An Urgent Conversation: Talking to Our Children about Race

Dear Nursery Families, 

I had planned to write today about our incredible resilience as a community. It has undoubtedly been a difficult time, and I am so proud of the tireless work our teachers and parents have put into collectively holding our children and maintaining their sense of joy and connectedness, even in the midst of global fear and isolation. It has been deeply moving to see how our children, our parents, and our teachers have continued to come together with determination and warmth. Every Friday, as we sing together at Shabbat, I am filled with gratitude and hope.
 
However, I cannot find it in my heart to write that message today, having spent the past week watching black parents shed tears of anguish and exhaustion over the violence that children of color face every day. I will write the message I had set out to write another day, for the tremendous work every parent is doing right now to care for children in the midst of crisis is surely worthy of praise and celebration. But today I am too sad and, though much that we have experienced recently is unprecedented, this particular sadness is not. It rises up with devastating, numbing regularity. So today I am trying to listen to parents like Christy Oglesby, who are pleading for “white mamas to come running,” and I ask you to join me in listening and in thinking about what we can all do to respond.  
 
I was born in Minnesota. I have written in the past about the sense of peace that I find in watching my son dig for vegetables in the Minnesota earth or in listening to a loon call across one of our many lakes. I wrote just a few weeks ago about the time my dad and I piled into a stranger’s minivan on a cold winter day, after we’d been in a car accident in front of a Minnesota mall. It is a place I have always felt safe, and I know that these have been my experiences, not only in Minnesota but in the world, in large part because of the privilege of my skin. If my dad had been a black man, it is very likely that standing on the side of the road on a December morning would have been filled with fear, rather than with the kindness of strangers. This is not specific to Minnesota. I am safer on any street and my father and son are safer on any street, in Minnesota or New York or any other city in our country, because the shade of our skin does not spark terror, which is a security we did nothing to earn.

Christy Oglesby writes:

“I heard [George] Floyd scream ‘Mama,’ and through my tears, even though I knew the events in the video had already unfolded to a tragic conclusion, I was still ready to fight. He wasn't my baby, but he was someone's child. And he needed someone with a mother's love to help him…I need the white mamas to share this burden. I need my white friends to love me and mine enough to come running, too. ‘Mama! Mama!’ I need them to hear that cry and to tell their sons and daughters that my child is a human. I need them to declare and believe that he's in danger, that I can't protect him by myself and that his life matters to me and to them. I need them to tell their white friends' children, too. My child's life is sacred. My child is not dangerous.”

These pleas echo through the centuries, and it takes humility and courage to listen. But from all the time I have spent in the classroom with young children and from the bottom of my heart as a parent, I can promise this: we will not traumatize white children by talking to them about racism, but we absolutely do participate in the traumatization and endangerment of children of color when we don’t, regardless of our intentions or beliefs.
 
These are unquestionably hard conversations. It is so hard to look into our children’s eyes and tell them about the things that are broken in the world. All any parent wants is for their child to be able to grow up filled with hope, confidence, and optimism. Shedding light on painful truths can feel like a threat to childhood itself; it is natural to want to preserve our children’s joy. But hard conversations are not inherently traumatic. If we talk to our children with honesty and care, they are capable of taking in difficult truths and responding with more empathy, understanding, and insightfulness than we often imagine. I have seen this again and again in the classroom and in my home.  
 
If we are really listening to black parents in our country, we must also acknowledge that explaining these truths to white children, who are safe in their skin, is far less wrenching than explaining to children of color that their mere existence may be seen as menacing.
 
Though these conversations are difficult, it is possible to have them with our children with love and compassion. I know this, because parents of color, out of necessity, teach their children these lessons every day with gentleness and with profound love. Listen to them and listen to their children. I also know this because, through many holidays across the year in our classrooms, we share difficult stories about the history of the Jewish people with young children sensitively and thoughtfully. We trust that if we handle these conversations kindly, their understanding will grow over time.

As so many black parents express their grief, again and again, over shepherding their children into a world that does not value them, it is untenable for me to look into their eyes and make the choice to preserve some children’s innocence over other children’s lives.
 
