Shabbat Scholar-in-Residence: Rabbi Sid Schwarz

Rabbi Sid founded, created and is director of Clergy Leadership Incubator (CLI), a program that trains rabbis (including Rabbi Breindel) to be visionary spiritual leaders. He founded and led PANIM: The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values and Kenissa: Communities of Meaning Network which builds the capacity of emerging spiritual communities across the country.

You are invited and encouraged to join as many of the following experiences as you can:

Friday evening, March 31

6:30 PM — Kabbalat Shabbat service

7:30 PM — “Re-Imagining the American Synagogue”

Rabbi Sid’s 2000 book, Finding a Spiritual Home: How a New Generation of Jews can Transform the American Synagogue, helped to shape the synagogue transformation efforts of the past two decades. Following services, Rabbi Sid will share insights about how to re-think the paradigm of the American synagogue in a way that might help congregations do a better job of engaging the next generation of American Jews.

Saturday, April 1

8:45 AM — Bagel breakfast

9:15 AM — Torah service in place of regular Torah study. Not only will we give honor to Torah, we’ll be celebrating the aufruf of Rebekah Glickman-Simon and Eric Weinstein!

10:30 AM — Shabbat morning alternative prayer experience: “Davening Out of the Box”

You should attend this prayer experience if:

• you are often bored at services
• you have no idea why anyone would willingly attend a worship service
• you are a deeply spiritual person, but services don’t always work for you
• you want to go where prayerful Jews have never gone before

Through discussions, song, movement and sharing, participants from young to old will walk away with a new appreciation for the Shabbat liturgy and the transformative power of prayer.

Lunch, followed by discussion at about 1:00 PM — “What is Prayer? Talk Back and Text Study”

This will be a chance to reflect on the morning’s prayer experience with Rabbi Sid through the prism of classical rabbinic texts on prayer. It will challenge your assumptions about what forms of worship are closer to the intentions of the rabbinic tradition.