Ann Arbor Reconstructionist Congregation

Upcoming Activities

Ice Cream Social for Returning and Prospective Beit Sefer Families

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Come join us – and (or) invite your friends with kids – at an Ice Cream Social on July 12, 2pm-4pm at the home of Caroline Richardson and Paul Resnick. Members of AARC, and non-members interested in a Jewish place for their kids to learn – are all welcome. Come meet other parents, the school’s director (Clare Kinberg), and members of the Beit Sefer committee. Find out if the AARC Beit Sefer is right for your family.

Jewish educators think a lot about what makes a Jewish supplementary Sunday school a place kids want to be. Fun; snacks; other kids; warm, reliable, knowledgeable teachers – those are part of it. Just as important though, the Beit Sefer needs to be a place where each child is valued for who they are and what they bring to the community. Find out about our plans to create a caring, ethical Jewish school based on questioning, creativity and a teaching staff who have a real passion for learning with their students.

So:

But even if you don’t RSVP, you are still welcome!

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Mezuzah Making, Beit Sefer 2015

 

 

This Sunday, what an opportunity!

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This Sunday, June 14, Matthaei Botanical Gardens is the place to be for the Farm Education Day and Sustainable Food Fest. There is really terrific programing and incredible food planned. Two of the things I am most excited about are the connections the planners have made with young Jewish social justice activists who are living in Detroit.

Blair Nosan (right) and Chava Knox at work at Eden Gardens.
Blair Nosan (right) and Chava Knox at work at Eden Gardens.

Did you know that Hazon, one of the most creative, inspirational Jewish social justice organizations, is opening its Detroit branch this month? You can meet Detroit Hazon’s lead organizer, Blair Nosan,this Sunday at 11:15 for the workshop “Bread from the Earth: Jewish Practice and Sustainability.” The workshop will be co-led by Sue Salinger, the sister of AARC member Carole Kaplan. This is an opportunity not to be missed.

In addition, Detroit Jews for Justice is leading a workshop at 10:15, Mayim Hayyim: A Jewish Perspective on the Detroit Water Shut-offs with AJ Aaron. AJ was a Repair the World fellow last year.

AJ Aaron
AJ Aaron

If you need any inspiration over the next few days, read those links about the work Blair and AJ are involved in. And see you Sunday, let’s get inspired together!

Is there a new Jewish back to the land movement?

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green-things-logo-1Is there a new Jewish back to the land movement? Let’s talk about it together on June 14th when we gather at Matthaei Botanical Gardens for the Farm Education and Sustainability Food Fest and take a tour of Green Things Farm. Certainly Nate Lada, who with his wife Jill Sweetman are the owners and operators of Green Things Farm, sees a connection between his Hebrew Day School education and his commitment to sustainable agriculture. When he was a guest speaker at a UM Hillel Tu B’Shvat seder in 2012, Nate talked about the importance of agriculture and respecting the Earth as central to the Jewish tradition. Twentysomething graduates of the UM where they both studied Environmental Science, Nate and Jill have taken advantage of several opportunities created by longtime Ann Arbor environmental activists such as the Ann Arbor greenbelt program, a thirty year investment voted on in 2003. With the goal of starting a family farm, Nate and Jill spent two years (2011-2012) as part of the first cohort at Jeff McCabe and colleagues’ Tilian Farm Incubator Program. There Nate and Jill learned many of the basics of the business of farming while taking advantage of the program’s land, equipment, farming mentors, and community support. The land they bought to start their own farm, on Nixon near Warren about 5 miles north of downtown, was also part of the greenbelt program, in which the city of Ann Arbor bought development rights on the properties, making the land affordable for farming. [Read more…] about Is there a new Jewish back to the land movement?

“We heard God’s words without using our ears.”

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Shuli and Me“We heard God’s words without using our ears.” So Shavuot is described at the end of Shuli and Me: From Slavery to Freedom, the storybook Omer calendar by Joan Benjamin-Farren you will hear at the AARC havdallah and Shavuot observance. The story, told from a freed slave child’s point of view, imagines those first seven weeks in the desert. We have been following the cloud. Today we are camped at the foot of the mountain. We’ve washed our clothes. We are waiting.

After havdallah, Rabbi Michal will lead us in a discussion of approaches to the concept of torah; the capital “T” Torah, the five books in our traditional scroll, and other uses of the concept of torah. A couple that speak to me, for instance: In a Kol Nidre sermon Rabbi Mona Alfi quoted the medieval scholar, Bachya ibn Pakuda: “Days are like scrolls, only write on them what you want to be remembered.” She explained, “In essence, what Bachya ibn Pakuda was saying is that each life is a Torah for future generations to examine and learn from.”

A description of Carol Ochs’ book Our Lives as Torah: Finding God in Our own Stories, says “Through the process of seeing our experiences in relation to Biblical stories, we begin to recognize our lives as part of the ongoing story of the Jewish people–as Torah.”

