Our 14th year began with a party for our bat mitzvah/13th anniversary. That service was focused on the horrible fires burning across the world, particularly Australia, as that destruction from climate change touched all of us so deeply, and stood in for what seemed to be THE story for how 2020 would go.
Then came March. As our services are the 2nd Saturdays we met in person, a smaller group, and sitting apart from one another spaced out around the circle, not passing a kiddush cup or touching each other’s food or hugging. How little did we know what was coming. We didn’t meet in April, as it was Pesach and we were all reeling from our city being shut down. In May we were back, via Zoom, finding new ways to pray and knowing that each thing we tried was practice for how High Holidays would be happening.
February 2020: You will not drown. You were born swimming
Torah Talk: Revisiting our founding statement
Torah Talk: Check in – where are we? How are we? What do we fear? What can we do?
May 2020: But are you prepared to live in the space between your ears
Torah Talk: The Jubilee, and the world we want to build when this is all over
June 2020: Pollination, Not Police Nation
Torah Talk: Defunding the Police, Funding Our Lives
July 2020: and the first berry dissolves on your tongue
Torah Talk: back to the original March plan, discussing our founding statement on being a non-zionist havurah
August 2020, erev shabbat: Lebanon’s Cedars, sprouted at creation-time
October 2020: Welcome to Sh’mini Atzeret
Torah talk: A Tithe is a fence around wealth
November 2020: Whatever it is the trees know, we need to know also
Torah talk: adrienne maree brown, November 7, 2020
December 2020: to know the dark, go dark
Torah talk: understanding the COVID vaccine, by havurah member Rin McMaster
January 2021: Let go the pain you are holding in your mind, your shoulders, your heart
Torah Talk: How do you organize during a regime change? lessons according to shemot