When Bakari Sellers was asked last week how he teaches his own children to feel hopeful about their future, he choked back tears and said, “I don’t have that answer. Other than every day I just tell them that I love them. That’s all I can do.” I urge us all to listen to Mr. Sellers and to other parents of color, who are expressing their pain and exhaustion right now. Their ability to continue to convey hope to their own children rests on the willingness of white parents to find the courage to see their pain and to teach every child that no one’s freedom can depend upon abiding fear that robs others of their freedom.    
 
These are not singular conversations. We do not need to unveil the whole of human suffering to our children all at once, nor can we afford to touch upon these topics only in moments of crisis. But research shows that the seeds of bias take root by the age of five if we do not actively disrupt the messages that permeate our culture and seep into our children’s consciousness. Children’s perceptions of which topics are too taboo to discuss with adults also crystalize in the first five years, and we cannot afford for race to continue to be one of these topics. If we begin these conversations early, if we approach them with love, and if we commit to revisiting them with growing complexity over time, our children will not be traumatized by the truth, they will become more tender, more insightful, and more active.       
 
It is our job to create safe, loving childhoods for our children, and it is also our job to think carefully about how we are shaping the citizens and neighbors they will become in the future. Children have risen up remarkably as leaders in so many ways recently. They have led movements, calling on us to protect their classrooms and their planet. Children know that even small hands can help bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice, and in my experience as a teacher and a parent they are usually eager to participate in shaping a better future, not frightened by it, as we sometimes assume they will be.     
 
Until we are willing to look white children in the eye and tell them the truth about privilege, we leave black parents no choice but to tell their children about fear. Until the tears of every mother’s child ring in our ears and make our hearts race with the same urgency that we feel when our own children are suffering, and until we run to their side with the same fierce instinct that propels us to protect our own families, we will continue to bear responsibility for the breathless last cries of other mama’s babies. It is necessary and it is possible for us to do so much better for everyone’s children.
 
Later today I will send our schedule for the week, and I truly look forward to coming together as a community to read, to sing, and to celebrate this last week of school with your children, who have risen so beautifully to the challenges we all face right now. It fills my heart with joy as I see them looking for their friends at the beginning of each online session, snuggling with their favorite stuffed animals as they listen to their teachers read stories, and dancing with glee as Paul plays their favorite songs. Our community is strong not only because we embrace one another but also because we reach out with open arms toward others. This week, as we celebrate our children’s growth, I will find solace in the future that I believe they are capable of helping to create, for as Melody Cooper, sister to Chris Cooper, wrote this weekend, “You can transform your own world through how you teach your children.”

In sorrow and in hope,
Alicia

Resources for Parents

Picture Books for Beginning Conversations with Children

A Note from Alicia: Playing Together

Dear Families,

Playing Together

“Children don’t say, ‘I had a hard day at school today; can I talk to you about it?’
They say, ‘Will you play with me?’”
~Lawrence J. Cohen

Every year teachers think carefully about how best to scaffold children through their transition into summer. Under any circumstances transitions are filled with the widest possible range of feelings, from excitement and pride to worry and sadness, and many of these feelings overlap, which can be especially confusing for children. Each individual child will process and express these feelings differently based on their own circumstances, experience, and temperament, and this is surely true for adults as well. Just as we discuss the different ways in which children approach the beginning of school and the role our own adult feelings play in that process, many of these same themes resurface at the end of the year. 

This year, of course, the uncertainties are more pronounced, and therefore the range of feelings, for all of us, is likely amplified as well. The teachers have begun sharing their plans for this transition and suggesting language for talking with children about the questions that may be on their minds. It is always important to remind ourselves that some children process change through behavioral regressions or acting out as well. These challenging moments are a natural part of the attachment process. When children regress and suddenly seem to need help with tasks that they had previously mastered, they are signaling to us that the change is making them feel unsteady, and they need a little extra reassurance to know that the grown-ups are still there to care for them. Similarly, when children have tantrums or lash out at us in these final weeks, they are often trying to make the separation feel more in their control, while also ensuring that you will stick around no matter what, even when they push every boundary.  

