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.
Our inaugural Ignition Grant recipients in 2016 blazed trails in Jewish learning and leadership. From podcasts to peer-led programming, Hebrew-Arabic language programs to inclusive Shabbat programs, our recipients allowed their creative visions to build communities near and far.
Our 2017 Ignition Grant recipients are making use of technology to drive their visions for a more connected Jewish world. Whether encouraging teens to be excited about Jewish learning after their b’nai mitzvot or exploring the viability of a home-based shtiebel, our grant recipients are working towards bridging gaps in a variety of Jewish communities.
Ariana Katz, the inaugural recipient of the 2016 Launch Grant, created “Kaddish,” a podcast about illness, death, and mourning in Jewish ritual traditions. Her work seeks to build an online community that “holds space at the intersection of life and death.”
At Rosh Hashanah, as we turn to new beginnings, we seek to repent—to do teshuvah—for what we have done wrong. And we can also affirmatively foster ourselves toward resilience—toward a thriving, loving outlook in spite of whatever challenges we encounter in life. In this video, I explore themes of resilience embedded into Jewish practice.
Important announcements from the Reconstructionist movement for Fall 2017
More and more I have come to admire resilience.Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foamreturns over and over to the same shape, but the sinuoustenacity 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
Examination of Rabbi Kelilah Miller’s papercut, “Human, Why Do You Sleep?”
An examination of Rabbi Me’irah Iliinsky’s artwork, “Heart of the Stranger”
Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement
Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis
Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues
Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives
