Makhzor Zine Making

Sunday, August 24th | 1:30-4:30pm | Old River Farm Picnic Area | All ages

We’re making a CJC makhzor (High Holidays prayerbook)! Join us to create art that we’ll include in the makhzor. This will be a chance to reflect on and interpret the prayers through art, and to contribute to creating a beautiful community makhzor zine that we can use for the High Holidays for years to come. All materials provided.

Join CJC and JVP for our quarterly book group. For our Elul Edition, we will be discussing Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown.

adrienne maree brown knows we need each other more than ever, and offers a practice for holding collective power, righting wrongs, and generating true belonging.

Ethical, pondering, and wondrous, adrienne maree brown’s Loving Corrections is a collection of love-based adjustments and reframes to grow our movements for liberation while navigating a society deeply fractured by greed, racism, and war. In this landmark book, brown invigorates her influential writing on belonging and accountability into the framework of “loving corrections”; a generative space where rehearsals for the revolution become the everyday norm in relating to one another. 

Filled with practical wisdom on how to be a trustworthy communicator while providing bold visions for a shared future, Loving Corrections can speak to everyone caught in the crossroads of our political challenges and potential. No matter how new to the struggle, or how numerous our failures, brown’s indispensable writing is an invitation to us all. 

6:00pm – After measuring wicks, we will head to the courtyard of Disciples Christian Church in Cleveland Heights to create our candles. As we do so, we will call on our ancestors (literal and spiritual), set intentions, and invoke blessings. We’ll also have a chance to get creative, as we design and decorate our candles. We’ll also have dinner while we make our candles.

For dinner, we’re going to collectively create a salad bar. CJC will provide greens and proteins, and we invite you to bring your favorite veggies, salad toppings, and dressings! 

7:30pm – We will close with a Selichot* service, full of yearnful song and soulful prayer, as we bring ourselves into this sacred time of year. During this service, we will light our soul candles and dress the Torah in her white mantle for the High Holiday season. We will also be revealing the Torah’s completed ark, which was first revealed in its incomplete unembellished form last Selichot.

On the cusp of the new year and the edge of nightfall, join us by the lake for a dusk hike where we will hopefully see migrating monarch butterflies!

The 88 acres known as the Cleveland Lakefront Nature Preserve sits atop a former disposal facility for sediment and garbage dredged from the Cuyahoga River during the late 1970s clean-up efforts. Since about 1999 the facility has been left to nature to reclaim, and in 2012 the Port Authority cut trails for birding and opened it to the public. This now beautiful lakefront property hosts almost 300 species of birds throughout the year, and during fall migration it is also host to monarch butterflies. Though weather and other migrating conditions are unpredictable, we may hope to see a large group of monarchs resting after their trek from Canada across the Great Lakes before they head further south for warmth. 

We will meet under the big tree by the parking lot. Laurel Simkoff will lead us on the flat 1.5 mile outer loop to see beautiful sunset lake views, and all of the diverse flora and fauna that call the lakefront home.

Please eat an early dinner or snack beforehand, and if folks want we can grab a late dinner nearby afterward.