Sometimes, though, in preparing the language we will use and bracing ourselves for the behaviors we may experience, we forget about the important role of play in buttressing the changes in children’s lives, and we are tempted to over talk when what children really need is a partner. We often describe the vital role of play in young children’s learning, but play is also the primary way in which children process their feelings, confront their worries, and test out their hopes and wishes. Sometimes this may appear very overt, as when a stuffed animal becomes the frightened child, and the child becomes the doctor or the super hero. In these scenarios, children are able to step out of an uncomfortable role and into a more secure and powerful one. However, if we are not on the lookout, even these relatively explicit moments of expression can be difficult to notice and translate. Adults are more removed from the instinct to play out our emotions and ideas, so we don’t speak the language of fantasy as fluently as children do. Even with a degree in education, I was four chapters into my third grader’s story, “Ella’s Adventures in New York,” before it dawned on me that Ella-the-Bunny was visiting all of the places that had previously marked our own day-to-day life in the city and are now off limits; Ella, it seemed, was riding the subway and checking in on the whale at the Museum of Natural History in our stead. 

Narrative play is often the most overt, but just as we may glean meaning and catharsis from wordless experiences, like a dance performance, a painting, or a baseball game, non-narrative play is also a rich source of expression for children. Running very fast or jumping with all their might into a big puddle might be as important an act of empowerment as stepping into the shoes of “The Mom” or putting on a superhero cape. Pretend play allows children to experience the confidence of being more grown-up and more powerful and of putting these sensations into words. But drawing, building, and moving are also crucial avenues for experimentation and expression. Research of young children’s art work has shown that they depict what is important to them, rather than what they see. They draw their self-portrait in blue crayon, because blue is their favorite color, and they can fully inhabit and proclaim their own preferences on the page. Or they depict a new baby as the largest figure in a drawing, because the baby’s needs take up so much time and space that they feel huge. Whether play has a clear message or is simply exhilarating, silly, or cozy, it expresses a feeling or a need for the child, and it serves as an invitation to us, the adults, to pay attention or to join in. 

The psychologist, Lawrence Cohen says, “We have to join children where they live, on their terms...If they don’t think we will play, they may not even ask, and we all miss chance after chance to reconnect.”  Sometimes this may mean taking on roles with them, and sometimes it may simply mean letting our guard down and joining in a painting session or a dance party. Expressing and releasing worry always feels less lonely when we have a partner, even if we don’t name that as our purpose, and viscerally sharing our excitement with someone else magnifies our joy. Cohen points out that these moments leave our children with a palpable feeling of our presence and love, and sometimes this is all they need to move forward with greater confidence and ease. Sometimes they need us to see the meaning behind their play, but often children just need us to meet them inside a feeling where we can help them to either inhabit it or release it.

Perhaps the best part of joining our children in their playful expressions is that we tend to walk away from these experiences feeling better too. There is exhilaration in letting a tower crash loudly to the ground, comfort in painting a wide blue sky, and freedom in a good dance party at any age. 

Wishing you a playful weekend.

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia

A Note from Alicia: Leaning into Love

Dear Nursery Families, 

Leaning into Love

“In the flush of love’s light
we dare be brave.
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.”
~ Maya Angelou

Last week I wrote about Loris Malaguzzi’s idea that our relationships with children ought to be filled with a sense of “nostalgia for the future”---an imagination of what the path ahead could hold that is rooted in a commitment to hope and possibility. One of our teachers shared this week that when she visited Reggio Emilia, Italy, an educator there defined this idea of “nostalgia for the future” simply: Nostalgia for the future is love.

What more powerful definition of love could there be, especially right now? When hope feels more difficult and complex, the word “nostalgia” seems particularly right. It is a textured word that implies longing for something we can’t quite touch yet. It takes more effort to hold onto hope and love when we have to stretch a bit to reach them.   

It is tempting to shield our children from the things in the world that are scary or sad, and that temptation is particularly powerful now when the more frightening parts of life feel so much bigger and more omnipresent than usual and when we are literally being instructed to stay inside and away from other people. As parents, it is only natural that we would try to make our homes into sealed bubbles that not only protect children from germs but from heartbreak. But love and hope are complicated feelings that can’t be fully accessed if we are only willing to acknowledge them in their brightest, most joyful shapes. For these feelings to become part of a child’s core identity, they have to be able to endure in sunshine and in shadows.    

