Posts by Members

Zichronot Drash

September 25, 2023 by Gillian Jackson

by: David Erik Nelson

Zichronot, “Remembrances.” This is the second of the three major themes of Rosh Hashanah. It’s the meat sandwiched between Malchuyot—”Kingliness,” which is the All-of-Everything of the physical Universe we enjoy—and the enigmatic sounding of the Shofar.

There’s a tendency to treat Zichronot as being about self-inspection: The High Holidays are a time for taking stock of the prior year, for looking to how we can avail ourselves better in the coming year. So we remember what passed, and try to mend the misses.

That’s a good practice.

But I wanna suggest that its liturgically off the mark, and overly negative.

Zichronot is rooted in the word Zichor—the command to “remember“. And Zichor is more often used in Torah to talk about God remembering or noting someone, not people reflecting on past deeds.

In Pslam 25, David writes:

Remember, Adonai,

Your compassions and Your mercies—

for they are from eternity.

Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my rebellion.

According to Your mercy remember me,

for the sake of Your goodness, Adonai.

Those “remembers” are Zichor. Likewise, it’s Zichor when HaShem remembers Noah and the beasts in the ark, and so makes the floods subside. It’s Zichor when the Eternal remembers Hannah and Rachel and gives them children, and Zichor again when Elohim remembers that we were slaves in Egypt. It’s Zichor Samson cries out for when he needs a little more oomph to crush the Philistines.

Additionally, while our modern reading of this Season of Remembrance often fixates on the negative —the errors we’ve made, the harms we’ve done —more often than not, those ancient Zichors are asking the Universe to recall what has been good in us and worthy.

I raise this only because we have an awful habit of only remembering what is shameful, only fixating on what hurts. No one thinks about their stomach when it feels fine; none of us can think of anything else when it aches.

So that’s my hope for this year . . . that we be willing to ask of ourselves, and of each other, the thing that ancient Jews asked of that Terrifying and All Powerful Being They Sensed Encompasses Us All:

To remember fondly, to see what’s good in the person sitting across from you at the dinner table, to accept and seek to expand and amplify the good in what you are, and have been, and will be in the coming year.

Amen.

Shofarot: Rosh Hashanah 2023

September 25, 2023 by Gillian Jackson

By Anita Rubin-Meiller

I am an early morning person, so it was not surprising that as I was wondering what to offer for this brief drash, I awoke with these words of the Sufi poet Rumi on my mind:

“The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you- Don’t go back to sleep”

Every year we gather together at Rosh Hashanah to hear the same message sounded through the shofar: wake up, wake up, keep returning to waking up. What is this awakening we are meant to be engaging with this day, the whole month of Elul that preceded it, and the 10 days of Teshuvah that will follow it until we gather again? In his seminal book for the High Holidays, “This is Real and you are Completely Unprepared”, Rabbi Alan Lew offers us many possible answers to that question. In a chapter entitled “the horn blew and I began to wake up” he writes: (this is a time)”to devote serious attention to bringing our lives into focus; to find out who we are and where we are going.” If I am like most human beings, than we all know that this is NOT an easy endeavor. It is a challenge to accurately and clearly assess ourselves, to be completely honest about all the dimensions of our aliveness – our physical, mental, spiritual, emotional and relational states.

I am an early morning person and it is easy for my heart to open to the secrets the breezes of the dawn might hold. It is easy for me to delight in the early morning quiet, in bird song and sunrise and to engage in meditative, contemplative, self-reflective practices at this time of day…feeling openhearted and close to God. But as the day progresses it is easy to be possessed by habitual mind states – expectations, planning, dissatisfactions, wants and to move through at least parts of my day on “automatic pilot”.

“Don’t go back to sleep” Rumi and the shofar shout at us; return again and again to awakening.

My daughter Melissa and I have had a very close and loving relationship with many shared joys and adventures and with plenty of challenges that we have both worked hard at resolving. Her visit home last December however was experienced by both of us as fairly disastrous. We each held the other to blame in numerous ways and after she left, I felt that I did not want to talk to her for a very long time. That feeling was an awakening, a call that I had better look within.

The second line of Rumi’s poem reads: “You must ask for what you really want. Don’t go back to sleep.”

What I really wanted then and now is for a loving, non-reactive, honest and understanding relationship with my daughter. I knew that that had to start with me and so I journaled a lot and went to see a therapist. In that way I came to see what stirred inside of me that contributed to our difficulties during that visit. I saw how guarded I needed to be growing up; how risky it was to be vulnerable or speak my truth. I saw how frequently I was judged and criticized and deemed “too sensitive”. I saw how I have continued to carry this protective impulse even in my most dear relationships where it is the least necessary. I saw how that interferes with honest communication, especially when I am feeling concerned, critical or hurt. I awoke to knowing more deeply that to have what I really want in all my relationships I need to bring awakened attention to hearing the messages of my mind and heart clearly and to discerning if something needs to be communicated even when it is uncomfortable, or if it is something I need to work on within myself.

