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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.

Elliott batTzedek

ALL

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Give Yourself Some Flowers

Marcus Amaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

And in the beginning,

God gave your body

a checklist:

Keep your heart

on beat

and your lungs

dancing with oxygen,

not passive to air.

Make sure

the path of your blood

slows down

for checkpoints

and avoids

bumps

in the road.

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Give Yourself Some Flowers

Marcus Amaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Train your nerves

to keep a balanced pace

and stay within

the lines

of steady flow.

Push forward

without putting

too much

pressure

on movement.

Remember

to return to water

when your spirit

and its frame

are in drought.

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Give Yourself Some Flowers

Marcus Amaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Treat your body

like a well-rounded planet

built for all seasons,

or pretend you are

an adaptable star:

Float in the black

and stay there

if you need to,

save some light

for yourself.

In other words,

rest like the sun does:

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Give Yourself Some Flowers

Marcus Amaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Schedule some time

to stay out of sight

when too many people

praise warm energy.

Keep in mind

all of these things

when depression

tells you

nothing is working.

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ALL

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Give Yourself Some Flowers

Marcus Amaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Keep in mind

all of these things

when it tells you

there is no

invisible force

connecting us,

when your veins

are stopped by blood clots,

when your bones are dry,

and the water

is too quick to boil.

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Give Yourself Some Flowers

Marcus Amaker

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Keep in mind

all of these things

when it tells you

that the soul is like the body:

Made to be broken,

open to deterioration

and doubt. Yes,

keep in mind

all of these things

and remember:

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Even when it

seems like

the clock isn’t ticking,

you were made perfectly

for this moment

in time.

ALL

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We come at last to the dark

and enter in.

ALL

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Sabbaths 2002 III

Wendell Berry

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

We come at last to the dark

and enter in. We are given bodies

newly made out of their absence

from one another in the light

of the ordinary day. We come

to the spaces between ourselves,

the narrow doorway, and pass through

into the land of the wholly loved.

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I have learned that darkness is no different from light,

both giving off the same cold and heat,

that each is both the absence and affirmation of the other,

each the other’s echo—sound of the other’s hand clapping.

I have learned that dark can be a friend, though not an easy one,

and that light sometimes conceals what you most need to see.

It is not a matter of love that both are yours forever,

each taking turns at your side, but if you are blessed,

you will come to love them both as you love the different qualities of morning and night, and even more, the certainty

that somewhere, as light shutters into darkness, elsewhere darkness

is unfolding to light.

Darkness and Light

Deidra Greenleaf Allan

Wendy Elishevah Somerson

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

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Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Mary Oliver

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Every year we have been

witness to it: how the

world descends

into a rich mash, in order that

it may resume.

And therefore

who would cry out

to the petals on the ground

to stay,

knowing as we must,

how the vivacity of what was is married

to the vitality of what will be?

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Lines Written in the Days of Growing Darkness

Mary Oliver

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

I don't say

it's easy, but

what else will do

if the love one claims to have for the world

be true?

So let us go on, cheerfully enough,

this and every crisping day,

though the sun be swinging east,

and the ponds be cold and black,

and the sweets of the year be doomed.

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To go in the dark with a light

is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too,

blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet

and dark wings.

—Wendell Berry

Wendy Elishevah Somerson

ALL

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To go in the dark with a light

is to know the light.

To know the dark, go dark.

Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too,

blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet

and dark wings.

—Wendell Berry

Wendy Elishevah Somerson

Recording by Hannah Fogg *Otter Moon Healing Arts*

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Winter

Susan Griffin

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

This winter sickness

took hold of me

but I was ready

to be held

and fell willingly

into solitude and

dream.

In my mind

a numbing snow

covered hot

causality

and I began to wonder

at all my years.

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Winter

Susan Griffin

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Weariness is not a lesson

but it leavens

want.

There would perhaps

be other lives

to live

but reaching

into the warren where

soft creatures hide

my hand gestures

kindly,

Don't be afraid.

It's just you and I here

in the dark.

Nothing matters

but this.

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

Don't be afraid.

It's just you and I here

in the dark.

Nothing matters

but this.

ALL

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Sabbath 1982 X

Wendell Berry

The dark around us, come,

Let us meet here together,

Members one of another,

Here in our holy room,

Here on our little floor,

Here in the daylight sky,

Rejoicing mind and eye,

Rejoining known and knower,

Light, leaf, foot, hand, and wing,

Such order as we know,

One household, high and low,

And all the earth shall sing.

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Trusting the Dark

Pesha Joyce Gertler

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

The flower withers, curls,

petals brown and fray,

crumble into the earth.

