Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

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Emergent Strategy and Congregational Transformation

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By Etta Heisler

This is the text of a d’var Torah, Torah teaching, that Etta gave on the occasion of the 2022 Annual Member Meeting. If you prefer, you can watch a video recording of Etta reading this d’var on YouTube.

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Change is coming.

What do we need to imagine

to be prepared? 

I know I’m scared.

I know from brokeness there’s whole.

“Change is Coming” song by Molly Bajgot inspired by text in adrienne marie brown’s book Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds.

Welcome! Wow, it is so good to be here today, and so good to be in community with you always.

In the spirit of thinking about our community and congregation as an ecosystem, I am going to talk today about some ideas from adrienne maree brown’s text Emergent Strategy which draws on wisdom from nature and connects it to both the experience and strategy of social transformation.

A few quick words on brown – she is a writer, facilitator, doula, and activist, and describes herself as “growing healing ideas in public” through her work. What I love about brown, one of the many things I love, is that her world view draws as heavily as it does from the thinking of activists and community organizers like Grace Lee Boggs as it does from somatic healing and the science fiction writings and ideas of Octavia Butler. As usual, women and queer folk of color lead the way in theories of social transformation and I am going to share some of these teachings with you now.

When I was asked to give this d’var, I drove over to my friend’s house who was borrowing my copy to pick it up. I flipped immediately in the book to the 6th chapter called “nonlinear and iterative: the pace and pathways of change.” In this section, brown describes the Occupy movement, and the Movement for Black Lives (also known as Black Lives Matter) as movements that grew from “common longing, from a relinquishing of control, and from a celebration of leaderfull transformation.” (106)

When I reread that line, it hit me right in the kishkes. I felt it like a kick in my stomach. “LeaderFULL transformation.”

I thought of my dread when I learned Rabbi Ora was leaving, the rollercoaster of rabbinic interviews this spring, and the joy and comfort of watching our community at high holidays this fall. Initially, I felt a bit hopeless on the day we learned of Rav Ora’s departure – leaderless and wandering – until you all showed me that in fact, we are leaderFULL. When I read that line, it felt like I was looking at this room of us in the mirror. I smiled. I actually got chills.

After sharing some observations of these movements, brown goes on to describe grief as a “time-traveling emotion.” (106) As many of you know, AARC has been a container, conduit, and comfort for me in my grief through the loss of my beloved Savta, then through the general mourning of the pandemic, followed quickly by my niece’s sudden death last year. It is in this brief side discussion of the emotional experiences that come with transformation that brown talks about the infinite paradoxes of grief. She lists them in fact for nearly half a page, and in that list she writes first that “water seeks scale, that even your tears seek the recognition of community.” (110) I immediately imagined the room at the UU church where we hold our Yizkor service each fall filling to the ceiling with our tears, and all of us swimming around. A few lines down in the list, brown writes that “that the sacred comes from the limitations.” (110)

At this point, I put my book down and repeated that phrase to myself. “The sacred comes from the limitations.” Into my mind came an image of a Rose of Jericho – or resurrection plant. It is a kind of moss that grows in the valleys or dried riverbeds/wadis in the desert. I saw them often when I was in Israel/Palestine. It stands shriveled and gray until rains come and then it opens up, its stems and fronds fill, and the wadi is briefly full of green. This is one way that nature has evolved for both scarcity and abundance. That in times where resources are low, creation becomes desiccated, curled in, and protective. But it is also alive, resilient, observing, waiting. When the rain returns, it blooms.

Perhaps in our AARC ecosystem, we are a field of Jericho roses. The question is, is it the dry season or the rainy season?

As the chapter continues, brown describes a trip to Occupy Wall Street. In some detail she illustrates the variety of ways she observed people contributing and supporting one another in the context of a decentralized, “leaderfull” movement built on people’s longing, needs, and responses. I could smell it, I could hear it – the sound of raised voices rippling across the crowd repeating words on “the people’s microphone,” food tables, medics and tents and art and music.

And then, in a new paragraph, she writes one line: 

“No one is special, everyone is needed.” (111)

We have a similar teaching in Judaism, in a hasidic tale that explains that Reb Simcha Bunam carried two slips of paper, one in each pocket. On one, a phrase from the Talmud: “For my sake, the world was created.” and on the other, a line from Avraham in the Torah: “I am but dust and ashes.” 

No one is special. Everyone is needed. Scarcity and abundance. Sacredness born of limitation. Paradoxes that have been around as long as desert moss and the times of our biblical forbearers.

At this point, brown goes into some wonderful thoughts on anti-capitalism (111-113) that are less relevant to the points I am trying to make today, but it’s still really good shit, so I’ll trust you to check the book out and read it for yourself. All of it leads into her thoughts on how to think about those voices who are critical of change – the questioners, the “what-if”-ers, the “we have to know our goals before we can decide how to get there” voices inside of us. brown observes, rightly in my opinion, that because capitalism was created to make profit off of people, capitalism is best served when everyone agrees and takes predictable action. Well, transformation just doesn’t happen that way.

brown goes on to discuss that while critique is a necessary part of the learning and iteration that transformation requires, transformation, as brown puts it, requires a “high tolerance of messiness and many, many paths being walked at once.” (119) (brown describes this messiness as “chaotic beauty” (119) – though I prefer to think of it as a beautiful cacophony.) 😉 In other words, there are multiple melodies, numerous “right” ways for us to move forward. And furthermore these ways must, by their very nature, be walked and explored in parallel, rather than one at a time.