I know that what I want to manifest in my life, what I am most called to live from are qualities of love, compassion, gratitude and joy. I know that the path to doing that includes actions of connection, deep listening, daily spiritual practices and faith. This does not mean I am capable of staying awake to making them manifest at all times. Sometimes I will lose my way. Sometimes the world, or the dynamics of a relationship will overwhelm.

Rumi concludes: “People are going back and forth across the doorsill where the two worlds touch. The door is round and open. Don’t go back to sleep.”

We go back and forth across the doorsill many, many times, with and without awareness, knowing and forgetting our intentions. We can only do our best to return again, to awaken to being genuinely who we are. Don’t go back to sleep.

Poem for Rosh Hashanah 2023

September 25, 2023 by Emily Eisbruch

By Emily Eisbruch

Summer ends, fall comes near

The Jewish days of awe are here

With prayer and music we manifest our tradition

As we co-create this year’s edition

Unetaneh tokef, Who shall live and who shall die

This is serious and somber, no way to lie

Honey is eternally golden and sweet

But at the days of awe, many forces meet

Apples are good, yet sometimes tart and sharp

Well, thank goodness for Rav Gavrielle’s harp

As we gather at the new year’s start

We open our spirit and our heart

Let’s work to grow, stretch and learn to love more

Welcome new friends and embrace the year 5784

Looking Forward with JCOR

July 17, 2023 by Gillian Jackson

By: Jeff Basch and Alice Mishkin

Jewish Congregations Organized for Resettlement (JCOR), the all-volunteer Jewish community collaboration that includes our Congregation—in partnership with Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County—is excited to report that our very successful and fulfilling first year will be complete the middle of August!

And now JCOR is planning to co-sponsor with JFS a new refugee family. To make this possible, JCOR must raise approximately $7,000 initially to get the new family settled in, with a goal of $20,000 for the full year to underwrite the co-sponsorship obligations. Generous donors made it possible for JCOR to help the current family. Our incoming refugee family needs that same help now. Federation provides fiduciary services to JCOR, and donations to JCOR can be made on their secure website.

Two additional opportunities to lend support are coming up fairly soon. On September 10 at JCC’s Apples & Honey, the Kona Ice truck will donate a portion of their sales to JCOR. On October 22, the community is invited to JCOR’s “Folk with a Klezmer Accent” fundraising concert featuring well-known local talent.

As individuals and as a Congregation we can help support the aspirations of the next refugee family. Please consider adding JCOR to our synagogue and your household charitable-giving allocations. Contact JCOR at jcorannarbor@gmail.com if you have or know of affordable housing that will be available by early fall; or if you or someone you know can communicate in Spanish or French, Tigrinya or Kituba, Farsi or Dari, Arabic, Ukrainian, or another language.

Please consider joining JCOR’s all-volunteer corps. This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us to seek to better the world, to express Tikkun Olam in ways that our interests and skills guide us to. Information about the teams and a volunteer sign-up form are available at JCORAnnArbor.org.

And, finally, we want to share a brief update on JCOR’s Colombian refugee family who arrived in Ann Arbor in mid-August 2022. Now, twelve months in, both parents are fully employed, both children have completed their first year of school in the United States in good form and planning for the first day of classes in late-August. The father has earned a driver’s license, and the family has purchased a (used) car, which saves $700/month that previously paid for contracted transportation to and from work. The family has completed their first year in the U.S.—both financially and operationally independent.

About JCOR: Jewish Congregations Organized for Resettlement is a participant in JFS’ refugee Co-Sponsorship Program. JCOR member congregations are Ann Arbor Orthodox Minyan, Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation, Beth Israel Congregation, Jewish Cultural Society, Pardes Hannah, and Temple Beth Emeth, with administrative assistance from the Jewish Federation of Greater Ann Arbor. JCOR’s goal is to help refugee newcomers become our independent neighbors over the course of their first year

Reconstructing the 10 Commandments

May 31, 2023 by Gillian Jackson

by Deb Kraus

We gathered after services on Shavuot to reconstruct the 10 commandments. I’ve been wanting to talk about this for awhile, and Carol let me add a group to the study sessions that Kathryn and Seth were doing.

WE had a multigenerational group: from Odile, celebrating her 76^th birthday tonight, to Sidney and Elsie, our young sages. It was hard to stay on track, but I think we treated everyone according to the commandments we reconstructed beow.

First we talked about the ones that either we had problems with or the ones that while good, probably wouldn’t make the cut of being one of the “ten.” This included “do not commit adultery,” presumed to have meant something more at the time and presumably there to promote the patriarchy. We ended up including it under “having ethical relationships.” In fact, we ended up combining 6-9 into this commandment, after many conversations about when murder, stealing and lying might be understandable, but realizing that this was the underlying principle.

Similarly we had a long conversation about “honoring your mother and father, “both in terms of whether honoring was the right verb and whether mother and father were the right objects of that verb. It turns out we wanted something that was more inclusive of the powerful mentors and teachers and other elders in our lives, and at one point we decided to include children in here as well. And then we realized that welcoming the stranger, mentioned 36 times in the torah, might fit in here too, although when I got home and wrote this out, we only had 9 so I gave it its own number.