Let’s meet there, at the mountain, and discuss: May 23rd 7:30pm till ? At the home, still, of Rabbi Michal and Jon Sweeney, 2960 Lakeview Drive. Dairy, dessert potluck. Early evening all ages, after havdallah for adults, childcare available. Email Clare or Rabbi Michal.

Klezmephonic and Drake Meadow: Bringing Jewish Music and Dance together the Ann Arbor Way

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10931275_692424077523327_4042546703563411397_nCan a Contra dance caller lead a Yiddish sher (scissors dance)? Darn right, if it’s Drake Meadow! We will all get to experience the fun of it on Friday May 22nd as we gather to honor Rabbi Michal and appreciate her leadership of our community over the past two years. A special Kabbalat Shabbat beginning at 6:30 will be followed by a potluck dinner and entertainment by Klezmephonic, a new Ann Arbor klezmer band.

Klezmephonic’s first show was at the Old Town Tavern in Ann Arbor in June 2014, and they’ve played pretty steadily ever since, most recently, to a packed Kerrytown Concert House. Klemephonic’s guitar player, Alex Belhaj, and clarinetist and vocalist Jennie Lavine both attended the November klezmer workshop led by Maxwell Street Band and co-sponsored by AARC. There Jennie met Margo Schlanger, AARC board chair and intrepid viola player and our other member musicians Deb Gombert, Paul Resnick and Deb Fisch. Also at the workshop were Dan Peisach and Ralph Katz, both of whom play with Alex in the Celtic klezmer fusion band, ‘Twas Brillig and the Mazel Tovs’, which plays an annual contra dance that, this past year, was called by Drake Meadows.

Drake says it’s not really too much of a stretch to combine Contra and klezmer. After all, he says, Contra draws on all European folkdance. For instance the Virginia Reel, the classic American folk dance is a British dance, and yet it bears a close resemblance to a dance from Czechoslovakia. Similarly, Drake explains, a sher is an Ashkenazi square dance, same basic structure. For more than you probably want to know check out this transcript on sher and Contra dance from a 2007 Symposium on Yiddish dance.

Klezmephonic’s Jennie Lavine is also hosting klezmer jam sessions through Oz’s music and the band is currently in the process of mixing and mastering their first album.

Jewish Time: Counting the Omer and the 19 Year Cycle

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By Clare Kinberg

8d87b6c94cb0063ffae44d8ad207432fBecause my brother, Rabbi Myron Kinberg (his name is a blessing) died on April 19, 1996, which was the 30th of Nissan, I learned this year about the 19-year cycle of the Jewish calendar. This year, for the first time since he died 19 years ago, the secular date and the Hebrew date of his yahrtzeit coincided. This got me thinking about Jewish time. I knew that the Jewish calendar is a lunar-solar calendar; now I’m trying to come closer to (even a little) understanding of what that means. In astronomy, there is a natural 19-year cycle between the sun and the moon, called the Metonic Cycle. Every 19 years, or approximately 6940 days, the moon will have gone through 235 complete phase rotations, making the day of the month and day of the year the same. The Gregorian calendar uses 12-months in a year; 19 years of 12 months gives us 228 total months. The 228 months are seven less than the required 235 months of the Metonic Cycle. In the modern Hebrew calendar, the extra seven months are added in the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years. During those “leap” years, the Hebrew calendar has 13 months. Perhaps the mathematicians among us will take some time to further explain this to me next time we meet!

There is another reason I am thinking about Jewish time. As I write this on April 21, the 2nd of Iyyar, it is the 17th day of counting the Omer, the Jewish ritual of counting the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot. There are many ways to think about these seven weeks. In an agricultural sense, it is the time between the early spring planting of the barley and its harvest, reminding us of our roots as an agricultural society. In a literary, metaphorical sense, the 49 days of the Omer is the time in which we entered the desert, crossed the sea, rejoiced, got thirsty and hungry, followed the cloud and stood at the foot of a mountain learning how to continue on as a people. Jewish mystics attended to these days as an inner journey. Rabbi Yael Levy explains the connections among all this in a beautiful Huffpost blog. On the last day of counting the Omer this year, May 22nd, we will be together for a special fourth Friday Shabbat potluck and dance party to honor and send off Rabbi Michal. The next day, Shavuot, will offer another opportunity to get together and study. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) is remembered as saying that the “catechism” of the Jews, our educational maxim, is our calendar. Our practice, our beliefs, our history, our spirituality all have expression in the days, weeks and months of the yearly cycle. Jewish time will be among the things I will be thinking about this Shavuot.

Also see: Counting the Omer During Quarantine

AARC Adult Hebrew Class soon to Graduate!

