Reconstructioning Judaism commissioned two Black Jewish artists affiliated with the movement — Ayeola Omolara Kaplan and Marjorie Attingol Salvodon — to respond to last year’s Movement Wide Day of Learning on Reparations.
As the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College continues to hone rabbinic education to meet the needs of rapidly changing Jewish communities, it has tapped two members of its 2017 graduating class to help put its ambitious plans into practice.
Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association have signed on to a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken calling on the U.S. Administration to urge Israel’s government to provide clear evidence of terrorism or reverse course in its policies towards the affected organizations.
As founding members of the Jewish Rohingya Justice Network, Reconstructing Judaism and the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association joined a letter to Secretary Anthony Blinken expressing ongoing solidarity with the Rohingya people, five years after the Burmese military waged a genocidal campaign that resultedin mass displacement, death, sexual violence, and other atrocities.
“It is clear at Ritualwell how values from the Reconstructionist movement are expressed in the creativity of inviting people to create their own rituals,” she says. “It’s empowering to write one’s own prayers and to create spaces for people who never had a voice in Judaism. To me, that inclusive spirit is very much the place that I wanted to be in as a Jew and as a writer, and I think that’s what we are doing at Ritualwell.”
Rabbi Jacob Staub, Ph..D., is director of the online platform Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations and professor emeritus of Jewish philosophy and spirituality and director of the Jewish Spiritual Direction Program at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Wyncote, the path to embracing Judaism really was a reconstruction.
Reconstructing Judaism joins a diverse group of more than 100 U.S. and international organizations in sending a letter to the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) urging that foreign assistance funding for abortion care be authorized immediately “to the full extent of the law.” The letter
Being a leader requires ongoing learning. You can’t learn to lead by attending a week-long conference or by doing it for a year or two. Rather, we want to impress the idea that learning to be a leader is a lifetime of study and practice.
Growing up in Tucson, Alanna “Lonnie” Kleinman did not know any female rabbis or any religious leaders who identified as LGTBQ. Now Kleinman is joining a much more diverse rabbinate, one that more fully reflects the fullness of Jewish communities.
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
