HOLIDAY SALE!
HIPPOPOTAMAS Solid Oak
FURNITURE
SALE
Spirituality
10%-30%
OFF
BARS • BAR STOOLS • PUB TABLES
CONNELLY
MOVEMENT
POOL TABLES
• Huge Selection
• Various firished
• 3 pc. 1" !tartan Slate
• includes Equipment
• Additional Savi ► gs on
Floor Models
• 8' add S80
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SATURN
Made in Wigan
By Wolverine
• Commercial Quaky
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• Al Formica Cabinet
• Three piece 7/8.
Itaian Slate
• Includes Equipment
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8'1" '
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$1449
Now
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THE PLAYER
By Imperial -----„,
3/4" Slate
From
• Includes Equipment $ 819
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THE ELIMINATOR
i4 '" ' ' By Imperial
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• From
Black cabinet
with chrome trim
• includes Equipment
$99995
3/4 Ina Slate
USED POOL TABLES AVAILABLE FOR SALE
OVAL TURBO HOCKEY
• Behind the goal action..,--'
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• Pro ring design
• Electronic scoring
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reg.
$849
Sale
$64995
Made In USA
FOOSBALL
of
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Heavy Duty
Made in USA
From
34995
DOIVIE ICE HOCKEY
$
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Made in Michigan
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• includes electronic scoring
reg. $679
.Sale
54995
AIR HOCKEY ---
$
• Becfronic scoring optional
Made in Michigan
From
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$35995
Wurlitzer Juke Boxes
from $34995
Shuffle Boards • Slot Machines
• Arcade Games • Billiard Lights
• Game Room Artwork
• Dart Boards and Supplies
.
-
BnnARDs & GAME Room SUPPLY
MOVING & RECOVERING
37730 Van Dyke,
Sterling Heights North of 16 Mile Rd.
810-268-3800
I 41410
Lni
from page 85
On The Move
Financing Available
The 100-congregation Reconstructionist
movement, up from 90 congregations in
1996 and 52 in 1986, is adding the
infrastructure of more established Jewish
streams. Currently, Reconstructionists
count 20,000 member families.
Increasingly, the movement's congre-
gations are hiring rabbis and moving
into their own buildings rather than
meeting in people's homes or in bor-
rowed spaces as chavurot, or participato-
ry groups.
"We are member-led," says Sandy
Hansell, president of Congregation
T'Chiyah in Royal Oak, one of four
Reconstructionist congregations in
southeast Michigan.
"We have no rabbi. We take turns at
our place," he says of the synagogue that
holds services weekly for Shabbat and
on major holidays.
Hansell defines the Reconstructionist
movement as "liberal Judaism coupled
with a strong, traditional base. For
instance, Saturday morning services
include reading the Torah with all the
traditional prayers said in Hebrew, but
with a lot of upbeat singing," he says.
Other Michigan-area
Reconstuctionist congregations are in
Detroit, East Lansing and Ann Arbor,
where the membership is looking to
bring in a Reconstructionist rabbinical
student on a monthly basis, as is
T'Chiyah.
"We have in the past had a rabbinical
student one weekend a month," says
T'Chiyah member Harold Gurwitz.
"The rabbinical college provides this as a
service for their students as well as for
member congregations."
Rabbi Debrah Cohen, who was the
Detroit area's only Reconstuctionist
rabbi, was chaplain at the Jewish
Association for Residential Care in
Southfield as well as part-time rabbi for
three-years at T'Chiyah. A graduate of
the Reconstuctionist Rabbinical College,
she left the Detroit area in the fall to live
in India for several months.
The movement's seminary, the
Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in
suburban Philadelphia, recently
increased the size of its incoming rab-
binic classes from 10 to 18, while
adding a cantorial program and master's
degree in Judaic studies. This month it
completed construction of a new library
and classrooms.
The movement now offers its own
complete set of prayer books, including
a High Holiday machzor (prayer book
used on Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur), published in 1999 and a
Passover Haggadah (book of the seder
service) released last spring.