So, in the tradition of every good d’var Torah, I ask: what are we to glean from all this? What wisdom can we draw as we embark on another year of our congregational evolution? How can we navigate these parallel and divergent paths and be curious and open to the iterations that stand before us even if some of them confuse us or take us way off course? brown has a perspective on this too, a metaphor offered by one of her teachers, Jenny Lee at Allied Media Projects. brown writes that the role of organizers, of change makers, “in an ecosystem is to be earthworms, processing and aerating soil, making fertile ground out of the nutrients of sunlight, water, and everything that dies, to nurture the next cycle of life.” (116) In this paradigm, brown offers, failure does not exist. In fact, everything we do either grows deeper roots or “decomposes to leave lessons in the soil for the next attempt.” (116)

In the AARC ecosystem, all of the efforts we share, all that we discuss, imagine and make – every idea, conversation, question, experiment, disagreement, celebration – all of it makes the fertile ground from which the next blossom of our community will emerge. It will take time. We will stumble and get turned in circles. We will need to cultivate it with our own longing and curiosity. To get there, we must simply do as adrienne maree brown instructs us on page 120 and say “I invest my energy in what I want to see grow. I belong to efforts I deeply believe in and help shape those.”

May it be so. Ken yehi ratzon.
Read adrienne maree brown’s bio or purchase Emergent Strategy to learn more. To dig in even further, you can listen to the Octavia’s Parables podcast hosted by adrienne maree brown.

Yom Kippur Community Kavanot

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This Yom Kippur brought more opportunities to learn from the incredibly wise members of our congregation. There is enough wisdom and perspective within this blog post to keep you thinking all year! Mazel Tov to our Kavanot team on your incredible insights, your contributions are deeply appreciated.

Green sprout in parched earth

Al Heit , Sins Against Our Future

By Joshua Samuels

When speaking of different transgression we should atone for on Yom Kippur an important  learning from the Mishna states:

Sins between a person and Makom, Yom Kippur atones for, between two people, Yom Kippur does not offer atonement until the wronged person is made whole. (Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah Mishna yoma Het Zayin)

I have left the phrase used for God in the Hebrew form, it is a less commonly used name, and also means place in Hebrew.

This teaches us those transgressions where we have sinned against the creator can be atoned through prayer, but those against our fellow person require us to make them whole again. 

If we take the word Makom in its simple everyday meaning, we can view this as sins against our place, our world can be atoned for on Yom Kippur. Unfortunately, the havoc and destruction we are wreaking on our environment is a transgression not only against Makom, in all its meanings, but against future people who will live on this planet, against our children and our children’s children.’

From those people of the future, as yet unborn, we cannot ask for, nor obtain forgiveness for the world we leave them.

While we cannot ask for forgiveness from the people of the future, we can strive for atonement through our actions.

There are many things that I do in my everyday life, that with a bit more awareness and thought would have less of an environmental impact.

It can be succinctly summed up as consuming less and producing less waste, but behind that lies a myriad of choices.

There are many things that I do out of lack of attention, quotidian things such as

I forget my reusable bags and use plastic bags from the store

I run the garbage disposal instead of collecting the scraps for the compost heap

I make multiple trips in the car when I could consolidate with some attention and so on, the list is long.

And there are changes in habits, such as changing what I eat to eat more local food and less meat.

Many choices are a question of changing habits or opting for a bit less convenience when the cost in resources is high, but some choices are far more challenging and there are things I am not willing to give up. Travel, particularly to visit family, is not something I am ready to forego. There is value in making these choices consciously, in weighing the global cost against the personal benefit

It is at times overwhelming when we feel that the actions we take are but a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is composed of drops, many drops.

So for this Al Het I will say in Hebrew:

Al Het Shehatanu neged Atid Olamaynu

For sins against the future of our world.

So let us strive to consume less, produce less waste, live with more disorganization and imperfection. Embrace entropy, it saves energy.

Releasing What Does Not Serve Us 

By: Seth Kopald 

We have finished the days of repentance when we asked our family and friends for forgiveness for our harmful deeds throughout the year. We have cleansed our actions. Yet, perhaps there’s more. Deep in our cells, our bones, our muscles, and our energy, our ancestors have transmitted to us many things, gifts and burdens. 

Our ancestors carefully crafted life rules to live by, ones that kept them safe, free, and prosperous. Perhaps these rules include: don’t shine too brightly, don’t advertise who you are, be the best at everything no matter the cost, or be alone because we get hurt when we are in numbers. Yet, they have also given us gifts. Like, the value of learning, community, singing and dancing, questioning authority, and having personal connections with G-d. 

