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Virtual Shabbat Box
Your Virtual Shabbat Box holds many ways to celebrate the day. Choose what nurtures you: listen, watch or read. Looking for Shabbat services? Check out Recon Connect for virtual Shabbat services and other live, online programs throughout the week.
January 27-28
This week, we offer you a special holiday box for Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of the Trees, which takes place from Wednesday night through Thursday, January 27-28. You can find it here.
January 22-23, 2021
Read: Protecting Life: A Prayer for Receiving the COVID-19 Vaccine
Protecting life is our most precious mitzvah. As you receive the COVID-19 vaccine, Rabbis Barbara Symons and Doris J. Dyen of the Greater Pittsburgh Rabbinic Association invite you to say these blessings. Sourced from Ritualwell
Read: And Now for the Good News …
Madeleine Fortney is on a mission to recalibrate herself to welcome hope and possibility with Jewish resilience and gratitude to guide her. Sourced from Ritualwell
Listen: A Hasidic Lens on Parashat Bo
Using three selections from a collection called Iturei Torah (“Crowns of Torah”), Rabbi Les Bronstein shares what he thinks are the most astounding, provocative and informative Jewish messages that we have available to us as Reconstructionists and as Jews. Sourced from ReconstructingJudaism.org
Watch: How Jews Move Their Hands
Rabbi Daniel Brenner explores chironomy (the use of hand gestures to direct musical performance), Talmudic gestures, shtetl dance and Hasidic prayer, as well as Jewish teachings about the human hand. Sourced from Recon Connect Beit Midrash
Listen: Silver and Gold: Reparations and Judaism
Since Ta-Nehisi Coates published his influential Atlantic essay “The Case for Reparations” in 2014, a number of thinkers have made explicitly Jewish arguments for (and against) reparations for American slavery. Rabbi Aryeh Bernstein explores this claim, and what he thinks it means for present-day policies and politics. Sourced from Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations
January 15-16, 2021
Read: A Blessing of Gratitude for the COVID-19 Vaccine
Trisha Arlin offers this blessing for the rollout of the vaccine that is part of the effort to defeat the COVID-19 virus. Sourced from Ritualwell
Read: A Prayer for the Return of Sanity
During this time of “mass insanity,” Suzanne Sabransky’s prayer/poem echoes our cries for compassion and help. Sourced from Ritualwell
Watch: Heart Meditation
Hadar Cohen guides you on a practice to feel connected to the heart space and to center in the heart. Sourced from Reset, providing Jewish activists with accessible spiritual practice and teachings. Learn more here.
Read: Noticing Jews of Color in Our Communities
In observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, Carmen Amalia Corrales challenges us to become more aware that Jews of Color rightfully belong in and are a part of our communities. Sourced from Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations
Watch: What Does Prayer Actually Do?
Using rabbinic material, Rabbi Nick Renner looks at one vision for how Jewish prayer worked more than 1,500 years ago and what that might mean for our world today. Sourced from Recon Connect Beit Midrash
January 8-9, 2021
Read: A Prayer Against Insurrection
Written in the immediate aftermath of the storming of our Capitol Building, Alden’s Solovy’s prayer gives voice to shared pain and hope. Sourced from Ritualwell
Listen: ‘Prayer Upon Rising’
In February 2007, Kaila Shabat was inspired to write this prayer-song while listening to the “Great Mass in C minor” by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Sourced from Ritualwell
Read: These Are the Names
In his d’var Torah on parashat Shemot, Rabbi Micah Becker-Klein teaches how names have played and continue to play an important role in Jewish life. Sourced from ReconstructingJudaism.org
Read: ‘Vaccinate Us’
We need a shot in the arm against COVID-19, and against racism. Call out what is needed now with “Vaccinate Us,” by Rabbi Jen Gubitz. Sourced from Ritualwell
Read: The Origins of Creativity: A Religious Perspective
Rabbi Dennis Sasso reminds us that God is a process at work in the universe, within and among us, that makes for the fulfillment of our human potential. Sourced from Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations
Watch: ‘Nothing Is More Whole Than a Broken Heart’
Rabbi Amy Small and her “Kipah, Kufi, and Collar” podcast colleagues, Imam Islam Hassan and the Rev. Ken White discuss this timeless quote of the hassidic rebbe, Menahem Mendl of Kotzk, from the perspective of their respective faith traditions. Sourced from Recon Connect Beit Midrash
January 1-2, 2021
This week, as we (finally) put 2020 behind us, we’d like to revisit the five most popular Shabbat Box pieces from this past year. May the new secular year bring hope, renewal and healing to all.
5. Hitoreri, Hitoreri
In her poem, Suzanne Sabransky reimagines the verse from the Shabbat evening hymn, Lecha Dodi, that calls us to arise and pour forth our song, bathed in the dawning of a new light. Sourced from Ritualwell
4. Contemporary Shabbat Evening Kiddush
Rabbi Brant Rosen offers a kiddush prayer to inspire us “with the possibilities of a world yet to be.”
3. Blessed You’ll Be: Mizrachi Rituals and Recipes for 5781
For this challenging New Year of 5781, Adva Chattler paired original kavvanot with traditional blessings for symbolic Rosh Hashanah foods from the Mizrachi-Sephardi tradition. Sourced from Ritualwell
2. Zoomed Out, or What to Do When Everyone You Know, Love and Dream of a Better World With Is a One-Inch Talking Head in a Pixelated Box
This poem by Adam Horowitz speaks volumes to the condition of relating to each other during a pandemic. Sourced from Ritualwell
1. Prayer for Change
Poet Cathy Cohen offers this prayer-poem for change. Sourced from Ritualwell
These resources were drawn from:
- Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations
- Hashivenu: Jewish Teachings on Resilience
- Recon Connect Beit Midrash
- Reset: Providing Jewish activists with accessible spiritual practice and teachings
- Ritualwell
- The Center for Jewish Ethics
Previous Virtual Shabbat Boxes by month:
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
