Monday, November 30, 2009

Notes from 1st Meeting of "New Circle" on November 23, 2009

Working name of group: “Page 36”

Email list: page-thirty-six@googlegroups.com

Blog: http://page36community.blogspot.com/

Mark your calendars:

  1. Saturday afternoon December 12th—lunch and ritual and talk on Hannukah/Hellenistm on UWS

Mich and Daniel L-L are point people

  1. Wednesday, December 23rd – learning of some kind TBD

Alissa and Aaron are point people

  1. Tuesday, January 5th- planning meeting at JCC in Manhattan

Attendance:

Daniel Lang- Levitsky

Eve Sicular

Aaron Levitt

Abigail Miller

Michelle Kay

Max

Alissa Wise

Emmaia Gelman

Staci

Aleza Summit

More practical tip:

- Meet bi-weekly on rotation (i.e. 1st Wednesday and 3rd Shabbes, still TBD)

- One of the two meetings/month will be Shabbes thing (either Friday eve or Saturday day) that include study/action

- Space: core location and some satellite locations for geographic accessibility focus on Manhattan below 125th Street

- No Debbie Friedman melodies

- Concentrated time for ritual and eating/schmoozing, not blending of two

- Create community, secular/religious together

- Find values in other’s worlds (have variety of things that not all of us will always participate in and that is OK)

Some things we would want to learn about:

- Hannukah/Hellenism

- Hebrew script/art/magic/craft

- Mikveh

- Jews & math

- Secular-religious divide

- The Dybbuk film

- Eve Sicular lectures

- Warsaw Ghetto Rebbe’s writings

Notes from the go-around (collection of people’s thoughts):

-More cultural connection then religious—music, yiddish, queer

- Don’t want to worry about fashion when going to shul

- Want a place to recharge, Jewish spirituality or nature work for me

- Cant be engaged in supporting or blind to ethnic cleansing or exploitation of people

- Lifecycle stuff—celebrations outside of babies and weddings…want to use lifecycle to celebrate other things too

- Frustrations with Zionism in synagogues (repeated often)

- High holidays are always stressful, to figure out what to do

- I often feel generationally out of place

- In many Jewish spaces my queerness feels invisible

- I have given up dreams of all parts of me to exist in one place—complacently out of place at this point

- want to rebuild cultural, social, and political life

- want to do text study—Talmud, hassidut, etc

- Want to use ritual and reinvent it too

- Wants a community that takes care of one another when necessary (death/illness)

- Want community to wear different hats, political, cultural, creative, intellectual, religious, spiritual (repeated often)

- Celebrate and mark holiday cycle together

- Havurah style of community—folks step up to do different things at different times (lead, teach, babysit, cook, clean, host…)

- Not that into formal synagogue formation

- JFREJ has been community for me, origin of my community

- Want the community to be intentional about being a community

- Shabbes dinner crew, core of people that are dependable (maybe with services and ritual)

- Not looking for a spiritual home because I don’t have a soul and don’t need one

- I am not looking for community of practice but don’t want my presence to obstruct others from seeking that here

- Community can do things that not everyone likes/wants because it does lots of different things

- Awareness of inevitably of my existence as next step in Jewish history, good moment for new constructions

- Religion as moral compass idea, want to think about that

- Want to bring in outside people to teach and talk and we discuss

- Want community for kids to grow up in

- Periodic moments of reflection, more than once a year

- Ritual that involves study (not just Jewish)

- Folks step up to do things as they feel moved

- I am atheist

- Like traditional davenning, some places are too woo-woo for me

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