As the Season Turns: Hoshanah Rabbah Torah Soak, First Yahrtzeit, Cohort Bet Applications, Sanctuary in Michigan
by Rabbi Nate DeGroot
Dear companions in love and justice,
In the midst of the High Holiday portal, we hope you are feeling the season's fullness with wellsprings of ease and blessings. From Rosh Hashanah to Yom Kippur and now to Sukkot, we begin our prayers for rain, aiming to embrace our precarity and integrate all that was stirred over the Days of Awe and the year that was, into this new year of 5787.
Here at The Shalom Center, we are very much feeling this fullness. And so too, the poignant turning of seasons and returning of cycles.
In this email, you will find four items we think you'll really want to see that are part of that turning, including:
A special Hoshanah Rabbah program celebrating what would have been Reb Arthur's 93rd birthday next Thursday evening with Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg.
A meaningful service to honor Reb Arthur's first yahrtzeit on the morning of October 9th.
A final announcement regarding applications for Cohort ב, which close tomorrow at sundown.
And an exciting Sukkot program live in Michigan with Gabriel Meyer that we hope you'll share with your people there.
Please read below for information on all four of these special gatherings, so you can register, apply, and share right away.
With deep gratitude and blessings for renewal, alignment, and transformation,
-Rabbi Nate DeGroot
1st Annual Reb Arthur Waskow Hoshanah Rabbah Torah Soak
Thursday, October 1, 2026
7:00-9:00pm ET, Zoom
Register HERE
“Soak” in Reb Arthur-inspired Torah on what would have been his 93rd birthday.
A night of celebratory remembrance and learning, with teaching headlined by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. Rabbi Phyllis Ocean Berman will open and Rabbi Nate DeGroot will facilitate.
For the last three years, The Shalom Center has celebrated Reb Arthur on Hoshanah Rabbah, his Jewish calendar birthday, with a special event. In 2023 we hosted FortyFest in honor of our 40th anniversary, just two days before October 7th, with an incredible lineup of teachers, musicians, and ritualists. 2024 was the Great Save-In, where a kohenet and badkhenhelped a crowd in Philadelphia and online fuse an existential gameshow with Arthur’s 91st birthday and the “passing of the lulav” from Reb Arthur to Rabbi Nate. And then in 2025, we celebrated Arthur’s 92nd - and final - birthday with our (Ninety)Two Books Launch Birthday, celebrating the incredible accomplishment of Arthur’s life, along with his bringing two books into being in his final two years. Arthur passed just one week later.
Hoshanah Rabbah has become a meaningful holiday for us here at The Shalom Center, one we’ve loved celebrating with you!
Why a “Torah Soak”?
From The Rest of Creation, Waskow 2016
Many of you will remember Arthur’s iconic blessing before studying Torah, where he would say a “la’a’soooooaaaaak”with full vim and vigor, evoking the wordplay of the verb “la’asok” as “to busy oneself” and “soaking” in Torah, like a hippo soaks in water. That playfulness and whimsy was core to Arthur, as was his devotion to and love of Torah - teaching and learning it.
In this program, we will learn with and from an incredible teacher, who counted Arthur as a teacher. This year, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg headlines the program, offering Torah in Arthur’s honor and inspired by him, for all of us to soak in. In so doing, we can honor Arthur while growing his spirit and his Torah, ensuring his presence remains a blessing, an inspiration, and a joy.
On the one year anniversary of Arthur’s passing, we will gather to honor his memory and mark this transitional moment.
Rabbis Tamara Cohen, Mordechai Liebling, and Shawn Zevit will lead and facilitate a morning service space with presence, teaching, music, and prayer.
All are welcome. The gathering is free to attend, but please register to receive the Zoom link.
Cohort ב applications close this Friday, Sept 25 at sundown!
Cohort ב — launching in November 2026 — is an experimental sacred justice cohort in the overlap of activism, art, and spirit-work, rooted in the wisdom of the bet, where together, members will:
Weave relationship and emergent collaboration.
Explore the intellectual, spiritual, and strategic contours of Jewish post-activism and sacred justice.
Craft a public project as an offering of sacred justice.
For 10 months, from November 2026-August 2027, following the rhythm of Jewish year 5787 through themes of creation, liberation, revelation, and decomposition, cohort members will meet together monthly on Zoom, gather for an in-person convening, and develop creative projects, all rooted in the intellectual, spiritual, and strategic contours of Jewish sacred justice and post-activism.
Based on our successes and learnings from Cohort א, our big bet is on new relationships leading to new collaborations and unfurling momentum; new ideas leading to new fields of study, areas of exploration, and strategic wrestling; and new projects serving as seed crystals for the supersaturated solutions of today.
For friends and family in Michigan
Sanctuary for the Apocalypse: An Interactive Sukkot Prayeformance with Gabriel Meyer
Tuesday, September 29th, 2026
7-9:30pm at The Sam
Register HERE
The Shalom Center is pleased to share a special opportunity to join an in-person event in Michigan! On Tuesday, September 29th, you can be with us on the ground in Detroit for Sanctuary for the Apocalypse, a 90-minute interactive prayerformance and evolving ceremony that integrates music, storytelling, selected readings, and reflective dialogue, led by Gabriel Meyer. Gabriel, a member of The Shalom Center's Advisory Council, is an internationally acclaimed author, musician, storyteller, and peacebuilder, and was part of our Cohort א — this event is Gabriel's Cohort א project.
The Sanctuary for the Apocalypse program is intentionally emergent, with each performance shifting according to the setting, the moment, and the shared field in the audience. Gabriel draws from Jewish, Sufi, and global spiritual lineages and offers songs in English, Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, and Tibetan. Humor, playfulness, and honesty serve as grounding tools for attendees to co-create intimacy and spontaneous community for these perilous times.
This special Sukkot prayerformance will take place outdoors on the roof of The Sam, with the Detroit skyline and the sukkah - our people’s own temporary sanctuary for perilous times - as the backdrop. Minyan Grove trees will join as participatory audience members.
Presented in collaboration with The Samantha Woll Center for Jewish Detroit, Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, and The Shalom Center, attendees will be invited to stick around after the prayerformance for deserts, drinks, a chance to interact with Gabriel and one another, and an opportunity shake lulav and make blessings in the sukkah.
Advance registration is requested. Registration is available at three pay-what-you-can tiers. Please choose the ticket that works best for you. Reach out to Marisa Mahoney at mahoney@downtownsynagogue.org for financial assistance -- cost should not be a barrier to participation.