Surely, we need to do our best to scaffold the ways in which children are being exposed to news and information so that they are not flooded by what they see and hear or left to process it alone. And of course the simple fact that they are not in school and not able to see their friends punctures the bubble that we may wish we could preserve in a significant way. They need our reassurance that we will do everything in our power to keep them safe and that hard things don’t last forever, even when we can’t see the end of the tunnel clearly yet. But this doesn’t mean that they need us to block their view of the world completely, even if it were possible to do so. Children need us to help them continue to look out, beyond their own experience, and to think in manageable ways about the needs of others and about how they can be helpers, even when that involves asking them to open themselves up to a little bit of sadness. They need our prompting and our help with this even more when they are removed from their communities. Though it may feel scary as parents to let the truth into our relationships with children when the truth is so daunting, doing so in gentle and supportive ways will actually help them. It will help them to understand why their lives feel so different right now, and it will ultimately allow them to access a sense of agency rather than helplessness.       

A love that resides in hope for the future necessitates that we look honestly at the present, because we can only feel the surge of possibility for tomorrow when we first take a clear eyed look at today. Only when we see the way things are can we begin to think about the way they could be, and what we might be able to do to help bend the arc and bring that change about. And in doing this---in taking an honest look at today, imagining a better tomorrow, and taking steps toward that vision---we not only make the world better, we feel better. Even in scary times, when we may need to think carefully about how we are “dosing” information about the world for our children, we can help them to experience this process of acknowledging reality and then taking steps toward actualizing a better future. The hardest part for us, as adults, is the first step, because we have to allow our children to experience a little bit of the ache that comes with seeing what is broken, in order to open the door to the feelings of hope and empowerment that come from envisioning something better and participating in creating change.  

We do this work with children in the classroom constantly. Whenever we encourage a child to notice that someone else is feeling sad or scared or angry and then work with them to think about how we might help that person feel better, we are nudging them to feel the discomfort of someone else’s pain for a moment and then to be participants in making their classroom safer and more joyful for everyone. The moment of discomfort is necessary to participate in the work of making things better. At school we also ask children to begin to make space in their hearts for suffering that occurs outside of their immediate experience and to think about how they can repair the world beyond their reach; whether encouraging children to decide together what they want to do with a tzedakah collection, or helping them to talk about an event in the world, such as the fires in Australia earlier this year, and then think about how they might help, we are purposefully pulling the curtains back on painful parts of the human experience in order to support them in the empowering process of envisioning something better and acting toward it.   

There are many ways to continue this work with children, even as we are far from one another and even as the proximity of suffering may feel more frightening. When it is so easy to become overwhelmed by all that feels wrong in the world, it is more important, not less, for us to look at the world with eyes open and help our children to do the same, so that we can contribute to the healing and rebuilding together. Simply helping our children to think about who else might be feeling sad or lonely or scared, and then encouraging them to consider what they could do to help, allows them to move into a position of positive agency. While our instinct may be to pull the curtains closed when the world seems to darken, ultimately this only makes us feel more alone. The same is true for our children. But looking out the window together and talking about what we see helps us to know that we are part of a shared experience and that we have some control over how the light can start to seep back in. 

This might be as simple as acknowledging that everyone is feeling a little lonely right now and making drawings for others to see through your windows, as we did together with the children several weeks ago. Or it could mean “adopting” a healthcare worker and creating encouraging pictures or notes for them, as some of our classes have been doing. Or it might simply mean making an extra call to a grandparent or a friend who lives alone to help brighten their day. All of these small acts ask us to take a moment to let our children feel someone else’s experience in their own hearts. Ultimately doing so will help them to feel less alone, and it will help them to feel engaged with the world rather than buffeted by it.    

Here are some simple entry points for talking to children about the needs of others right now and helping them to take action:  

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia

A Note from Alicia: Managing Uncertainty & Finding Nostalgia for the Future

Dear Nursery Families, 

Managing Uncertainty & Finding Nostalgia for the Future

The Way It Is

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn’t change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can’t get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding.
You don’t ever let go of the thread.

~William Stafford

It is a long standing understanding in psychology that having a sense of control over one’s life and environment is critical to both emotional and physical wellbeing. It is also true that the intensity with which we feel a desire for control varies across temperament and life circumstances; having too overpowering a need for control can lead to strain on all aspects of our health, just as not having any opportunity for control can. A hierarchy of need plays a role as well—the more we feel is in our control, the more we tend to focus our desire for choice on increasingly fine grained aspects of life. Determining what to hold onto and what to let go of is a central human task, and it is one that educators often speak of in understanding child development. Children’s behavioral regulation often rests on having choices, while also feeling that those choices are limited and manageable. It is both frustrating to have no control and scary to have too much.

