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Come and enjoy the Havurah's sukkah! In addition to services for Sukkot, we have lots of meals in the sukkah. Help us decorate the sukkah Sunday October 2 at 11:00 am. Then come for services followed by a vegetarian, potluck meal Wednesday October 4 at 6:30 pm and Thursday October 5 at 10:00 am. Not enough? Come for Shabbat services also followed by vegetarian potlucks in the sukkah Friday October 6 at 6:30 pm and Saturday October 7 at 10:00 am.
The Havurah will keep seven days of Sukkot and then joyously celebrate Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah together on Thursday October 12 at 9:30 am, including Yizkor, Hallel, reading the end and beginning of the Torah, auctioning (not for money!) off the special aliyot and dancing with the Torahs!
Kathy Green, founding member of Havurat Shalom.
Michael Breslau, uncle of Havurah member Josh Schreiber Shalem.
May the Source of Peace send peace to all who mourn and comfort to all who are bereaved.
Remembering Kathy Green
Joseph Reimer
When I think back to the first year of Havurat Shalom, I have trouble holding on to the fact that we were a group of young men. It seems embarrassing to acknowledge that we self-styled progressive Jews constructed our ideal Jewish community to count only men as full members and considered the women in our midst to be “wives” and “girl friends.” And that we did so without much thought or awareness is truly humbling.
But when I feel my way back to that first year, a very different picture emerges. As a single young man from an Orthodox background who was for the first time moving from New York to Boston, I was not seeking to live in a male-only community. I was as captive as the next to the conventional myths about gender roles, but I was emotionally-cued to seek female company. Yes, I wanted to find a girl-friend; but my emotional needs went well beyond that. I wanted to find women friends who could –in a way that I could then never have acknowledged- fill in my emotional life. When I feel back, I recall the friendship of Merle, Ruthie, Mona, Liz, and above all, Kathy.
I close my eyes and see myself at the Greens for erev Shabbat dinner. Art and Kathy lived in the two-family house near Harvard Square that housed both the Havurah and their home. The Greens always had company on Friday nights and I’d never know who I’d find there. But the other guests did not matter. I had come for their company. The way they lit their living room. The music that would be playing. The books they were reading. The conversations they generated. And the way they looked at you and held you with their smiles. I could not get enough of that. I felt held by their eyes.
Art played many roles in my life that year, but who was Kathy? I had never met anyone like Kathy. First, she grew up in Kansas. Second, she was an orphan, Third, she had come to her Judaism as an adult. Fourth, she was also also interested in Russian mystical literature. How do you put all those pieces together and come out with a coherent person? I did not know.
Much about Kathy remained a mystery to me. But I learned to look to Kathy as an emotional anchor that year when the Havurah could become an emotionally overwhelming experience.
Kathy was short, thin, intense and beautiful. She did not speak a lot, certainly not at our weekly communal meetings. But she looked at you differently. No matter what was going on, I could look over to Kathy, and if I caught her eye, she would beam back at me. I felt she was silently saying, “Joe, this will be OK,” and that was intensely comforting.
I never felt that Kathy cared about whether or not she was officially a member of the Havurah. At times Merle or Mona would speak up about the exclusion of women, but not Kathy. Yet Kathy was most devoted to the religious life of the Havurah. She regularly came to davven, to learn, to be with the community. She did not lead services or teach classes. But when she was there, you felt her special presence and her serious attention. The life of the spirit and the community were her pressing concerns.
After her funeral this month I was filled with memories of Kathy from the early days of the Havurah. She and I had come from such different backgrounds and yet I felt deeply connected to her. I sense that perhaps the Havurah had a special meaning for Kathy, an orphan from Kansas who grew up without any of what the Havurah provided. I hope that was so. I know that what she brought to the Havurah was enriching for many of us who surrounded Art and Hannah as we laid our beloved Kathy to rest.
Remembering Kathy Green
Merle Feld
Kathy was beautiful, a beautiful woman, also, a slip of a girl. One of the reasons old friends are so precious is that they remember you through many stages of your life and can help reflect back to you your essence, seeing not only the shaking-decline-in-a-wheelchair you but also the barely-out-of-adolescence you, the new mother you, the you brimming with ideas, you listening intently before responding.
I knew Kathy when she first loved Art, when she first loved Hebrew – how hard she worked to learn. She was a voracious lover of all things Jewish, she had an old soul, and thus found kindred spirits in the Havurah. I will forever have an image of her, coming down in the morning that first year to the kitchen we all shared with them, struggling to wake up, seeking coffee and cigarettes – we all smoked then. I remember Kathy and I preparing for the first Havurah retreat – we had planned a huge turkey, but as 23 and 20 year-olds respectively, we actually had no idea how to make a turkey, so we’d neglected to defrost the thing, and then valiantly struggled to do so on Thursday night by plunging it into hot water in Kathy’s bathtub, convulsing in laughter.
Kathy was an intellectual and relished all the amazing courses that first year – a child in a candy store. She was always reserved, an intensely private person, but with a gentle, caring soul and a wicked sense of humor. She was graceful, she didn’t know how to be unkind, she showed no inkling of the traumas she had survived. Only when I helped her bring her memoir, Sailing in Kansas, to publication did I finally see her beauty and her struggle in all its complexity – it’s a must-read.
Rest in peace Kraindal bat Leah, your memory is a blessing.
Remembering Reena Kling
There is going to be a memorial edition of the Havurah’s electronic newsletter for Reena. If you would like to submit writing or photos, please do so by email to info@thehav.org by October 31.
Reena made many teaching tapes over the years to encourage people to learn to leyn and lead services. If you have such a tape, please lend it to the Havurah. We are going to digitize them and make them available.
The Havurah is seeking new members! Members commit to doing some of the varied work that makes the Havurah run. If you might be interested in membership, please contact Heidi at info@thehav.org or 617-623-3376.
Or, if volunteering at the Havurah is not for you right now, become an associate member! Send us a tax-deductible donation with your name, address and email, or donate online here. Associate members can attend Havurah retreats, have access to the services of the G'milut Chasadim Committee and have the option of being on the Associate-Havnet and Havnot email lists.
We have children's book club on the first Saturday of the month. Kids choose to have a picture book or a chapter of a chapter book read to them (or both!). This is usually be upstairs, but could also become part of the adult service during the d'var Torah slot.
Every Shabbat - every day! - there are older and younger children's play rooms on the second floor, as well as a play structure in the back yard.
Contact us regarding Shabbat childcare.
Havurat Shalom is an organizational member of the local time bank, the Time Trade Circle. TTC presents feminist economist Professor Julie Matthaei speaking on the Solidarity Economy and time banking. All welcome!
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