T'Chiyah uses that machzor and
has used the movement's Shabbat
prayer book for several years. "The
unique and special prayer books are
an example of what the movement has
done to incorporate the
Reconstructionist approach to
Judaism," says Gurwitz, who joined
Hansell and Benjamin Ben Beruch at
the Nov. 2-5 convention. Ben Beruch
represented T'Chiyah and the Ann
Arbor Reconstructionist Chavurah.
"What struck me, being there, was
how fast the Reconstructionist move-
ment is growing," Hansell says. Having
attended conventions over the last 10
years, Gurwitz found many new congre-
gations represented since the last confer-
ence.
Other significant changes are on the
horizon. The movement's new camp is
scheduled to open in 2002 somewhere
on the East Coast. Reconstructionist
teens from around the country will
gather in Florida in January to launch
the movement's first youth group.
"We are a very exciting, energetic
group and we seem to be striking a
responsible core," Hansell says.
He is optimistic for the growth of
both the movement and his synagogue.
"We have a good, committed core of
members in our congregation and are
poised for growth," he says of T'Chiyah
with its 39 member families.
Why Reconstructionism?
The first Reconstructionist synagogue,
the Society for the Advancement of
Judaism, was founded by Rabbi
Mordecai Kaplan in the early 1920s.
Kaplan was the first to introduce
the bat mitzvah and began counting
women in a minyan (prayer quorum)
in the late 1920s. Reconstructionism,
which regards Jewish law as something
to inform policy rather than to dictate
it, was the first movement to ordain
openly gay and lesbian Jews and to
recognize patrilineal descent, the idea
that the child of a Jewish father and
non-Jewish mother can be considered
Jewish.
Even as they become more institu-
tionalized, Reconstructionist congrega-
tions are doing it in a distinctive way,
putting their own left-leaning marks on
programs such as fund-raising and sum-
mer camps.
In a meeting at the biennial, before
taking on such issues as what level of
kashrut (kosher) to observe or the role of
Hebrew, camp committee members
talked about the need to welcome chil-
dren from lesbian and multiracial Jewish
families.
As a growing number of congrega-
tions are taking on major expenses, like
for buildings and staff, the movement
has responded with a series of work-
shops on fund-raising.
Called "The Torah of Money," the
workshops urge congregations to
explore traditional Jewish texts on
money, while also encouraging them to
try creative fund-raising approaches.
Many congregants came to
Reconstructionism because they were
disenchanted with the synagogues they
grew up with, finding them too focused
on material trappings or giving too
much clout — whether ubiquitous
plaques or aliyot (blessings before the
Torah) — to the wealthiest members.
Reconstructionist congregations want all
members, not just major donors, to feel
a sense of ownership in the synagogue.
"Our movement has a strong anti-
institutional orientation," writes Mark
Seal, the JRF's executive vice president,
in a recent issue of the movement's
newsletter.
"There's a sense of, 'How can we
even think about intensive fund-raising
when one of the central motivating fac-
tors that led to the creation of our com-
munity was a rejection of the culture of
fund-raising within the broader Jewish
community?"'
Reconstructionist congregations are
taking a range of approaches, but most
are making 100 percent participation,
rather than total dollars raised, the
major goal.
Congregations nationally are trying
innovative fund-raising techniques, such
as anonymous capital campaigning and
sliding-scale membership dues. They
seek to avoid the hassles and capital
campaigns that buildings require by opt-
ing to continue renting or borrowing
space from other institutions.
T'Chiyah, which rented space for
years in a church in Detroit's
Greektown, meets in the Royal Oak
Woman's Club on S. Pleasant. Members
are largely from the Royal Oak,
Huntington Woods and Ferndale areas.
"I think we're finding our way to be
an institution that will not forget its
grassroots beginnings," says Linda Jum,
a member of B'nai Keshet in Montclair,
N.J., and a JRF board member, while
adding: "The more mainstream we
become, the better off for us.
"I believe there are many
Reconstructionists out there," she says.
"They just haven't realized it."
❑
Jewish News StaffWriter Shelli Liebman
Dorfman contributed to this story