Another option for High Holidays

Winnipeg Jewish community members have always had several options to choose from when it comes to deciding where to attend High Holiday services.

Those options have included local ultra-orthodox, orthodox, conservative and reform synagogues — many of which have shut down, moved or merged over the decades — as well as a variety of other alternatives that have been offered on and off at summer camps, nursing homes, private homes, hotels and rented spaces throughout the city.

When the 2026 High Holidays begin with Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year at sunset on Friday, Sept. 11, there will be one more option for community members to consider.

That option is a new service being hosted on the second morning of the holiday, Sept. 13, by Ahava Rabba, a fledgling grassroots congregation that began meeting almost a year ago and is coming together for the Jewish New Year for the first time ever. Ahava Rabba, which translates from the Hebrew as Abundant Love, takes its name from the blessing that observant Ashkenazi Jews recite every morning just before the Sh’ma, Judaism’s central declaration of faith.

“The Ahava Rabba prayer,” Emèt Eviatar, says “reminds the Divine of the great love the Divine has had for our ancestors and for us, and expresses gratitude for the gift of Torah — the blueprint our tradition gives us for a good life.”

Eviatar, who lives in Winnipeg, founded and named Ahava Rabba last September as a fieldwork project for her rabbinical studies at the Academy for Jewish Religion, based in New York. She will be ordained as a rabbi in the spring of 2027.

“Ahava Rabba is a joyful spiritual and ritual home for the liberatory Jewish community in Winnipeg,” Eviatar explains.

A liberatory community, she elaborates, is a group of people who stand in solidarity with other minorities and with the oppressed peoples of the world.

That commitment is reflected in Ahava Rabba’s four founding beliefs. All humans are created in the image of the Divine; no one is free until everyone is free; we all can learn from ancient traditions; and community is necessary in challenging times.

Ahava Rabba has been holding regular get-togethers since its founding, mostly for Friday evening or Saturday morning Shabbat, or Sabbath, services. Those services, held in a West End community centre, have been attended by a core group of about 15 people. The Rosh Hashana service, which will be led by Eviatar and capped at 50 participants, will be held at a different, centrally located community centre, within walking distance of one of the city’s intersecting rivers. Proximity to a river is necessary for tashlich, an integral part of the Rosh Hashana service that calls on Jewish worshippers to symbolically cast away their sins and mistakes of the past year into a natural body of water.

Generally, those who have been eagerly attending the Ahava Rabba Shabbat services and those who will be eagerly signing up for its Rosh Hashana service are Jewish community members who, for various reasons, have not felt welcomed or comfortable within the community’s conventional spaces and who, as a result, rarely walk through the doors of any of the local synagogues, no matter their denomination.

“They tend to be Jews who feel alienated from the mainstream Jewish community but still want to have a spiritual connection with our tradition, and who are comfortable with (our) values,” Eviatar says.

While her New Year service will incorporate many traditional elements, including the clarion call of the shofar, or ram’s horn, it will be less staid, less formal, and more interactive and inviting than a typical synagogue service.

“Ahava Rabba’s service will be participatory and ritually abbreviated but will touch on all the highlights of a Rosh Hashana service, including a Torah reading,” Eviatar emphasizes. “It will also include time for reading and discussion of contemporary texts suitable for the day.”

Additionally, it will be offering children’s programming and an optional vegetarian potluck luncheon, or kiddish, after the service.

In the months that follow Rosh Hashana, Eviatar plans to continue hosting regular Ahava Rabba Sabbath services and, eventually, other Jewish holiday celebrations and faith services as well.

There are too many people in the Jewish community, she reiterates, who do not feel at home within its cultural and spiritual spaces, and have as a result come to think that Jewish tradition has nothing to offer them.

“My mission,” the future rabbi says, “is to show them that that is not true. Our wise, old, deep tradition has room for every Jew. We just have to know where to look.”

Those interested in attending Ahava Rabba’s Rosh Hashana service or any other of the group’s services or events may contact AhavaRabba@pm.me for more information.

For security reasons, and as a sad and frightening reflection of the hateful times in which we are living, the location of the Rosh Hashana service will be disclosed only to those who register in advance.

swchisvin@gmail.com

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