Kol Nidre, the namesake prayer of this service, is an aramaic prayer revoking vows made before G-d and it is a call to reconnect with our ancestors. We were born into these vows and we are called to release them, the ones that don’t serve us. We are called to make a choice – to embrace life and live it fully. In order to do that, we must release the burdens that keep us from living. 

As we uncover burdens passed down by our ancestors, perhaps you may hear voices inside saying, “we can’t let it go, or we will lose connection”, or perhaps ”These burdens help us to never forget”. From my experience, when we ask our ancestors if this is true, they tell us, “You will always remember and we will always be here, but you don’t need the pain and these restrictions to life.” They want us to be free. 

We are now moving into the Amidah, a silent prayer, and in this place there is an opening, a moment to connect with G-d and our ancestors. I want to offer you a brief mediation to free us more deeply into that experience. 

So now I invite you to notice in your body any energy, beliefs, or unnecessary rules that have been passed down to you, ones that keep you from living and being your full Self. 

Now notice the gifts that have been passed down to you. 

Now, put them in two separate piles. 

See if it is ok to release the burdens. Perhaps you can send them back to your ancestors and they can be cleansed by sending the burdens over the horizon. Perhaps you need time to decide if this is ok and you want to temporarily put the burdens in a sacred container and save them, in case you do need them. Either way, you can experience what it is like to be free, to release the vows of our ancestors that no longer serve us. You can bury them with honor, like we would an old Torah that can no longer be used. You can step into a mikvah in your mind and allow the waters of Miriam to wash them away. See what, if any of this feels right for you. 

Now, embrace the gifts, and allow your natural qualities to emerge: curiosity, calmness, compassion and courage. Let them fill you up. With those qualities and gifts, let’s enter the silent Amida together, a chance to connect with G-d, one-on-one. As you do, if it feels right, invite your ancestors to be with you as we all turn toward G-d’s essence.

How To Approach The Process of Change

By Deb Kraus

Today is a day we afflict our souls.

It’s a day where we rehearse our own death.  Where we say over and over again all the sins we could have possibly committed, even ones that wouldn’t have occurred to us, and ask God to forgive them.  We beg to be written into a book of life that most of us don’t really believe exists.  We abstain from eating, from drinking even water, from bodily pleasures, from adorning ourselves.  We spend all day in shul.

In other words, it’s a day we can really “get our self-hatred on.”

So why, out of all the holidays of the year, is Yom Kippur my favorite holiday?

Possibly because I reject most of that.

Somehow, along with the orthodoxy I was raised with [which had me worrying one year about having turned on—and then immediately off—the light in my bedroom as I went to sleep after Kol Nidre (clearly I was more afraid of my mother than I was of God)] I was also brought up with the idea that to change, you had to really hate yourself.  As a clinical psychologist with 35 years of experience, I know that I’m not the only one to have gotten that message. 


But I also know that it’s not true.  You can’t self-hate yourself into self-acceptance or change.

Instead the radical notion, the one that actually works, is that we can love ourselves into changing.  I have three ideas about how we might do that:

First, if you are here trying to become a better person, in the sense of becoming someone other than you are, please be kind and know the impossibility of that.  As Nadia Bolz-Webber, the tattoo’ed Lutheran pastor of the House of Sinners and Saints in Denver says, “we can grow in wisdom but we still fundamentally remain ourselves.”  In other words, let’s try to stop being someone else or some ideal version of ourselves, and become, instead,  the best “us’es” we can become.  It’s the Rabbi Zuzya story all over again:  when asked what his main concern was in dying, he said “God won’t judge me on why I wasn’t more like Moses.  He’ll ask me why I wasn’t more like Zuzya.”

Second, we can take a lesson from one of my more self-loathing clients, who nonetheless parents very well. He says to his toddler daughter, “there’s nothing wrong with you that you can’t fix with what’s right with you.”  I love that, and I offer it to all of us.  “There’s nothing so wrong with us that we can’t fix it with what’s right with us.”

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, I know we don’t believe in the actual book of life, but in case you do, I have it on good authority (that is, a podcast) that we come into this holiday already written in.  If we believe we need to be saved on this day, know that we already have been. 

What if we took these three ideas into our day of prayer?  As we take this deep-dive look inside ourselves, cataloging all the ways we missed the mark once again this year, what if we did it with the idea that together, with a combination of God, community and ourselves, we can fix it.  And become the best versions of ourselves that we can.

As Rabbi Ora said at this point last year,

 “…it is love – the love we receive, the love we transmit – that enables us and energizes us to change. It’s not that we will be more worthy of love if we change. It’s that love – being loved, and being loving – is precisely what enables us and energizes us to undertake the holy work of teshuvah.”

She concluded with an invitation.  “Let’s start from that loving place.” 

Rosh Hashanah Kavanot 2022

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What a joy it was to learn from and enjoy our community’s teachings on Rosh Hashanah. If you missed it or would like to read the Kavanot that were shared by Emily Eisbruch, Seth Kopald, Anita Rubin-Meiller or Dave Nelson you are in luck! We have posted them here on our blog to read and cherish going forward. Mazel Tov to our Kavanah writers on your profound and heart felt teachings, your contributions are deeply appreciated.

