Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.

​

Rachel Carson

​

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Four years ago today we gathered, just a few of us, sitting far apart, no hugging, no oneg, so much anxiety.

​

We could in no way know what was coming.

​

Had we known that was the end of our in-person years, what would our grief have been?

​

Had we seen the new ways we’d grow, the new people to gather with us, would that grief have tasted less bitter?

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Let us bless how from the earth these bodies of wisdom were created, alive as they are, all open openings and holy holes.

​

Unconcealed, revealed, we face the fate of our dignity:

if wrongly opened one would be, or wrongly closed another,

we know not how we could withstand.

Broken though this flesh can be,

still we love this life while we last.

​

Blessed and blessing, we bow to both the healing of sleep

and the daily miraculous of awakening.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

Elliott batTzedek

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Ode to the Daffodil

​

Renee Emerson

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

You confront me, rising arrogantly

at the first of March alongside every path

and in and out of gardens. Tufts of green

threatening flower, I have nothing new

to tell you. Never once did I set a bulb

going, pocketed in the earth. I have waited

an entire winter to only know more winter.

Yellow lanterns, clusters of bright faces,

fist-clenched constellations, I’ll see you

dusted with snow I’m sure next Thursday.

I’ll see you bow your heads in despair

as I’ve bowed mine to pray for life

to spring up once more from the lonely dirt.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Thaw

​

Martha Courtot

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

no matter how long the Winter is

thaw comes

season by season

we learn this

too slowly

​

no matter how long we have spent

wrapped in a frozen season

no matter how deep under the snow

the private grief lies

one day

thaw comes

​

we are never prepared for it

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Thaw

​

Martha Courtot

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

and what was once safe for our feet

changes

water released from ice and mud and madness

and we open our eyes to earth-shift

stone-change

​

everything thawing

thawing like a madness

the earth opening

water running

​

all of our secrets exposed.

​

Spring

​

Ellie Schoenfeld

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Earth laughs in flowers

but it takes a long time

for her to crack a smile around here.

And I, desperate for a joke

after nine years of winter,

finally spy a corner of grass and soil,

tangible evidence

of the possibility of Spring.

I want to grab the dirt,

rub handfuls onto my skin,

fill myself in

grow flowers from every orifice.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Dear March

​

Emily Dickinson

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Dear March—Come in—�How glad I am—�I hoped for you before—�Put down your Hat—�You must have walked—�How out of Breath you are—�Dear March, how are you, and the Rest—�Did you leave Nature well—�Oh March, Come right upstairs with me—�I have so much to tell—

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Thank You

​

Ross Gay

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth's great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into that grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden's dormant splendor.

Say only thank you.

Thank you.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Spring

​

Linda Pastan

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Just as we lose hope�she ambles in,�a late guest�dragging her hem�of wildflowers,�her torn�veil of mist,�of light rain,�blowing�her dandelion�breath �in our ears;�and we forgive her,�turning from�chilly winter �ways,�

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

we throw off�our faithful�sweaters�and open

our arms

​

Forsythia

​

Barbara Crooker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

What must it feel like

after months of existing

as bare brown sticks,

all reasonable hope

of blossoming lost,

to suddenly, one warm

April morning, burst

into wild yellow song,

hundreds of tiny prayer

flags rippling in the still-

cold wind, the only flash

of color in the dull yard,

these small scraps of light,

something we might

hold on to.

​

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

[untitled]

​

Rabi’a al-’Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Where are you from?

There.

​

Where are you headed?

There.

​

What are you doing?

Grieving.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

ALL

You There

​

Judith Barrington

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Put the palms of your hands together

close to your body, thumbs touching your chest

then bow your head to the tree

whose body bears these words.

​

In the deep pool under the cedar

a trout rises to a mayfly and ripples spread

in widening O’s like the years

etched into heartwood as it grows.

​

What have the years written into your body?

What patterns emerged as you passed through fire?

Put your palms together, lifeline to lifeline.

Bow your head for the history you bear.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Testimony

Rebecca Baggett

for my daughters

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

I want to tell you

that the world is still beautiful.

I tell you that despite

children raped on city streets,

shot down in school rooms,

despite the slow poisons seeping

from old and hidden sins

into our air, soil, water,

despite the thinning film

that encloses our aching world.

Despite my own terror and despair

I want to tell you

that the world is still beautiful.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Testimony

Rebecca Baggett

for my daughters

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

I want you to look again and again,

to recognize the tender grasses,

curled like a baby's fine hairs

around your fingers, as a recurring

miracle, to see that the river rocks

shine like God, that the crisp

voices of the orange and gold

October leaves are laughing at death.

​

I want you to look beneath

the grass, to note

the fragile hieroglyphs

of ant, snail, beetle. I want

you to understand that you are

no more and no less necessary

than the brown recluse, the ruby-

throated hummingbird, the humpback

whale, the profligate mimosa.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

Testimony

Rebecca Baggett

for my daughters

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

I want to say, like Neruda,

that I am waiting for

"a great and common tenderness,"

that I still believe

we are capable of attention,

that anyone who notices the world

must want to save it.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Despite my own terror and despair

I want to tell you

that the world is still beautiful.