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For the past three months AARC members Odile Hugonot-Haber, Mike Ehmann and Sally George Wright have been learning the Aleph-Bet in a weekly gathering graciously hosted by Odile (and Alan.) Coffee, tea, and Washtenaw Dairy donuts, as well as other goodies brought by students or by Rav Michal, who guides them, accompany an hour or so of learning Hebrew phonetics as well as some prayer and translation.

hebrew study

The motivation for the class began with Odile, who wished to learn Hebrew in preparation for her conversion after 20+ years of her activity in the Jewish community. Indeed, Odile will celebrate her formal entry into the Jewish people on Shabbat morning April 11. All are welcome for the 10 am service at the JCC and a light lunch. RSVP’s appreciated for space and food planning purposes (to Odile Hugonot Haber <odilehh@gmail.com>)

Teach-Ins: 50 Years Ago and Today

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teach in 50Fifty years ago this week, AARC member Alan Haber helped to organize the first anti-Vietnam War “teach-in” on the campus of the University of Michigan. In February and March 1965, the United States had begun sustained bombing of North Vietnam (and, secretly, Laos and Cambodia), and the first ground combat troops landed. As a co-founder and the first president (1960) of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Alan had been organizing against the war for years. According to recent articles recalling the events, a few UM professors wanted to call a one day strike, but amid backlash decided to use their positions and the university’s resources differently. The first 12-hour teach-in (8pm-8am March 24-25, 1965) in campus spaces and involving two hundred professors and thousands of students, was a significant escalation of the anti-war protest movement. This coming weekend, March 27-28, the UM is hosting a “Teach-In +50: End the War Against the Planet.”

In a prelude to the weekend’s events, Alan and many other longtime peace activists are spending the week assessing lessons from the past and applying them to violent conflicts that still plague our world. You can still catch two panels on Thursday, March 26: On today’s wars in the Middle East, 3:00-5:30pm, Room B780 School of Social Work lower level; and Winning the Peace: What have We Learned, 7-9pm in the International Institute’s Meeting Room.

The full program for the week-end Teach-In is here

Behind the Kitchen Door

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611taCpxXoLOn  Sunday April 12 you can join a group of Jewish social justice activists who will visit the Restaurant Opportunities Center (ROC) in Detroit to learn about the often invisible problems of restaurant workers. Many of those workers—often with children—qualify for food stamps and live a paycheck away from homelessness. Discrimination, wage theft, and abusive working conditions are common. The deadline to register for this event is April 6, see the bottom of this post for more details.

Founded in 2008, ROC-Michigan is dedicated to winning improved working conditions and opportunities for advancement for Southeast Michigan’s 134,000 restaurant workers. ROC-Michigan is an independent affiliate of ROC United, a national organization of over 10,000 restaurant workers.  ROC was originally founded in New York City by a group of restaurant workers who had formerly worked at the World Trade Center and were displaced by the 9-11 tragedy.

In her 2013 book Behind the Kitchen Door, ROC co-founder Saru Jayaraman writes, “Sustainability is about contributing to a society that everybody benefits from, not just going organic because you don’t want to die from cancer or have a difficult pregnancy. What is a sustainable restaurant? It’s one in which as the restaurant grows, the people grow with it.”

This program will feature a vegetarian, kosher-style Cajun/ Soul fusion lunch at ROC’s COLORS Restaurant. Following the meal we will learn about issues faced by restaurant workers from a panel including COLORS staff. Cost of the meal is $18 per person. Any additional donations are tax-deductible and go to support ROC. To reserve a spot, make a check out to “ROC-MI,” indicate # of attendees, and mail to the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, 1457 Griswold St, Detroit, MI 48226. Deadline is April 6th. Reconstructionist Congregation is co-sponsoring this joint social justice program along with six other area Jewish groups. Carpooling is encouraged! For questions or more information contact Steve Merritt at stevemerritt2@gmail.com.

Passover Planning Post

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The first seder of Passover is Friday April 3

As in past years, AARC will help match up members with home seders. If you are having a first night seder and have an empty seat or two that could be filled by AARC member(s), email Clare. If you’d like to be invited to a home seder for the first night, email Clare. I’ll do my best to match everybody up.

AARC Second Night Community Seder

Join us for a musical, thoughtful, interactive and delicious celebration of our story of freedom! The theme for the evening will be “Becoming Slaves, Becoming Free” and include explorations of personal, communal and international experiences and issues.

Our younger guests will have age appropriate fun and an opportunity to create something to share with us as we ponder more adult issues.

The meal will be a coordinated pot-luck to assure we have an appropriate mix of items as well as all the ritual goodies.

Location: TBD based on size of gathering.

Please RSVP by March31st. For more information contact Rav Michal

Mimouna, a farewell to Passover (and Shabbat) Saturday April 11, 6:00-9:30pm

We’ll celebrate the end of Passover with a Sephardic tradition of Mimouna (a hametz-laden Spring feast) and the end of Shabbat with Havdalah. The meal will include pizza for the children and Spring vegetables. Please join us with a dish to share such as fresh bread, beer, and Sephardic inspired dishes. At the home of Carol Lessure, Jon Engelbert, Avi and Deron.