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As part of our recent convention, B’yachad: Reconstructing Judaism Together, we shared this video of a new setting for Hinei Mah Tov by RRC student Solomon Hoffman. It features over 150 Reconstructionists representing 40 of our communities from across North America and beyond. The participants reflect the spectrum of our movement—lay leaders, Rabbis, Cantors, students, teachers, children, elders, musicians, singers, dancers, artists—all sharing in this collective project.

Before Ritualwell was a website containing more than 2,200 liturgy and rituals crowdsourced by Jews, it was an idea of where to put dozens of scraps of paper in the drawers of offices in the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and Kolot: Center for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies in Wyncote. 

In 2001, RRC and Kolot, in partnership with Ma’yan, a Jewish feminist organization, uploaded the prayers scrawled on those papers to the newfangled Internet, creating an archive of Jewish writing that filled in the gaps of liturgies and practices that historically excluded women and LGBTQ+ Jews. Community members were invited to write and submit their own liturgies and rituals.

Almost two decades later, Ritualwell has not only become a library of prayers and poetry, but an online community center for Jews looking to hone their skills through writing workshops and classes.

Yom Kippur is our people’s day for a grand pause to look back and to look ahead.

As we look back, I am honestly saying, and if you would like, join me in saying:

“Let me be a little sad,” or, if needed, “deeply sad,” for the things we’ve lost during this most unimaginable year.

Creative Expression Holidays

“We accept the responsibility for changing and for changing this world. That is what people need to stay in hope. And without hope, there is no energy for no creative new solutions,” says Rabbi Amy Bernstein in this moving video, Tashlikh Reconstructed

Reconstructing Judaism's support of entrepreneurship gives rabbinical students and recent graduates the funding, supervision and mentorship to turn ideas into reality. “For me, the big story is that Jews remain seekers of meaning and community. What our Auerbach grants do is create new portals for Jewish community and meaning,” said Cyd Weissman, Reconstructing Judaism’s vice president for Innovation and Impact.

D'VAR TORAH
Genesis 18:1-22:24

In this Community Teaching call from January 2017, Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso teaches on artists and biblical text as seen through literature, visual art and music.

At Camp Havaya Arts, opening this summer in Redlands, California, campers will be nurtured as they explore for themselves what it means to live a Jewish life through the prism of the arts.

In our first session with author Abigail Pogrebin, we began with a question: How can we make the holidays 'urgent' in today's busy world. We shared observations about the Judaism practiced by our Hebrew schools, families, and synagogue communities.

Rabbi Shelly Barnathan, the 2017 Launch Grant recipient, is busy creating a co-constructed network of baby boomers and empty nesters, a commonly-overlooked generation within the Jewish community. Her project, Or Zarua, features "holy conversations" over coffee and musical Shabbat dinners.

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam
returns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuous
tenacity of a tree: finding the light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another. A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers,
mitochondria, figs—all this resinous, unretractable earth.

—Jane Hirshfield

Creative Expression

This alternative Amidah was used during mincha prayers by members of the Reconstructionist Rabbinic Association outside of an Immigration Processing Center in order to call attention to the plight of immigrants and underscore the importance of the Jewish obligation to welcome the stranger. 

Rabbi Brant Rosen's poem responds to Psalm 79, challenging us to welcome the stranger even, and especially, in uncomfortable ways.

In an essay that appeared in Philadelphia's Jewish Exponent, Rabbi Deborah Waxman, Ph.D., makes the case that Reconstructionist Judaism matters now more than ever.

We welcome your submission for the High Holidays on the theme of "Embracing the Stranger — Within and Without." Deadline is July 17, 2017!

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