UUA Common Read 2023-24: On Repentance and Repair by Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg

Workshop 2: Repentance and Repair in Our Covenanted Communities

SCENARIO C

At Congregation C, some members began, and many have adopted, new practices that welcome people to share the pronouns they use. For example, many have begun hand-writing their pronouns under their names on name tags. Committee meetings and workshops now have a regular practice of inviting everyone to self-introduce with pronouns at the start of a gathering.

At a recent Board meeting, with the minister in attendance, a member brought up another way to affirm the humanity and inherent worth and dignity of people of any sex or gender: gender-neutral bathrooms. Since the building has several single-use bathrooms, the member said, this could simply be a courtesy of putting up a gender-neutral sign.

Another member asked, “Why can’t we make all of our bathrooms gender-neutral?” A third asked, “Why would that be necessary, since we already have some where it’s easy to put up a sign?” No decision was made. After the meeting, a board member who identifies publicly as non-binary approached the minister and explained that they felt humiliated and hurt by the discussion.

Discussion

Step One: Who were harm-doers? How might they name the harm they did? Did the harm escalate out of a conflict? Conflict is to be expected. How did it cross over into harm?

Step Two: What changes could harm-doers start to make, in order to demonstrate repentance?

Step Three: What restitution and consequences did or could the harm-doer(s) do? What could that look like, without doing further harm?

Step Four: Who could offer a meaningful apology to whom?

Step Five: Who is responsible for making different choices, going forward, to prevent their causing similar harm in the future?

How is the congregation a harm-doer? What changes, what repairs, what different future choices can the community make, for a transformative repentance?