Gratitude for Community
– by Emily Eisbruch

Welcome community of
sharing, being, caring
Music, chanting, praying, dancing
Group aliyot with meaningful themes
Acknowledging our struggles and naming our dreams

Helping with the mitzvah corps
Warm congregation we are working for
August picnic at Bandemere park
Breaking the fast, after havdalah, after dark

Being together through COVID blues
Telling our stories in the Jewish news
Building thoughtful bonds on our listserv Recon chat
Where we ask each other, how about that?

Terrific book group conversations
On jews throughout the generations
Holidays – latke versus hamentashen debates
and pondering of collective fates

Creating chuppah cover squares
A gorgeous collaboration where each one shares
Ner tamid, Magillah ark, Torah Table tapestry
Members manifesting their artistry

For our youth, environmentally and ethically aware
An innovative and bold Beit Sefer
At these days of awe, let’s take measure
Of the community we are together
With gratitude, let’s look at how to nurture, how to be
In the Hebrew year five seven eight three

Praying from the Heart 

By: Seth Kopald 

As we continue deepening into our Rosh Hashanah experience, I invite you to ask yourself: Who is praying? 

Take a look inside. Is it a part of you who is going through the motions because this is what we do on Rosh Hashanah, or one who thinks we “should” be praying on this Holy day? Is it a part of you who might want something from G-d: healing, forgiveness, even a sense of ease? You may notice how much of your attention is above your shoulders, in your cognition. 

Now, slowly allow your attention to drop into your heartspace. Notice, you can sense yourself and the people around you, from your heart. From this place, perhaps we can extend warmth and love to those parts of ourselves who think we should pray, and recognize their desires and their fears. 

–

From this place of deep compassion for ourselves, we can then turn to G-d. From our heart, notice how we feel in G-d’s presence, no matter how you sense or perceive them. Perhaps you feel, or have felt abandoned, by G-d. Yet, for a moment, see if we can feel the acceptance that is there, and how we are also a part of the Divine – the life force we all share that is our true Selves? 

–

Can we for a moment, if you choose, allow yourself to be held, to sense the presence of something greater than ourselves. See how our hearts respond, how our bellies respond, and how our full bodies want to respond. Perhaps ask G-d in this moment: What do you want me to know? And see what you sense. . . 

–

As we move forward in prayer, let’s commune with G-d from this place, alive, embodied, vibrant, compassionate, and from our hearts – let’s commence in prayer.

Kavanah on the Non-Duality of the Divine

David Erik Nelson

About two weeks into the pandemic one of my kids had a question about the Kabbalistic Tree of Life diagram. I don’t recall what the question was, who asked it, or if anyone’s interest persisted long enough for me to find an answer.

But that got me looking at kabbalah, and I kept returning to it, because in those claustrophobic early days of the plague it was definitely more reassuring to read commentaries on centuries-old rabbinic esoterica than anything I was likely to see in the Washington Post.

I’m one of those people who often prefers to follow “the words of your heart” instead of the ones in the siddur. So I’m sharing this, for those who are likewise inclined.

Just a warning: at first, what I’m gonna read will come off as kind of anodyne and hippy-dippy. Then, on reflection, it will begin to seem sort of awful. That makes me nervous.

But I’m still going to share it with you. 

It starts like this:

The essence of divinity is found in every single thing—nothing but it exists. Since it causes every thing to be, no thing can live by anything else. It enlivens them; its existence exists in each existent.

Do not attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose that God emanates until a certain point, and that from that point on is outside of God, you have dualized. Realize, rather, that GOd exists in each existent. Do not say, “This is a stone and not God.” Rather, all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by divinity.

I don’t think that’s too earth shattering, right? I mean, it sounds an awful lot like a combination of Yoda describing the Force and the first lines from that Beatles song “I am the Walrus” (♬♫♪ I am he as you are he as you are me / And we are all together … Koo-koo-ka’choo… ♬♫♪ )

But Rabbi Moses ben Jacob Cordovero—the 16th Century Kabbalist who wrote what I read—doesn’t leave it at that. He goes on, and that’s where things get potentially…uncomfortable. Cordovero says:

Before anything emanated, there was only God. God was all that existed. Similarly, after God brought into being that which exists, there is nothing but God. You cannot find anything that exists apart from it. There is nothing that is not pervaded by the power of divinity. If there were, God would be limited, subject to duality. Rather, God… is present in everything, and everything comes into being from it. Nothing is devoid of its divinity.

That’s a little more extreme than Yoda and the Beatles. 

Because Cordovero isn’t saying “All of the good things are pervaded by God” or “All of the righteous are children of God” or “Everything in nature is God.”

His claim–which you could derive just from the words of the Sh’ma–is that “Nothing is devoid of God’s divinity.”

