Given how many requests I have had for a video of the services that I lead for the community I started “Reform Judaism in Atlantic Canada: Decolonizing Judaism in Mi’kma’ki and Beyond”, I have begun recording our services. I understand that not everyone is able to attend services at the time that they are held for a number of reasons. I am honoured, humbled and grateful by the number of people who have reached out to request a copy of the service and to let me know how healing this decolonizing approach to Judaism is for them. I try to bring my experience as a psychotherapist and chaplain to our worship services, so that they are trauma-informed and do not contain some of the psychologically damaging messages (like I am a sinner!) that I believe emerge from the colonial mindset that teaches us fear over faith.
I firmly believe that Judaism, at its core contains the antidote to such unhealthy mindsets, but due to the ways that we ourselves have been colonized (oppressed) by a non-Jewish world that has tried to destroy us time and again, we have also internalized certain messages that have found their way into our liturgy and practice. Reform Judaism reflects the ancient Talmudic practice of taking the inherited tradition of our ancestors and translating it to a new world: for the rabbis of the Talmud, they tried to update their understanding of the biblical practices that could no longer be observed after the destruction of the Second Temple, and for me, I try to do the same in a world that is forever altered by the Holocaust and by the ways that colonization (Jews sometimes prefer the word assimilation or antisemitism) has impacted the way we think about our Jewish identity. By seeking to translate our inherited tradition and to find new ways of letting our ancient Jewish rituals and prayers nourish us, I pray that these will bring as much healing to others as it did for me to create and lead them.
As always, I am honoured and grateful for the kind messages of support and appreciation I receive from you all. Together, may we bring “tikkun” (healing) to the world we inhabit, and may our faith and religious practice bring only blessings. May this new year of 5784 liberate us, and may we understand that the goal of the “Day of Atonement” (Yom Kippur) is to become At-One: with ourselves, with one another and with our fragile and sacred planet.
Emerging Torah as Rabbi Nachshon emerges 