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.
