A therapist, an artist, a diplomat and an AI conversation designer for Google walk in a room. No, this is not the start of a joke. It’s what Adas Israel Congregation has planned for a panel discussion for Shavuot in early June.
In addition to an evening of traditional Shavuot services and teachings led by rabbis and community members on June 1, the Adas Israel community will hear from a panel that explores relationships through multiple lenses the next day, according to Rabbi Sarah Krinsky.
Shavuot is a holiday that celebrates the giving of the Torah to Moses on Mount Sinai. Though it’s celebrated seven weeks after Passover, Krinsky is already deep into the planning stage for this event.
“There’s a teaching that Shavuot is a celebration of the marriage between God and the Jewish people, and that it’s this moment of love and ecstasy and celebration, so that’s what we’re leaning into,” Krinsky said.
Krinsky will moderate the panel alongside fellow Adas Israel Rabbis Lauren Holtzblatt and Elianna Yolkut. The rabbinic team plans to ask the panelists what partnership means, how relationships tend to show up in each of their respective fields and the obligations inherent in being in a relationship.
“We’re thinking about how relationships show up in our lives in expected ways and also with more curious ways,” Krinsky said. “A therapist will talk about relationships between individuals and families and couples and things like that.”
But she also noted that the diplomat may oversee the relationships that states and countries have with one another.
“The artist, an active member of our congregation, thinks really critically about how art is a way that she expresses relationship, and also the relationship between the viewer and the piece, and the artist and the piece, that kind of triangle dynamic,” Krinsky said.
Last year, Krinsky hosted a similar panel discussion for Shavuot, this one about creation. The panel featured an author, a sculptor, a physician who conducts scientific research and someone who works in the technology entrepreneur space — the latter was unable to attend due to illness. Even with only three of the four planned panelists present, the Adas Israel team said the event was successful.
“Our team felt like the format that we had last year really worked,” Krinsky said. “But what’s a new topic, a new twist on it?”
She and the clergy team chose to focus on relationships, a decision that stemmed from Shavuot and what’s authentic to the holiday and content that “feels wise and interesting to people in their lives.”
Krinsky found community members who she determined could speak with authority on the topic, and that’s how this year’s panel was born.
“I think Shavuot is about celebrating Torah,” Krinsky said. “We think very expansively. There’s this idea that Torah has 70 faces to it, all these different facets of where Jewish learning can show up.”
She said the June 2 panel is about “learning Torah, celebrating Torah [and] being able to understand expansively how that might show up,” which is what Krinsky said she’s trying to model through the discussion.
“I hope [attendees] understand … that Torah doesn’t just live on a scroll in an ark, but it shows up in all these other places,” Krinsky said. “More specifically, I would love it if they left with some advice or wisdom that they could bring into relationships of their own.”