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

If Not

Rabbi Hillel, Adrienne Rich, Dane Kuttler

​

If I am not for myself

who is for me?

If I am only for myself

what am I?

If not now

then when?

If not with others

then how?

If not here

then where?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

call & Response

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

from “Gnawed Bones”

​

Peggy Shumaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

If every day

re-enacts creation,

if we live

here, now

​

in the first world

and the last,

let us speak

in our bones

​

languages of water

from all skies, from

deep underground.

Let our bones quench

​

the thirst of history,

thirst for all we yearn

to sip, marrow

of each dry tongue

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

​

from Kaddish for Our Souls

​

Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1963

​

Translated from Yiddish by Sylvia Fuks Fried

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

We Jews dance around the Golden Calf. We have forgotten that we live in a world that is treyf. The times are dark, yet we do not even light the Sabbath candles. Six million Jews went up in smoke. Blood will remain silent. But our conscience is mute as a wall. We are inebriated and distracted by the follies of this world. The martyrs do not need our recitations of kaddish — but we need someone to recite kaddish over us, for us, because we have lost our souls.

�I do not seek merely to unburden my heart. We will not fulfill our obligation by reciting lamentations. Our task is not to bang our heads against the wall. Our task is to find an answer to a crucial question: What is our generation's obligation? What is the task? Not to forget, never to be indifferent to other people's suffering.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Gatherings / Elliott batTzedek

​

Gather our strengths

and gather our failures

Gather our kin

and gather our strangers

Gather what we love

and what we fear

Gather what we have lost

and what we are afraid to lose

​

Find the courage to proclaim

“All we gather is sacred”

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

call & Response

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

And you must love The One, your God, with your whole heart, with every breath, with all you have. Take these words that I command you now to heart. Teach them intently to your children. Speak them when you sit inside your house or walk upon the road, when you lie down and when you rise. And bind them as a sign upon your hand, and keep them visible before your eyes. Inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

This war, I am afraid, will not leave the nation where it found it. Its conclusion may be the beginning of a grave alienation. The speed and the spirit in which this war ends will fashion our own lives in the years that lie ahead. On January 22, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson in his address to the Senate uttered a point of view which we pray President Lyndon Johnson would adopt as his own: “It must be a peace without victory.” Let our goal be compromise, not victory.

The initiative for peace must come from the strong, out of a position of strength.

We will all have to strain our energies, crack our sinews, tax and exert our brains, cultivate understanding, open our hearts, and meet with all Vietnamese, North as well as South.

This is the demand of the hour: not to rest until — by excluding fallacies, stereotypes, prejudices, exaggerations which perpetual contention and the consequent hostilities breed — we succeed in reaching the people of Vietnam as brothers.

There is still time to unlearn old follies, there is still time to seek honest reconciliation. A few months from now it may be too late; a few months from now our folly may be beyond repair, sin beyond repentance. 

It is not for man to decide who shall live and who shall die, who shall kill and who shall sigh. May no one win this war; may all sides win the right to live in peace.

​

“The Crisis of Responsibility” Abraham Joshua Heschel, from The Moral Outrage of Vietnam

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

For Nothing Is Fixed

​

James Baldwin

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

​

For nothing is fixed,

forever, forever, forever,

it is not fixed;

the earth is always shifting,

the light is always changing,

the sea does not cease to grind down rock.

Generations do not cease to be born,

and we are responsible to them

because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails,

lovers cling to each other,

and children cling to us.

The moment we cease to hold each other,

the moment we break faith with one another,

the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Amidah / Seven Breath Meditation

​

Rabbi Jill Hammer

Kohenet

​

Breathing in, I take breath into myself.

Breathing out, I join the web of being.

Breathing in, I rest in the present.

Breathing out, I am part of past and future.

Breathing in, I honor the shrine of my body.

Breathing out, I honor the shrine of the cosmos.

Breathing in, Presence fills me.

Breathing out, Presence enfolds me.

Breathing in, I witness what is broken.

Breathing out, I bow to what is perfect.

Breathing in, I offer gratitude for what is.

Breathing out, I accept that all changes.

Breathing in, I pray for peace for myself.

Breathing out, I pray for peace for all beings.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

How do we understand the tremendous, complicated, desperate grief of this moment?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

When I spoke to you

about grief

I forgot to say

how large grief is

how to suffer it

is to descend into a canyon.

You will look upward for miles

at ancient walls

as if at an unfathomable history

that is your history too

and just beginning to

take shape in your mind.

​

Susan Griffin

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

After Majdanek

Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1948

translated from Yiddish by Morris M. Faierstein

​

We still feel the blow to our head. It feels like the heavens above us have fallen in chunks. We have not yet grasped the disaster that has befallen us. We are still before the funeral - still prepared to sit shiva confounded, confused, and petrified.