That’s … problematic. If I say nothing is outside of God, then I’m surely saying that the squirrel is divine and the car is divine, the meat is divine and the bullet is divine, the victim is divine, the killer is divine, the rescuer is divine, the ambulance divine, diesel is divine, the kid watching it all on YouTube is divine–

That all quickly becomes overwhelming. 

Cordovero claimed that by “Contemplating this, you are humbled, your thoughts purified.”

I don’t know about that.

But I do know that contemplating this non-duality—this complete saturation of all of reality (good, bad, and ugly) in the divine—feels simple and honest and true, in the way the Sh’ma feels simple and honest and true. 

And, on a functional level, it helps me get past the bumpier bits of our liturgy. 

A lot of us feel weird begging the forgiveness and protection of “Our Father, Our King” in Avinu Malkeinu. I feel less weird about it when I reflect that I am singing to a paternal majesty in which we all co-participate, that I’m begging me to forgive me, and for us to forgive each other, and to protect each other (and all of everything) from pestilence, sword, famine, captivity, destruction, iniquity–and all the other very unpleasant things that dwell together with us in the divine.

Zichronot

By Anita Rubin-Meiller

When my mother died in 1986 at the too soon age of 64, 3 months after my wedding, I made a decision to remember God. I was acutely aware of my choice…would I see God as this distant, all powerful entity that just took my mother’s life; or would I turn to the God of my still evolving understanding…a Divine presence shining through the loving and comforting presence of friends and family.  I chose the latter and remember gathering in my childhood bedroom with 3 of my dearest friends, sharing memories, laughter and tears. The blasts of the shofar in this Zichronot section of the Shofar service are a calling from God to us to remember we are never unseen, never forgotten; to remember the God that took care of Noah and saved the species of the Earth from total extinction; to remember that we too, are tasked with seeing the holiness in each and every living and breathing life form; that because we are remembered our actions matter.

There is an old fable, recounted in M.Scott Peck’s book…A Different Drum. It tells the tale of a monastery that had “fallen into hard times.” With only 5 monks remaining, its order was dying. Desperate for new possibilities, the aged Abbot makes a visit to the Rabbi from a nearby village. The Rabbi too was experiencing a dispirited community and so the two faith leaders conversed and commiserated. As the Abbot readied to return to the monastery, he asked if the Rabbi could offer any advice. The Rabbi responded, “ I have no advice to give, but the Messiah is among you.” You might guess what happened then…perhaps it would happen here, or anywhere…the monks, thinking that the Messiah could be any one of them started treating each other with immense kindness; started seeing the particular sparks of God each one manifested; started creating an aura of love and respect that began to attract visitors and even young men desiring to join the Order.

In my nascent meditation practice with the Awakened Heart community, I have been learning over and over again how reality is defined by what we bring our attention to. The shofar blasts of Zichronot ask us to bring our attention to God’s covenant; to the God whose image we are created in; to a God that is not only Sovereign but in the words of Rabbi Samuel Barth“a parent who has time and love for each child”. Through the teachings of Ram Daas, we are being asked to bring our attention to a God who bids us to “love, serve and remember.” What would it look like if what we were paying attention to and remembering was the Divine unfolding in the universe through the interconnection of everything? At the Awakened Heart August 2020 retreat, Sylvia Boorstein, a beloved Jewish Buddhist teacher, offered this drash to introduce the prayer: Hah-raynee m’kah-bel ahleye et mitzvat haboray Ve-ahavtah l’ray-ahchah k’mochah; translated by Rabbi Jeff Roth in this prayer chant as: I take the mitzvah upon myself of loving all who cross my path, offering kindness from my heart, loving you and loving me:  She said,“My choice of the most important commandment might be fixing a mezuzah to the doorposts of your house because when you go in and out and touch the mezuzah you are sensitive to this passage, “to love God with all our soul, all our might, all our heart”. If you took it really seriously you can’t just kiss the mezuzah and leave, you can’t take any grudges with you, so you have to stand in the doorway and think about it for a while – Ok, I can do this; Ok, heart clear – Go! And when you return, you pause, I can’t go in until I’m sure that my heart is free of negativity…may I be free of negativity and the danger it would pose to me of confusing my mind. You have to check yourself everytime you go in and out, am I fulfilling the commandment…I’m going to love everybody indiscriminately…May I have no ill will in my heart, may I have an unmortgaged heart.”

Perhaps for some of you, as it has been for me, this idea of keeping the heart clear of ill will has become particularly challenging amidst our political climate and escalation of hateful, provocative speech and actions. It has been surprisingly difficult to restrain my own hateful speech and violent wishes, albeit usually expressed under my breath or in the privacy of my own home. Still, I can feel its impact on my heart and spirit. So recently, I returned to Sylvia’s teaching and added mezuzahs to 2 other entranceways of our home. I have an earnest desire to follow her suggested practice, knowing the peace that can come to my body, mind and heart from doing so. Knowing it will help me remember that Everything, and everyone, is God. Perhaps the shofar blasts about to come will awaken the capacity to bring that intention into action; to remember to remember.