Sidney, our young sage, echoed (without knowing it!) what Caleb Shoup talked about in his bar mitzvah d’var on this topic several years ago. How he asked, can you say it’s wrong to have a feeling? He was referring to “do not be envious of others,” the coveting commandment He suggested we should focus more on gratitude. This is how “have gratitude for all you have” came to be part of our 10.

People had problems with the idea of using God’s name in vain. It was one of those things where it felt too ubiquitous to condemn ourselves for it. That didn’t convince me, but when Rena said “We should talk about not disrespecting or misusing God,” that resonated with everyone more than anything about language. It’s Shulweis’ predicate theology once again. Act Godly!

“Do not make or worship idols” provoked a lot of conversation about how what we pay attention is really what we worship, whether it be money, food, video games, power….so we changed #2 to “Don’t lose sight of what’s important.”

We didn’t mess with the first commandment, figuring that monotheism is too central to Judaism to reconstruct.

Then we turned our attention to what isn’t here and found that we wanted to pay more attention to the earth and all creatures. And we wanted something about caring for ourselves, which eventually got combined in with Shabbat.

Lastly, “Make liberal use of apologies and work to right your wrongs.”

Here is our list:

1. I am God. Don’t’ have any others.

2. Don’t lose sight of what’s important or worship other things or Gods

3. Do not disrespect or misuse God. Act Godly.

4. Take care of your body, mind and soul. Have a day of rest to replenish yourself and keep it holy.

5. Honor your elders, whether they are teachers, parents, elders. Honor your children. In fact honor everyone.

6. Love and welcome the stranger. Humanize everyone. Respect individuality and work to have empathy for everyone.

7. Have ethical relationships. Treat others how you would want to be treated and don’t treat others how you don’t want to be treated.

8. Make liberal use of apologies and work to right your wrongs.

9. Honor the earth by caring for all life’s creatures and the natural world. Work to repair and tend and heal the world back to its original condition. Remember there is no “away” and every place is someone’s back yard.

10. Have gratitude for all you have.

Isaac Meadow Presents Benefit Concert for Ukraine

May 15, 2023 by Emily Eisbruch

Isaac Meadow, of the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation, will present a humanitarian aid benefit concert for Ukraine on Thursday, June 15, at Zion Lutheran Church in Ann Arbor, at 6:00 p.m. The concert will feature music by multiple composers, played upon the piano and the organ in the church’s main sanctuary. Admission will be by free-will donation.

The concert will be performed as a “mitzvah project” ― a community service associated with Isaac’s Bar Mitzvah. Isaac was inspired to take on this particular effort by the confluence of compassion, love of music, and familial ties to Ukraine.

At the age of five, when Isaac first received money as a present, he wanted to give it away to a beggar he met in the streets. In the following years, he has remained empathetic to people in distress, particularly the homeless. When Isaac started following the news of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, he knew he wanted to act. “I was horrified,” he said, “particularly by the violence against children ― children being killed, or forced from their homes.” A benefit concert, he thought, might be a way for him to raise money to help.

Isaac has a long-standing love of music. He has studied the piano since the age of five under the tutelage of Renée Robbins, and recently has started to study the organ with Carol Muehlig. He is looking forward to an intensive organ study at Interlochen fine arts camp later this summer. He has played piano for the Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation’s High Holidays services, and looks forward to serving the congregation musically again in the future. The concert will feature pieces that Isaac has learned especially for the occasion, as well as several pieces that he has been playing for longer. The concert will also include a brief demonstration of the types of sounds and musical techniques achievable on the piano and organ.

Isaac’s family has a current connection to Ukraine because Isaac’s grandmother befriended Vladimir Sayenko, now a Ukrainian lawyer, when he was studying at the University of Michigan in 1993 and 1994. Sayenko later hosted Isaac’s grandmother, and mother on a visit to Goroshina (alternatively, Horoshyne), the Ukrainian village Isaac’s great-great-grandfather fled in the early 1900s to come to the United States.

All proceeds will go to “Breathe” (Ukrainian: “Dyhai”), a charity originally founded in 2020 to provide equipment for hospitals in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since Sayenko is an associate of one of Breathe’s founders, Isaac looks forward to keeping a close conversation going about the charity, and to seeing the good that the benefit concert proceeds will be able to accomplish. Thus far, Breathe has provided supplies to Ukrainian hospitals, winter clothing for the elderly, and electronic chargers and other equipment to families, for lighting, communication and for continuing children’s education in the wake of wartime disruptions. Isaac said, “It’s really good to be able to help people – even from so far away!”

Emergent Strategy and Congregational Transformation

December 5, 2022 by Gillian Jackson

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.

—

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

October 12, 2022 by Gillian Jackson

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.

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

September 28, 2022 by Gillian Jackson

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!

December 22, 2021 by Gillian Jackson Leave a Comment

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!

Zichronot Drash

Shofarot: Rosh Hashanah 2023

Poem for Rosh Hashanah 2023

Looking Forward with JCOR

Reconstructing the 10 Commandments

by Deb Kraus

Isaac Meadow Presents Benefit Concert for Ukraine

Emergent Strategy and Congregational Transformation

By Etta Heisler

Yom Kippur Community Kavanot