What is this space?
Kruim Yachad (Torn Together) is a weekly space for Jews to gather to metabolize our grief over the recent and (at the time of this writing) ongoing genocide in Palestine. Weekly sessions will incorporate a variety of Jewish grief technologies, including (but not limited to) prayer, kriah (tearing fabric), song, movement, lighting candles and work with sacred plants. 

We come to this space to grieve the catastrophic loss of life in Palestine, as well as the ways that Zionist propaganda threatens our shared humanity as it leverages intergenerational Jewish trauma & weaponizes Jewish grief against Palestinians.

Together, we will take responsibility for tending to the complexity of our grief as part of our commitment to transforming cycles of harm towards healing, in service of our own liberation, and the liberation of all peoples. Together, we will create a diasporic grief temple - a container for experiencing a Judaism that is both spiritually and culturally independent of Zionism. Together, we will uplift grief as love and as a threat to empire.

We acknowledge that any grief touches all grief and invite participants to bring whatever grief you are holding. We will bring whatever grief we are holding and then, we will hold it together.

We will be torn together.

Who is this space for?
This space is dedicated to Jews who wish to grieve in Jewish space, using Jewish ritual technologies, in service of our work towards a Free Palestine. Anyone who identifies as Jewish and/or has a Jewish practice is welcome to join us, regardless of lineage, familiarity with Jewish ritual, etc. Jews who are just beginning to wrestle with/unlearn Zionism are just as welcome as Jews who identify solidly as non-Zionist or anti-Zionist.   

While non-Jewish folks are welcome to participate, please know that our explicit intent is to create a container for Jews to metabolize our grief so that we can show up more effectively, respectfully and appropriately in movement spaces which are not, and should not be, centered around Jewish grief and pain.

Our highest aim is to hold space for Jewish grief, pain and intergenerational trauma while de-exceptionalizing it by contextualizing it within legacies of settler-colonialism.

Who is leading this space?
This space is sponsored by the JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) Havurah and is crafted and facilitated by Ray Himmelman & Elana-June Margolis with guest leaders joining to lead us in specific rituals. We will update our schedule below to share about our guest leaders as we are able. 

Ray & Elana-June have been chevruta (study partners) and collaborators for over ten years.  During this time, they co-lead the Eye of the Needle Kaddish Call, which ran nightly for several months during the early stages of the COVID-19 Pandemic. They have co-authored one Haggadah (Haggadah for Divine Alchemy) and several very queer Purim plays. They are honored and grateful for the opportunity to co-create this Diasporic grief temple, in service of our shared humanity and our work towards a Free Palestine and the liberation of all peoples. 

More about the facilitators: 
Ray Himmelman Le Blanc is a queer Ashkenazi Diasporist, a ritualist, a healer, an artist, and a mama living in Oceti Sakowin territory of the Dakota people, in what is known as Minneapolis. Being raised as an orthodox Jew deeply informs Ray’s earth-based, anti-Zionist and evolving spiritual practices. As a Doctor of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine, Ray brings a focus of healing and embodiment to their ritual work. Ray strives to listen for wisdom of ancestors and other-than-human teachers while grounding through Jewish tradition and leftist community.

Elana-June Margolis is a white, queer, Ashkenazi, anti-Zionist Jewish femme mystic. She is an ordained Kohenet (Jewish Priestexxx), teacher, writer and artist. Her life’s work is dedicated to liberating ancestral texts & technologies in service of personal healing towards collective liberation. You can learn more about her work @ https://elanajune.com or on instagram @madamfullcharge