Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

I got some much needed time away this week to celebrate Thanksgiving with some close family (read: family within our already existing safe bubble) down in northwest Arkansas.  Amongst our few activities venturing out was a visit to the contemporary museum of art in Bentonville, The Momentary.

We were witness to an incredible exhibit of art by Nick Cave, an artist who came out of the Kansas City Art Institute. The exhibit, entitled “Until” — a combination of present despair over racial injustice and hope for what a post-racist world might look like — contemplates whether racism would exist in heaven. The reference to the word “until” is a reverse of the legal axiom of innocent until proven guilty. For Cave, if you are Black, it is guilty until proven innocent.

The exhibit was both jarring and uplifting, somehow a proper metaphor for this year’s Thanksgiving celebration. We all experienced a very different and more challenging Thanksgiving this year than maybe any other in our lifetime. Whatever was lacking in this year’s Thanksgiving in the way of more immediate connection, I still find myself grateful for those who set a vision for a more hopeful future.

This past Sunday, I was on the Zoom service at Swope Parkway United Christian Church.  They were celebrating 10 years of service for my friend the Rev. Dr. Rodney Williams. It is in those relationships, including the relationships with my Kol Ami family, that I live in grateful hope, even in a world of great challenge.