through a mediator or priest. She allowed herself to be vulnerable without apology, to stand in her authenticity with strength and resolve. She did not get rid of the competition nor abuse her privilege. She prayed with all her heart. She did not let her grief stifle her inner voice. She remained hopeful in her pain by continuing to be in conversation with God and as such, she elevated her consciousness and made a commitment to share the gift that she might receive, and in so doing she shifted the paradigm for all of us. Hannah’s story inspires us to move in this direction. Zichronah livrachah. Remember her and her story for she is a blessing for all of us. Learning from the contrast of her story and Sarah’s is a blessing for all of us. May we continue on the holy path of learning from our ancestors, for their sake, for our sake and for the sake of future generations.
Re-Rolling the Torah Together
Words by Keith Kurz
The Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation met with the Hebrew Day School’s third grade.
In preparation for Rosh Hashanah the Torah needed to be re-rolled from nearly the end to nearly the beginning. Deb Kraus led the third grade class in a prayer for doing the mitzvah.
The students asked good questions and sang songs during the re-rolling. Intermittently Deb stopped the rolling of the Torah to point out many items, including the beginning of each book, the 10 Commandments, the Shima and the place where Avram changed his name to Avraham and Sarai to Sarah. Noah learned to re-roll the Torah and perform hagbah.The Hebrew Day School hopes to have more activities with AARC.
Yom Kippur Workshops
Workshop #1: Deborah Dash Moore on Mordechai Kaplan 2:00-3:10pm
Workshop #2: Niggun Circle 2:00-3:10pm
In this “workshop” we’ll be calming ourselves down by chanting melodies and prayers that focus on healing. Interspersed in this, there will be opportunities to share what you need to.
There’s nothing I’d rather do on a Yom Kippur afternoon (or any other time, TBH!) than sing. If you are so inclined, please join us. – Deb K
Workshop #3: Listening through Grief in a time of Middle East upheaval: Communal Yizkor 3:15-4:25pm
This is a listening session for anyone who has experienced grief (in the largest sense) related to the Middle East over the past year and wishes to process it as a community as a step towards tikkun olam and personal Teshuva. This will be a space to listen with respect and kindness. Our intention is not to discuss policy, to engage in debate or to challenge each other’s experience but rather to deepen our sense of community. Sign-up now, if you want to reserve a spot. Please arrive on-time. We will be starting promptly.