Some Delicious Recipe Ideas For Your Holiday Break From Our Congregation’s Fantastic Cooks!

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Will you be spending holiday break at home with family this year? Why not try a delicious recipe from some of the fantastic cooks in our congregation!

If you have a recipe you would like to share, type it in the comments below!

Veggie Barley Bake Recipe by Rena Basch:

https://aarecon.org/dish-cold-winter-evening

Rena’s Basch’s Veggie Barley Bake

Dina’s Cranberry Relish Recipe:

https://aarecon.org/dinas-cranberry-relish/

Challah Recipes from Lori Lichtman, Nancy Meadow, Fred Feinberg

https://aarecon.org/food-feature-challah/

Clare Kinberg’s Sufganyot Recipe

https://aarecon.org/sufganiyot/

Marcy Epstein’s Pear Plum Kugel

https://aarecon.org/marcys-kugel/

AARC Mitzvah Corps – an Essential Ingredient of a Caring Community

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By Anita Rubin-Meiller written for the Washtenaw Jewish News

“Mitzvah comes from the root word tzavta, which means connection. There are 613 mitzvot, and therefore, 613 ways 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. When I became chair of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation (AARC) Mitzvah Corps several years ago, I knew that what we could offer to the larger community would best be generated by what we offered each other to build connection, support, and a sense of being known. Towards that end, we began having quarterly meetings, which moved to Zoom during shutdown and have been in person since the availability of the vaccine. The meetings 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.”

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.”

Early on the Pandemic showed us that support might have to arrive in ways that we were unaccustomed to. We were placed in lockdown in March, 2020 and a month later, a former beloved member of our congregation notified me that she had just lost her mother and was seeking support for one night of Shiva. She and her family had other resources for Shiva as well, but it was especially important to her during this time of “virtual only” contact to be with people who knew her, her family and may even have known her mother. She had been an active member of the congregation for many years and had celebrated the Bar and Bat Mitzvahs of her children with us. It was a certain joy to be able to connect her with Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner and know that her needs in the midst of grief would be well tended to. The Mitzvah Corps notified  the congregation of the chance to offer support, and our first Zoom Shiva was manifested. While a Zoom Shiva could never substitute for the in-person hugs, warm personal exchanges, and provision of food that happen in person, for this woman, seeing familiar faces, in a religious context that meant a lot to her, “felt like home”.

Another request prompted by the societal circumstances we found ourselves in was from a long time AARC member with chronic health issues that impacted her mobility and sense of safety. At the start of the pandemic, she was experiencing greater physical difficulty, and had had a couple of falls. It was also just barely a year since she had lost her beloved husband, and her loneliness and isolation was acutely felt. At the suggestion of a good friend, she contacted the Mitzvah Corps and explored what support could be offered. We created a chain of daily phone calls with a combination of AARC members and personal friends, that continues to this day. She says she is “so thankful” and that through these calls she has come to trust that “someone cares about me”.

Some needs met by the Mitzvah Corps, such as helping families host services for B’nei Mitzvah have been unnecessary during these past 2 years. Other needs have remained the same. We have organized meal chains for families bringing home a newborn and for individuals moving through significant illness or injury. We have provided rides to medical appointments and assisted with grocery shopping. We have been grateful that when a need is made known, many members of our congregation rise to the occasion to pitch in.

As it is designed now, the five Mitzvah Corps members carry the responsibility to mobilize support when and where it is called for. All requests come through the chair person and are either met by her, or assigned accordingly. We have been glad to be available during these difficult times, but at times have also felt the strain of higher demand, as when two of our members were significantly injured and another’s family was ill with Covid. 

The pandemic also thwarted initial efforts from some Corps members to start new offerings, a support group for families caring for their elders and a support group for parents of teens. Hopefully these will happen in the future.

“You don’t always think of yourself as someone who will need something, but we are all vulnerable and there are times we will need help.”

At our most recent quarterly meeting we began to address the issues of increasing membership in the Mitzvah Corps and being better able to know, and meet, what the needs of the congregation’s members truly are. As we puzzled over what we’d want others to know about our efforts, one member, Caroline Richardson, observed: “You don’t always think of yourself as someone who will need something, but we are all vulnerable and there are times we will need help.” Our board liason, Debra Gombert, observed:” the act of bringing a meal to congregation members in need was about connection, not cooking; about being in community and creating community.”

It seems that the Covid pandemic and other factors in the past few years have highlighted great need in many areas for many people. It can be overwhelming to know where you can have an impact that matters, if that is your desire. But, as it says in the Mishnah, “Anyone who saves a life, it is as if they saved an entire world.” The AARC Mitzvah Corps offers an opportunity to lighten the burden of one individual, or family, and by doing so increase your own sense of well -being and joy. 

If you would like to learn more about the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation please visit aarecon.org, or contact Gillian Jackson at aarcgillian@gmail.com or Rabbi Ora Nitkin-Kaner at rabbi@aarecon.org.

To see this article in the December 2021 Washtenaw Jewish News, scroll to Page 19 here. https://washtenawjewishnews.org/PDFs/WJN-12-21-web.pdf

Renew Your Membership at AARC!

