Temple Micah

Um, in a previous, uh, conversation, Rich Harwood and I talked about what civic culture means, what is that expression all about, what is, what is, what does it mean to have civic health in a society, in a democratic society? And, um, I'm pleased to again introduce Rich Harwood, um, longtime friend and thought partner, um, in this world of American democracy.

I'm a congregational rabbi here in Northern Virginia, but before that, I was just a random person living in the DC area, and I belong to a very special congregation in Washington, DC called Temple Micah.

And Rich Harwood was a member at Temple Micah just after me, and I got introduced to Rich by, by our common rabbi, and, um, and we've been in conversation over the years about these topics, about what creates a healthy civil society.

And, um, and the reason why Rich has been such a wonderful thinker with me is, has been that he has real-life experience.

He's not just working at a congregation like me in one small bubble of community.

If we stop bothering, we'll never survive.

Rabbi Healy Slackman from Temple Micah in Washington, D.C., in a heartbreaking and heart-filling sermon on love and loss, quotes Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who wrote, this is the meaning of existence, to reconcile liberty with service, the passing with the lasting, to weave the threads of temporality into the fabric of eternity.

To this, Rabbi Slackman adds, something endures.

It's not us.

For a little while, astonishingly, we get to touch it, participate in it, even form it.

Eternity bears the marks of our having been here.

Rabbi Kelly Whitehead, also from Temple Micah, writes about the need to cultivate imagination.

She calls for a movement of Judeo-futurism or futures thinking.