Times of crisis and uncertainty are destabilizing precisely because they rob us of our sense of manageable control. Trying to hold onto control when we have so little can fill us with anxiety, but letting go completely can drain us of motivation and lead to depression. It feels like an impossible tightrope, and our desire to be able to see the future clearly reflects our need to at least know when we will have some of our sense of agency back. 

As we consider how to bring a meaningful close to the school year, when so many of the concrete experiences that usually bolster us through transitions are absent, we are thinking about how to help children process change in a virtual space and how to support them in moving on to the next step, when the next step for many is unknown. In a typical year, we advise parents to focus on the immediate future for children, and not to look too far ahead—to remember that the summer comes before the fall, and for kids a few months feels very far away. Now we are in a moment when even that immediate next step is uncertain, as both the summer and the fall feel filled with more questions than answers. This is a hard message to deliver to our children, for whom we are accustomed to being in the role of experts and knowledge keepers. The Reggio Emilia philosophy teaches us to try to let go of that job and allow children to explore uncertainties and to trust their capacity to grapple with questions and problems. It is a strange truth that this process of letting go of our adult authority feels easier when we are more secure in that authority. Our knowledge and our control of so many things suddenly feels equalized with our children’s. We are all living in the moment and wondering what might be ahead right alongside them, and this feels particularly scary when we long to be their bastions of safety and certitude.   

Yet, the most deeply rooted power of the Reggio approach lies at the core of its history, which is one of profound resilience and hope. The first Reggio school was built out of the ashes of World War II, paid for by the sale of a tank, three trucks, and six war horses. Its foundation was a strong belief in the power of education and in the process of envisioning children’s futures as a means to lead us into a better time. Loris Malaguzzi said, “Observe and listen to children, because when they ask, ‘why?’ they are not simply asking for the answer from you. They are requesting the courage to find a collection of possible answers.” 

This is what we must all do now. We must help our children find the courage to move forward within a multiplicity of possible answers. And we must attend to these lessons ourselves, as we build the same patience and inquisitiveness within our own hearts and minds.  

Image from Reggio Children, https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/

Image from Reggio Children, https://www.reggiochildren.it/en/reggio-emilia-approach/

This is our work at home and at school. As teachers, we are looking ahead and helping each other to imagine not one but many possible ways forward from the current moment. The view ahead is filled with questions, but we know from our work with children that the beauty of uncertainty lies in the possibility of imagination. This is the spirit with which the first stones of the first Reggio school were laid, and it is the spirit we are working to embrace as we envision what school could look like on the variety of possible paths that lie ahead for us now. 

There are many critical logistical, financial, and safety challenges inherent in this process, and we are thinking deeply and carefully about how we will navigate them. But, as educators, committed to the fundamental belief that a new world always grows out of what we imagine for our children—”a nostalgia for the future,” to use Malaguzzi’s words—we are rooting ourselves in envisioning a future that may be radically different in some ways, but that springs from a belief in what children are capable of and what they deserve, not from what they can endure. The Reggio schools, which educators around the world look to today as guideposts, did not grow out of a resignation to make due among the ruins; they grew from a passion for a better life ahead, even amidst crumbling buildings, and a firm belief that the key to that life could be found in our relationships with children.

We will be sharing more in the coming days, weeks, and months, about the many possible futures we are beginning to imagine for our children and our school. We will need your help as we shape that vision and begin the work of laying new bricks. But for now, know that our starting point, as always, is our dedication to the rights of children, our deep belief in their capacities, and our enduring commitment to a hopeful future for them:  

“We should think that we have more need of being nostalgic, not so much about the past but more nostalgic about the future. The children expect us in the future where our nostalgia now sees them, and I wish we will all be there.” (Loris Malaguzzi, 1993)  

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia   

A Note from Alicia: Spring Will Come Again

Dear Families,

Spring Will Come Again

“Winds my blow, and snows may snow,
And clouds may come and hide the moon.
Still we know that someday soon
Spring will come again, summer has to follow.
Birds will come again, nesting in the hollow.
Once again, we’ll know all we know,
That after winter comes spring---
All we know, that after winter comes spring.”