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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.

Capturing Learnings as the AARC enters the High Holiday Season

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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

A Note from Margo Schlanger and Sam Bagenstos

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Dear Chevra –

We moved temporarily to Ann Arbor for six months in 2008—and we showed up at the Hav (as this group was then known) pretty much right away.  Our children, Harry and Leila, were 8 and we didn’t want a gap in their Jewish education, so getting them enrolled in the Beit Sefer was a priority for us.  

Very quickly, the Hav became not just a source of Jewish acclimation/education for our kids but a crucial community for all of us. We didn’t move to Ann Arbor for permanent till 2011, but AARC meant it felt like coming home. 

A decade on, we’re moving away, temporarily, to DC.  Sam has started a new job in the Biden/Harris administration, and Margo is luckily able to work remotely for the UM Law School.  The current pandemic has little by way of silver lining, but for us, it does have one: because AARC’s activities are still all virtual, we’re able to remain active members of the community from afar. Virtual services are obviously different from in-person gatherings—but we have already found them to be a really meaningful way to stay connected to our haverim at AARC, and we are thrilled we can continue to do so.

So we just wanted to tell everyone that we’ll be away but not gone, and we hope to see you and to stay in touch.  

Le’shalom u’be’ahavah  

Margo Schlanger and Sam Bagenstos

Seth Kopald’s Simchat Torah Shabbat D’var Torah

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Rabbi Ora asked me these questions: “What is a metaphor/image that speaks to your experience of simcha (joy), and why? And what, if anything, is Jewish/spiritual about simcha for you?” 

From my personal experience, and based on the work I do with people everyday, Joy seems to emerge when we return to our natural, birthright qualities of our true Selves. I believe our natural qualities include curiosity, compassion, creativity, playfulness, and the capacity to feel joy. I believe we are all born with a light inside, connected to G-d, the universe, to life itself. That light carries and supports our freedom to express who we are. A light that allows joy to flourish, if it is allowed to shine unencumbered. 

Yet life seems to carry hurtful experiences that appear to dim or almost extinguish our light, sometimes beginning in the womb. On the other hand, when children receive unconditional love, when people around them value what they bring, their uniqueness of expression and thought, children don’t need to take on beliefs like feeling they are too much or not enough. They can shine their light with joy and perhaps carry that into adulthood. Simultaneously, our culture and even our religion can impose burdens on us as well. Of course, Judaism carries many gifts, rich in tradition: learning, sacred rituals, and resilience. For me, I realize that I have taken on intergenerational burdens tied to my understanding of what it means to be Jewish. I have always felt like I have to look over my shoulder for my own safety, and perhaps I need to hide, like our ancestors did in caves. 

A week or so ago, I looked inside myself and asked my system if I carried such legacy burdens. I saw myself sitting at the Passover table as a young child. I heard a voice in me say, “we must suffer” and when I asked why, it said, “in order to survive.” I looked around the 1970s table. I was with my family, no joy and little unconditional love, but there was more heaviness. The story of Passover. The gift of freedom came with a cost – the suffering we endured – slavery, witnessing plagues, death of sons, seas swallowing people, angels shushed for cheering, and we decided to never go into the promised land. To this day, my system has never allowed me to go to Israel, as if I still carry the burden of slavery in Egypt. This young part of me showed me the burdens that cover my joy during Passover, burdens I still carry today. 

This inner experience happened the same day I saw Rabbi Ora’s email inviting me to give this dvar torah. The depth of the timing felt sublime. I asked myself: Where is the joy? Where is the joy of the Jewish people? Is it in Israel, where people feel they have a homeland? I cannot say. Is it in the siddur? The one I was forced to get through in Hebrew school? No. As I explored this topic more deeply within myself, I saw the contrasting Jewish experiences I have had in my life.

You see, Joy was in the siddur at Summer camp. There was a loving Jewish community in which I lived for four weeks at a time. I went to both sessions, so eight weeks of Joy. We prayed every morning in a circle, swaying together, our voices filling the Beit Am. The dancing, the discussions, the ease of being together. Joyfully singing the birkat hamazon after every meal. The machine of Society gone, our burden of suffering paused. The sadness carried in the songs we sang felt more like a beautiful sadness, one that tied us all together. Then it was time to go home again, back to Hebrew school where I wanted to say to the Rabbi, “This isn’t being Jewish! This is a fashion show. We are running through the motions. No kavanah. It’s not from the heart.” Ironically, when I studied for my bar mitzvah, which was shared by another boy, an old school rabbi showed up for me and helped me learn my torah portion. He literally slammed his fist on the desk and shouted with passion, “You have to sing loud, and slow, From Your Heart!” One of the best moments of my Jewish life – sitting across the table from this mysterious rabbi. He felt like a wizard to me. And there we were on my bar mitzvah day, the other boy racing through, I drummed up my courage and sang from my heart. 