​

How do we endure this? How do we bear the pain? Are we idiots? Are we base? When I think of my people, burned and cremated in Poland, a shudder courses through my veins. I feel the nails of insanity. I choke on pain and drive away from myself the picture, the sound, the woe. No, one cannot drive away an ocean; one can bury oneself in a hole, a pit of forgetfulness.

​

How worthless is such a life in hiding. The sound of the ocean roars in the distance, there is nowhere to run away. Our misfortune is as large as God. We mask the sound of the shudder with cheap noisemakers. Talk is a waste of time; we won’t experience any good fortune (and even saying these words is foolish). We have Tisha B’Av all year and yet - we put on Purim plays.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Liora

Ostroff

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Psalm 137

Elliott batTzedek

​

My god how beautiful it is, it could break open your heart, it broke open my heart, the ways Jews grieved and mourned for Zion and Jerusalem for two thousand years.

​

We lay down and wept and wept and wept for thee Zion.

​

And in those words everything everyone has lost and wept for.

​

We lay down and wept and wept, remembering thee, Zion.

​

And yet: Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.

Happy shall be he who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock.

​

As if any grief, however vast, however deep, down to the core of the Earth and up into the stars, could justify genocide. As if mourning, even thousands of years of mourning, somehow makes just children’s bodies broken, dashed, shattered, scattered.

​

What have we become that we can pretend our need to feel safe, to be safe, justifies colonization, occupation, imprisonment, mass murder?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

My god how awful it is, how horrible beyond measure, how it breaks your heart open, that weeping for Zion has been swallowed whole by Zionism.

​

If we remember thee, Zion, our memory must stretch back and back, to grasp what our ancestors yearned for, to grasp being forced to sing our songs in a strange land while ruled by violent occupiers.

​

To grasp the Commandment repeated over and over and over that we must be kind and moral and just for we were strangers once.

​

Only when we dare grasp our full memory can we fully remember Zion, fully remember what we have lost and what we go on losing.

​

And only when we remember what we are losing can we fully weep.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Eich Nashir by Tany Vitzchok

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

11 March 2023 / 18 Adar II 5783

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

11 March 2023 / 18 Adar II 5783

Yitgadal veyitkadash shemey raba be’alma divra hiruty veyamlih malhutey behayeyhon uvyomeyhon uvhayey dehol beyt yisra’el ba’agala uvizman kariv ve’imru amen.

​

Yehey shemey raba mevarah le’alam ulalmey almaya.

​

Yitbarah veyistabah veyitpa’ar veyitromam veyitnasey veyit-hadar veyitaleh veyit-halal shemey dekudsha berih hu le’ela min kol birhata veshirata tushbehata venehemata da’amiran be’alma ve’imru amen.

​

Yehey shelama raba min shemaya vehayim Aleynu ve’al kol yisra’el ve’imru amen.

​

Oseh shalom bimromav hu ya’aseh shalom Aleynu ve’al kol yisra’el ve’al kol yishma’el ve’al kol yoshvey tevel ve’imru amen.

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Mourner’s Kaddish / Elliott batTzedek

So often am I lost,

​

yet through the pall, yet through the tarnish, show me the way back,

through my betrayals, my dismay, my heart’s leak, my mind’s sway,

eyes’ broken glow, groan of the soul—which convey all that isn’t real,

for every soul to These Hands careen. And let us say, amen.

​

Say you will show me the way back, my Rock, my Alarm. Lead the way, Oh my Yah

​

And yet in shock and yet in shame and yet in awe and yet to roam and yet to stay and yet right here and yet away and yet —“Halleluyah!” my heartbeat speaks, for You live in all this murk and too in the clear and too in our wreckage.

You are the mirror of our souls, let us say: amen

​

Life may harm me, rob me, ream me raw, try me, even slay me

Over all You will prevail. And let us say: Amen

​

Say You shall loan me a tomorrow, Say You shall loan another day to all who are called Yisrael and all called Yishmael and all called We and They, and let us say, Amen

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Adon Olam / She Carries Me by Jennifer Berezan

She is a boat, she is a light

High on a hill in dark of night.

She is a wave, she is the deep.

She is the dark where angels sleep.

When all is still and peace abides

She carries me to the other side.

She carries me, she carries me,

She carries me to the other side.

​

And though I walk through valleys deep,

And shadows chase me in my sleep,

On rocky cliffs I stand alone;

I have no name, I have no home.

With broken wings I reach to fly;

She carries me to the other side.

She carries me, she carries me,

She carries me to the other side.

A thousand arms, a thousand eyes,

A thousand ears to hear my cries.

She is the gate, she is the door;

She leads me through and back once more.

When day has dawned and death is nigh,

She carries me to the other side.

She carries me, she carries me,

She carries me to the other side.

​

She is the first, she is the last,

She is the future and the past.

Mother of all, of earth and sky,

She carries me to the other side.

She carries me, she carries me

She carries me to the other side.

She carries me, she carries me,

She carries me to the other side.

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024

Upcoming Services

Saturday April 13 @ 10 am ET

Saturday May 11 @ 10 am ET

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024