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Communal Tragedy

Memorial wall with photos and plaques honoring Yitzhak Rabin at Tel Aviv assassination site.

As individuals, we all know pain and loss. It is the rare person who escapes sorrow. But when one of us hurts, others are there to offer comfort. Communal tragedy is different. When something bad happens to us as a community—whether that is a school, a town, a people, or a country—we struggle to figure out how to tend to our own wounds while taking care of each other. Drawing on compassion, empathy, justice, and love, we can bring out the best in each other, and perhaps, find a theology of hope in the midst of despair.

Latest Rituals

“What I need, right now, / is to not feel…”
a tear streamed face of a young woman
“I cannot be soothed / because there are / no moral answers…”
a woman looks up at the sky, hands in prayer at her heart
“When the dark comes, let it. In its own way, it offers us balm.”
dark bedroom with dawn through window
“I am thirsty to return to the peace of our peoplehood…”
water lit from above
“reaching toward me, / as alive and animated / as my own unimaginable heart–”
a hand reaches out to the shadows
“Can we be mirrors of each others’ light?”
light blue sky with clouds
“the shared livestream of celebrated death, / night and day of shattered glass.”
Broken glass set against stones
“I wish I could make enough soup to nourish the broken, injured, hurting, praying, people of the world.”
a person eats a bowl of soup
“I have lived enough to know there / are probably embers glowing…”
embers
“As we inhabit one Earth, we are one human family…”
a view of earth from a Nasa spacecraft

The Reconstructionist Network

Serving as central organization of the Reconstructionist movement

Training the next generation of groundbreaking rabbis

Modeling respectful conversations on pressing Jewish issues

Curating original, Jewish rituals, and convening Jewish creatives

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The Reconstructionist Network