Use the menu above and links below to find the full schedule, meet the team, explore our theme TIKKUN: Return to Repair. We invite you to check out 5786 programs, sign up to volunteer, donate, explore Storahtelling, join us as a Partner, and more!
In 5786, we rise again, guided by our people’s age-old resilience, ready to restart the annual journey of reflection and return to our best selves, to show up and to repair. Much more than a familiar quote or cliche – Tikkun or Tikkun Olam does not just mean that it’s on us to fix the world – it’s a more complex and nuanced concept that has evolved along with us over millennia, challenging us to course correct with courage and compassion, towards the transformations that will nurture trust and hope, bring peace and justice – for generations.
Welcome to 5786.
We return to reconnect to our core essence and values, and to each other.
We return to repair.
“There is nothing more whole than a broken heart.”
This paradox, taught by the 19th-century Kotzker Rebbe, reminds us that wholeness is not found in perfection but in vulnerability — in the openness to repair that comes from heartbreak. With open arms, sincere smiles, and heavy hearts, we welcome you to this new Jewish year with the Lab/Shul community.
Our hearts are broken from devastating personal losses this past year, and heavy with the continued collective suffering of our people — and of all people — in these troubled times. We’ve lost loved ones, family, and friends, who leave behind legacies of resilience, courage, and a commitment to justice. We continue to count the days since 10/7, mourning innocent lives, protesting the demolition of dreams, and sharing the pain of Israelis and Palestinians. Our hearts ache with moral injury and widening divisions in our society.
And yet, precisely with these heavy hearts, we show up once again as a community to begin a brave new year together.
We gather to draw from reservoirs of healing, to carry forward the legacies we’ve inherited, and to repair within and beyond ourselves. Our cherished traditions and time-tested rituals become tools to hold each other, to imagine new paths of purpose, and to begin again with hope.
Tikkun is our theme this year: to return to repair. We seek to name what is broken, to explore what it means to mend, and to take the first steps of realignment within and beyond.
As Leonard Cohen reminds us: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.”
What will help us take our first steps into this new year with some hope, letting the light in? Can our ancient recipes for reflection and repair guide us as we face these days with heavy hearts? While we don’t have all the answers, we do have this sacred time and space, our reimagined rituals — and each other. Every shift and each transition in our lives becomes another step on our collective journey toward love and liberation.
Our team of ritualists, artists, educators, and activists is honored to co-create this ritual container, and to host courageous Israeli and Palestinian peacemakers throughout this sacred season. These hopeful healers insist on a shared path forward, reminding us what repair can look like even in the face of violence, terror, and war.
Our friend and teacher Rabbi Sharon Brous writes: “The shofar is a raw, wordless cry — reminding us that prayer at its core is not polished speech but the unfiltered sound of the heart breaking open.”
Together, we will try and cry, smile and sob, sing and sit in silence, each finding our own way of return to repair. As the Psalms remind us: “We who sow in tears will reap in joy.”
We hope that whatever needs you bring into this new year, you will find meaningful, inspiring moments here — and many more beyond.
Thank you for joining us as we begin this year with courage, compassion, and a commitment to Tikkun.
Shana Tova — may this year be a better one, with return to repair, healing, and peace.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie, Co-Founder & Senior Spiritual Leader
Sarah Sokolic, Co-Founder & Executive Director
