We are thrilled to share that Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation invites you to an evening of prayer, poetry, music, and community at our LGBTQ+ Pride Kabbalat Shabbat, on Friday, June 26, 2026 at 6:30 pm, at the JCC, 2939 Birch Hollow Dr. A parve potluck follows the service. Come as you are. Bring your whole self. Bring a friend. Bring a parve dish to share (no meat, no dairy, but eggs ok)!
A Torah Portion Made for This Moment
The week’s parsha, Chukat-Balak, is the perfect queer-positive parsha to center our thoughts around Pride and the LGBTQ+ experience. At its heart is a jenny — a female donkey — who sees what the powerful male prophet Balaam cannot: the angel of God standing directly in his path. When she speaks, she disrupts everything. She’s marginalized, overlooked, and dismissed — and she’s the one with the clearest vision of truth.
Sound familiar?
The central drama of this portion is Balaam’s repeated attempt to curse the Israelites, which God transforms, again and again, into blessing. “A people that dwells apart, not reckoned among the nations” — words Balaam meant as an insult that become, through a queer lens, a source of pride. To be outside the norm, to resist definition by society’s narrow metrics, to be “strange” in a world that rewards sameness — these are not curses. They are, read rightly, blessings.
Transforming Curses into Blessings, Because Pride is Protest
There’s a wonderful saying–I have it on 2 t-shirts–that “Pride is Protest.” It’s an odd phrase, but an important one: we need to always remember that LGBTQ+ Pride was born out of the Stonewall Uprising, in the early hours of June 28, 1969, when queer patrons of the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, New York City, resisted a police raid. This is why we celebrate Pride in June, and why we must always keep in mind that we have turned the hideous efforts to shame and humiliate vulnerable members of the community into a reason to celebrate, march, dance in the streets, wear all sorts of rainbow decorations, and celebrate LGBTQ+ people.
Inspired by the Chukat-Balak parsha and Pride month, we’ll engage in a special ritual to help us each release a curse, hurt, or fear bogging us down and then embrace a hope or blessing to lift us up and give us pride, just as Balaam’s curse was transformed, into something new and positive.
Poetry, Music, and the Sacred Art of Being Seen
The evening will be woven through with poetry and song that honor LGBTQ+ lives and sacred belonging. We are thrilled to welcome Detroit-based poet Stephanie Glazier, a Lambda Literary Fellow, who will read her own work at the service — including her moving poem Agent Orange, Again, a meditation on prayer, rage, love, and the wildness of God. Stephanie’s manuscript Of Fish & Country has been recognized by the National Poetry Series, the Alice James Book Prize, and many others. Her work has appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, and Alaska Quarterly Review, and she served for years as poetry editor of Gertrude, the celebrated LGBTQ+ literary journal. Having her voice with us on this night is a true gift.
The service will also draw on the poetry of Mary Oliver (who was, in her own life, a testament to love on one’s own terms), and on the music of Debbie Friedman — including Miriam’s Song — performed by an ensemble of musicians and singers from our community who are bringing their whole hearts to this evening.
Our Interpretive Amidah, adapted from Mishkan Ga’avah: Where Pride Dwells, will include a blessing for our LGBTQ+ ancestors — those who fought to love, who insisted on their dignity, who contributed their fierceness and art and voice to this world. We walk in their memory.
Celebrating All of Who We Are
The children’s blessing will name LGBTQ+ figures from our tradition — Joseph, David and Jonathan, Naomi and Ruth — alongside the matriarchs and patriarchs, because our stories have always been part of the story. We’ll close with Fred Small’s beloved Everything’s Possible, a lullaby for every child that holds open all the doors of a life: “You can be anybody you want to be / You can love whomever you will.”
Throughout the service, we’ll use fluid, expansive language for the Divine — because our tradition has always known that God is bigger than any single name.
Pronoun stickers will be available. All are welcome at this table.
## Join Us
**LGBTQ+ Pride Kabbalat Shabbat — Parshat Chukat-Balak**
Friday, June 26, 2026 · 6:30 pm
JCC · 2939 Birch Hollow Dr, Ann Arbor
Parve potluck to follow
Shabbat Shalom — and Happy Pride. 🌈
