Community-wide Passover Learning, Open to All.
What is freedom? It feels like the entire world is trying to answer this question. But while anger, fear, and frustration seem to be the norm of the political landscape, Judaism asks us to tackle the concept of freedom with open minds, hearts, and adaptable interpretation. This year’s Through Parted Waters: a Community Pesach Learning will seek to reset the table, to bring us back to a dialogue that builds and sustains rather than judges and divides. Passover is the holiday of questioning, so let’s ask those questions side by side, hand in hand, as we leave Egypt…together. 

Join us in person at CSZ for two sessions:
7:00 p.m. Start Time with Opening Niggun. 
7:10 Session I 
8:00 Break
8:10 Session II

Register Below, or call 248.357.5544.

Educators:
RABBI YONATAN DAHLEN
Moderator

RABBI ROBERT GAMER
Why Truthiness is Not A Jewish Value
How Judaism would have us talk to one another even over the most heated topics.

RABBI SHALOM KANTOR
Overcoming the Fear(s) That Can Prevent Our Freedom
From the questions of the “Four Children” to the Song of Dayenu – the Haggadah is filled with subtle ways we may be avoiding embracing the freedom that we are supposed to feel at this moment. Let us discuss and learn how we can use the Haggadah to find our own and collective freedom from the fears in our own lives preventing us from finding the freedom we so desire.

RABBI BLAIR NOSANWISCH
What Does Sourdough Bread Have to do with Pesach and Liberation? 
Drawing connections between the mitzvah of getting rid of se’or and the story of liberation and what it has to teach us about connection to place, people, and story.

RABBI STEVEN RUBENSTEIN
Freedom Granted and Freedom Denied
A public reading  of two classic short stories, Bontsha the Silent by I.L. Peretz and The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin, followed by a talk-back about the theme of freedom in each.

RABBI ARIANA SILVERMAN
What if We Were Freed, But Never Left Egypt?
This session tackles the idea that the Exodus was not just a release from slavery to freedom, but a total escape from the land of our enslavement. What are the conditions we need to fully feel free? Is it dependent on place, time, community?

RABBI AARON STARR
Neither Fully Free Nor Fully Submissive: Exploring Jewish Obligation in the Contemporary American Milieu
How do our American notions of freedom and rights jive with our Jewish sense of commandedness toward God and toward others? We will explore traditional and contemporary notions of obligation to ask, ‘To whom and to what are we commanded today?’

REBECCA STARR
Jewish Parenting and Grandparenting:  The Challenges of Setting Limits and Empowering Growth at the Same Time
Empowering and inspiring the younger members of our community to be resilient leaders is challenging today in a way that it has never been before.   Social media, a global pandemic, the 24-hour news cycle, and unlimited access to television and movie streams leave parents and grandparents with real questions about how to set limits and boundaries for children. How might Jewish tradition guide the caregivers of today’s generation as they navigate the endless freedoms available?   The Exodus narrative required that the Jewish people commit to a set of standards as they explored their newly found freedom from slavery.  What commitments must we make to our youth today to help them navigate the many freedoms they enjoy while holding them to a high standard of responsibility?

*List in Formation