KI was founded in 1970 by a small group of families who wished to create a fully participatory Jewish experience that would be rich in
community and tradition, and to establish a superior religious school. In 1982, the congregation purchased and remodeled a Lansing public
school building to house our growing membership. We are located in southeast Lansing, approximately
two miles from Michigan State University. Our members, now numbering over one hundred twenty-five families, come from all around
the greater Lansing area.
The KI Community
Members of KI are a diverse group, coming originally from every denomination. In our participatory congregation, the breadth of members'
backgrounds and experience is a source of strength, and we encourage as much personal choice in our Jewish practices as possible. In this way
we draw the best efforts from the women and men who lead our services, lead and participate in our committees, and teach our children and each other.
Our Jewish community encourages all its members to get actively involved and to make a difference, and there are many opportunities for
members to join in the life of the community. These include weekly Shabbat morning services, holiday
observances, festival celebrations, a religious school, adult
education programs, and a variety of social and cultural programs throughout the year.
Reconstructionist Affiliation
After 25 years as an independent congregation using the Conservative liturgy, KI affiliated with the
Reconstructionist movement. Rabbi Michael Zimmerman has served our congregation since 2003. As
Reconstructionist Jews, we have strong commitments both to tradition and to the search for contemporary meaning. We hope for a Judaism that serves
as a rich source of spiritual self-expression and moral challenge in the way we live our lives. And we encourage all Jews to enhance their own
lives by reclaiming our shared heritage and becoming active participants in the building of the Jewish future.
KI is the custodian of one of the Czech Holocaust Torah scrolls which is on loan from the Westminster Memorial Scrolls Trust in England.
The Torah was sent to us by air from the Scrolls Trust in England on September 24, 1973.
We learned from the Scrolls Trust that they believed the scroll to have been written in 1840. There is a label on the back of a panel
that shows that the scroll had been in Moses Hirschler's bookstore in Wien (Vienna) at some point in its history. Moses Hirschler lived
from 1810–1896. We located a descendant of his who is an expert on scrolls in his own right who suggested that the Torah may actually
have been in Hirschler's bookstore for repairs (in 1840?), and may have been 40 or 50 years old at the time.
Our Czech Torah, which was removed from a synagogue in Německý Brod during the Holocaust, has an amazing power to capture the imagination.
When it is unrolled one can see that the calligraphy is unusual. There is something about the shapes of the letters; the proportions of
the tagin, the little crowns that are on top of certain letters; and the line spacing that make it inviting to read. Apparently,
according to one expert we consulted, some of the letters that are atypically written large were ones that were characteristic of
“kabbalistic scrolls.” Learning this made us want to learn more about the Torah, the scribe who penned it, and the community that used it.
So even before its journeys from Německý Brod to the basement of a synagogue in Prague, to the Westminster Memorial Scrolls Trust in
London, to Kehillat Israel in Michigan, this scroll has had a long life and was read from by many generations. It would have been a very
sad day that it had to be left behind by its last owners in Německý Brod. We are honored to house it in our synagague, and researching its
past has led to us learning about the Jewish community of Německý Brod during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. We have posted
the results of our research in a blog about the Torah, which can be found here:
http://kehillatisrael.blogspot.com.