~ Leonard Bernstein’s Peter Pan, ”Spring Will Come Again”

One of the disorienting features of living in isolation is that time begins to feel very elastic. Much more than usual, I find myself in conversations in which everyone struggles to put a finger on when precisely a previous conversation was had or when exactly a particular event occurred. The ability to keep track of where we are in time is not only important for planning and productivity, but it is also essential, on a deeper level, to hope. The various ways in which we mark the passage of time remind us, not only of what has gone by, but also that there is a future—that the present moment is not all there is. Tracking the passage of days is a remarkably consistent human determination in any isolated circumstances. As the days blur together, we are compelled to find ways to keep track, and we feel more adrift when we lose sight of our markers, because each mark reminds us that there will be another.     

The applause at 7pm each night offers us a marker of the passage of the day. Shabbat offers us a marker of the passage of the week. And the signs of spring arriving offer us a marker, every time we look outside our window, of the passage of the seasons. At this time of year, the connection of the passage of time to a feeling of hope is always particularly palpable. As the trees begin to bud and daffodils begin to peek through the soil, we are reminded, by the comforting regularity of the seasons, that new life always manages to make its way into the world. 

There is surely a dissonance to the arrival of spring this year. Sometimes it makes me more sad when I hear a bird outside my window or notice how many leaves are on the trees, because these things remind me of all that we usually do together in the spring and cannot do right now. We are beginning to hear this theme from children as well. For some, the daily time with friends online continues to be an anchor, and for others it is becoming a reminder of the distance that they are so eager to cross but can’t. Acknowledging the complexity of these feelings is important. We are all feeling so much dissonance right now, and just as marking the time that has passed helps us to see the future, noting our sadness and anger also reminds us that feelings are impermanent. Mr. Rogers reminded us of this. He said: 

“At many times throughout their lives, children will feel the world has turned topsy-turvy. It’s not the ever-present smile that will help them feel secure. It’s knowing that love can hold many feelings, including sadness, and that they can count on the people that they love to be with them until the world turns right side up again.” 

So much has changed and feels topsy turvy. But we continue to mark the time, and we see what we’ve survived adding up like an arithmetic of our resilience. And we see the space for tomorrow’s mark. Spring still comes. 

The hope that spring brings isn’t naive and it isn’t easy. It is tenacious, as flowers make their way through soil that was frozen only a few weeks ago. The renewal of spring also doesn’t turn a blind eye to change, for nature, even in its rebirth, is constantly adapting toward survival. The world turned right side up again will likely look different. It will surely require us to bend and flex and adapt in so many new ways. And yet we will, because people do, just as the trees find ways to lean and twist in their persistence to grow toward light.  

Over the weeks since we closed our physical doors, we have welcomed four new babies into our community. This is the most tangible reminder we have of the persistence of hope and the continuity of life. And with new life, our capacity to care and to nurture is also renewed. After we get through the crisis phase of this experience, there won’t be a magical restoration of the past, just as new lives don’t restore lives lost. But by continuing to mark the days and celebrate the emergence of life, we challenge ourselves to remember that there will be a tomorrow and that, with both our tenacity and our gentleness, whichever way the future may bend it will remain rooted in our values and our commitment to one another.  For spring is a time of nurturing, but this nurturing is not delicate. It requires our labor, our muddy hands, and our insistence on the possibility of renewal.  

Elie Wiesel described faith as “a rebellion.” He said that, “hope is possible beyond despair but not without it...Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.” And he went on to remind us that hope depends on our commitment to share it with one another. “Just as despair can be given to me only by another human being, hope too can be given to me only by another human being.”

We have work to do as we head into all that is changing and all that remains unknown. But spring is tenacious, and so is our spirit. 

Mazel tov to our new parents and our new big brothers and sisters! And mazel tov to each of you who has made it to Shabbat once again and marked the passage of another week with us. 

As we look ahead, we have some exciting new programs and points of connection we are looking forward to sharing with you. More on this very soon. We will continue learning, and we will continue listening. We will continue building. We will continue to find ways of coming together, growing together, and helping each other bend toward hope. 

Shabbat shalom,
Alicia