Responding to Instability: Democracy and Tisha B’Av
July 17, 2024
Looking to make sense of all that’s unfolding in American democracy and absorb it through a Jewish framework? Hoping to add new meaning to Tisha B’Av?
Looking to make sense of all that’s unfolding in American democracy and absorb it through a Jewish framework? Hoping to add new meaning to Tisha B’Av?
Rabbi Sandra Lawson, last month, delivered the 2024 Pride Keynote Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburg. Lawson, RRC’ 18, is the inaugural director of diversity, equity and inclusion at Reconstructing Judaism. She titled her talk, “Building Bridges Across Identities & Communities.”
Members of RRC’s faculty are taking part in a study tour as an expression of the college’s commitment to Israel education as a core component of the rabbinical school curriculum.
Myra Sack, a scholar-athlete who turned her love of sport into a passion for social change, knows what it means to have her world turned upside down. After losing her child, she’s suffered the kind of loss most people cannot even fathom, yet she’s also discovered that by telling her daughter’s story, she can help others process grief.
What does it mean if our communities are not equitable — if the people who make and come into contact with our movements and congregations find unequal access to the sources of connection and meaning they seek?
“Moving Through the Wilderness: Recommitting to Equity After 10/7” is a collection of brief essays originally published in the Forward. Rabbis Sandra Lawson and Deborah Waxman explain Reconstructing Judaism’s commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.
ADVOT is a community where writers can express their artistic and spiritual selves in a Jewish context; an address they can join other Jewish writers who are composing from a liturgical, spiritual and ritual mindset.
Cyd, Weissman, Reconstructing Judaism’s vice president for engagement and innovation, was a featured panelist at a high-profile Shavuot program held at the Weitzman Musuem of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia.
The panel “Only in America: The Evolving Place of Jewish Life and Culture in the United States” kicked off a 12-hour, in-person tikkun-leil Shavuot. The Shavuot custom of staying up all night to study Torah dates back hundreds of years, related to the receiving of Torah at Mount Sinai.
When it comes to combating systemic racism, everyone has something to learn.
That’s one reason why faculty members at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College are engaging in a year-long process — one rooted in the Jewish practice of Mussar — to confront anti-Black racism in themselves and the college environment.
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
