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Rabbi's Week In Review - 7/18/2022

07/18/2022 04:20:22 PM

Jul18

As we at Congregation Kol Ami continue the important work of pursuing justice and strengthening marginalized communities outside our synagogue community (our work with Migrant Farmworkers Assistance Fund, Martin Luther King Jr. School and Manheim Garden, as well as such issues as reproductive rights and voting rights), we also continue our focus of strengthening our internal community. In order to do all we can for others, we must be a healthy, thriving and welcoming congregation.

Our Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI) Design Team, a diverse group of Kol Ami congregants, continues to lead our CLI strategic planning process. It is our commitment to be a different kind of synagogue community. This commitment was reinforced this week by an article in the Forward, observing that institutionally traditional models of synagogue life do not resonate as they once did. The old model comes with shul politics and a lack of connection. That is not who we want to be.

We held the first of what we hope will be many Social Shabbat programs — a Friday-evening gathering at a local bar where we could just be in relationship with one another and connect in a more casual environment. We look forward in the near future to a Jewish Food Series, to share some of what is best about Jewish culture. These events and other more casual worship experiences are all in response to your feedback — that, particularly coming out of COVID isolation, we need more space and time to be social.

Our CLI work is ongoing, and we always want to hear more from you as to what feelings you carry with you into our Kol Ami space — what resonates for you and what does not. Your experience with Kol Ami informs our communal experience. We look forward to continuing our mission: to be a place of meaning and purpose, an emotionally safe and nonjudgmental space, a community that looks to bring healing in the world, a place where everyone feels needed, and a place where we feel a sense of family.

Thu, March 28 2024 18 Adar II 5784