Rabbi's Week in Review Blog

While I will be somewhat off the grid this week for a retreat of my rabbinic Clergy Leadership Incubator, I head off feeling joyful about having participated in two simchahs over the weekend. On Saturday, we celebrated the bar mitzvah of Aiden Yampolsky, the son of former congregants Justin Yampolsky, Austine Roney (f/k/a Dia Matthews during her time in Kansas City with Kol Ami), and Roney Eapen. (I participated in person, in Madison, Wisconsin, and the congregation attended via livestream.) On Sunday, I had the honor of officiating at the wedding of Brianna Pearson and Ariela Mann.

Both ceremonies reminded me of how special it is to share in the most important moments in people’s lives, and how these moments can both sustain relationships and create new relationships. Whatever we are engaged in at Kol Ami, it is the way we engage in relationship that is at the core of how we create community.  

I believe we all need community — a place to share our lives, our joys and our challenges. It is true in how we engage in individual one-on-one relationships, and it is true in how we engage in the mitzvah of loving the strangers in our midst. Extending love so that strangers are strangers no more.

To Aiden and family, to Brianna and Ariela, mazel tov!!