At camp, on kabbalat shabbat, we heard a story of a young boy who lived in an orthodox village. He walked into the synagogue one day, the old men davening in a murmur. The boy, not knowing the prayers, started singing what he knew, the Hebrew alphabet. He sang the alphabet with joy, no words, a nigun from the heart — and he was hushed by the men, shaming his natural love for G-d. The Rabbi stopped the service and shared what he saw: the boy was the only one truly praying. 

In our Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation, I see heart connection often. Rabbi Ora is a model for us. She allows her natural light to shine. Her words take us to deep understanding and compassion and she shares her heartfelt niguns with us all. One of our congregants led us in a nigun over the high holidays, her heart open and her voice connected deeply. She let her light shine. 

On this day we celebrate Simchat Torah with our new friends at Congregation Agudas Achim. 

The torah itself seems to hold the light that we all share inside, I feel its resonance. It’s not the words or the stories inside the torah scrolls, it’s the gestalt of it all that resonates with me. And today we roll it back to the beginning, B’reshit, when G-d sparked the first light of creation, the light that is within all of us. “G-d saw the light that it was good.” Yes, when I feel my light and the light of others, it does feel good. 

Our light may be covered, like the clouds cover the sun, but it is there nonetheless. Perhaps today as we roll back to the story of creation, the beginning of what we see as life itself, we can begin to unload the burdens we gathered along the way and those given to us by our lineage. Let the clouds part even briefly, so we can go back to our natural state and feel our light and the innate birthright qualities of that light. To me this is Joy, the return to ourSelves, and that is what I wish for all of you today. 

The Jews of old had light, and happiness and joy — may it be so for us! Esther 8:16

Inspired by my ancestors and the work of Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems (IFS) Model and all the wonderful IFS leaders.

Photo: Vladimir Kramer

One Farmer’s COVID Holiday Thoughts, October 2020

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By Carole Caplan

This year—in this unusual and uncertain year—unable to gather in community, I chose instead to pray outside.

The words and songs of the service streamed out of my phone which sat neatly tucked into my tool belt

I had been weeding as I prayed along, enjoying the morning sunshine and the cool fall air.

I think it was out somewhere between the rows of fading sunflowers and the newly planted kale that I surprisingly ran into God…or perhaps it was that God, equally as surprised, ran into me.

The familiar tunes had tugged at my heart, and suddenly—without thinking—I had sprung up and began to dance, twirling to the music with the sun on my face and laughing like a little girl.

As the laughter turned to tears—you know, as it often does when we allow ourselves to open past the veneer of the everyday—I had an undeniable sense of being connected to these growing and dying things around me, to the cycles of the seasons they follow—and to the rhythms they look to teach me about year after year. 

Similarly, I felt connected to a growing and dying peoplehood, a Jewish project spanning space and centuries that was reaching out to me there in the field that very day.

For a moment I felt completely a part of, not apart from, and I felt it deep inside my bones.

As a farmer, the agricultural content of our Jewish teachings and rituals are not lost on me as I steward this small piece of land.

On Sukkot we are told to build huts to dwell in—structures consciously designed to be unstable—a roof which lets the rain in, and walls fragile enough to be blown over with the next big wind. We wave water-dependent species in all directions, and as Sukkot closes, we beat water-loving willows on the ground as we pray for rain—rain that might come at just the right time and in just the right amounts. At the same time, as farmers we are gathering in the harvest, the tactile abundance of the year which might nourish us through the cold months ahead. We buy seed and we plan for a harvest we can only trust will one day come to be.

As Jews, I think we are called to live precariously amidst the plenty precisely to remind us that despite our efforts for control, the future remains unknown. And even given that unknown, we are called to remember that this is not to be the time of our worry, but rather it is called the time of our rejoicing. The teachings seem eager to imply that joy is the fertile ground in which we can plan and plant for happiness. Happiness that might come from choices well made, and from a life well lived, but one that nonetheless, is not guaranteed.

The teachings seem eager to imply that joy is the fertile ground in which we can plan and plant for happiness.

In the bounty of the winter squash piled high in the barn awaiting market, gratitude comes easily for me and helps me access that type of joy. And with that joy, there inevitably comes hope. Farmers are incredibly hopeful people, you know. We have to be. The odds of seeds growing and plants reaching maturity against the realities of droughts, of floods, of untimely frosts and heat spells, of pests and disease…well, it’s all a practice of patiently tending what is in front of you today, despite the knowledge that disappointments and failures abound. Yet what remains certain to the farmer is that growth is possible, and that alone seems to provide the energy for one to endure, to remain adaptable, and to do the hard work that needs to be done.

If hope holds space for possibility and roots itself in joy, then perhaps joy is a fertile and abundant attitude waiting for us right outside the doors and walls we build as we attempt to keep ourselves safe. So, I invite you to join me outside. Come out to the farm sometime. Put your hands in the dirt. Soften. Connect. Find yourself to be a part of life. And listen. Joy dwells here, I am sure, and is calling out to each of us echoing our ancient texts: May we be grateful, may we be blessed, and may we merit to live many days upon the soil.

Photo: Pezibear