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

Workshop 2: Repentance and Repair in Our Covenanted Communities

SCENARIO A

Congregation A has a youth room that is not near their coffee hour location. On some Sundays, adult teachers lead youth programs at the same time as worship. When worship ends, the adults usually join coffee hour, and some youth stay unsupervised. The adults are supposed to lock up the youth room when they leave, but often they forget.

One Sunday, two boys and a girl remained in the youth room. One boy talked the girl into lifting her shirt and he touched her chest while the other boy looked on.

It was some weeks before the girl told a parent that this had happened. The parent then came to the congregational leadership to let them know. The parent said they no longer felt safe sending their child to youth programs and that the leadership was responsible for the harm the child had suffered.

As a result, large windows were installed so that the youth room is no longer a private space.

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?