The shell, the pod

also falls into darkness:

like a flower’s corpse: hard, tight,

closed in on itself. We call

this a seed. And trust

the dark to do what it will.

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Sabbath 1991 V

Wendell Berry

The seed is in the ground.

Now we may rest in hope

While darkness does its work.

ALL

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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?

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call & Response

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I am a prayer

Joy Harjo

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I am a prayer

I am a prayer of rain in the desert when the flowering ones need a drink

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of sun when there is no end to night

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of ocean when there is no more blue

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of clouds when few make rain songs

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of roads that lead everywhere but home

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of white birds who cannot fly through a storm of fear

I am a prayer

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I am a prayer

Joy Harjo

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

I am a prayer of fire who arrived to care for humans, then was misused to destroy

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of wind, whose breathing carries seeds, pollen, and songs to feed the generations

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of moon who wears the night as a shawl to hide that which should never be spoken

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of grief, when life gambled with death and gave up families for guns

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of smoke, wandering the broken houses, the littered ground looking for a white flag of reason

I am a prayer

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I am a prayer

Joy Harjo

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

I am a prayer of mountains, those tall humble ones who agreed to lift our eyes to see

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of forever making a path of beauty through the rubble of eternity

I am a prayer

I am a prayer of poetry speaking the soundlessness of the dead who return to speak in prayer

I am a prayer with children on my back roaming the earth house of destruction and creation

I am a prayer without end

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call & Response

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”

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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.

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all

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Prayer for a Blue Day

Dee Dee Risher

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

Oh God, I wake up to weather

in this world you created whole and intricate

and I think how it matters;

How sun, season, gray or blue

can turn my heart. Such a little

and a cosmic thing.

And I ponder that in a world of agony,

small things—heat, cold, fleas, dust,

broken appliances—

cause me more emotion than

true tragedies and losses;

earthquakes and floods

elsewhere.

Sometimes I live so small.

ALL

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Prayer for a Blue Day

Dee Dee Risher

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

First I pick that realization up like guilt,

a bad feeling to be dusted away,

but here, deeper, is my confession:

I cannot hold this world and all it brings

to me on screen and in word,

even in my own circle of beloveds.

And You whisper:

I did not make you to hold everything.

This world will break your heart,

and every day, somewhere,

it is ending.

But do listen deeply,

do seek peace and pursue it,

love as much as you can.

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Prayer for a Blue Day

Dee Dee Risher

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

Do light the candle of mercy every night,

though the wind outside is strong

and you know not when it will cease.

ALL

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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.

Amidah / Seven Breath Meditation

Rabbi Jill Hammer

Kohenet

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A Very Basic History

587 BCE The First Temple is destroyed and many Jews are taken into exile in Babylonia
515 BCE: Babylonian empire falls to the Persians, who establish a self-governing Jewish province. Jews return to Jerusalem and the Temple is rebuilt.
332 BCE: Persians fall to the Alexander the Great, setting up Hellenist/Syrian/Selucid rule over Judea/Samaria
168 BCE: Under the reign of Antiochus IV, the Temple is looted, Jews are massacred, and Jewish religious practice and sacrifices are outlawed. An alter to Zeus is erected in the Temple.
167 BCE: Matthathias and his five sons lead a rebellion. After he dies, his son Judah Maccabe comes to power.
165 BCE: the revolt is successful and the Temple is liberated and re-dedicated. The Hasmonean Jewish Kingdom begins and lasts until 63 BCE. Over the next decades the Hasmoneans gain autonomy from the Seleucids and go through a burst of geographical expansion, population growth, and religious/cultural development
131 BCE: The Seleucid/Syrian king dies and the Hasmoneans throw off their rule.
96 BCE: an eight year civil war begins
63 BCE: The Hasmonean Kingdom ends after two brothers war over power. Both appeal to the Roman Republic to intervene. A Roman general is dispatched and he takes over the kingdom, massacring twelve thousand Jews and killing the Temple Priests on the altar. Rome annexes Judea.
37 BCE: the Romans appoint Herod the Great as a vassal king until 6 CE, when Judea becomes just a province of Rome.
66 – 73 CE: Anger at Roman rule leads to the Jewish-Roman war, when Jerusalem is burned and the Temple is destroyed.

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At the time of the Maccabee revolt, many Jews in urban settings had taken on Greek cultural and religious customs, and had jobs in civic power structures. Most rural Jews avoided any Greek/Hellenistic practices and lived within their own communities.

At the beginning of the revolt, Mattathias killed a Jew who offered sacrifice to Greek gods, and then killed the Seleucid official who ordered the sacrifice. Declaring “let everyone who is zealous for the law and supports the covenant come with me” he and his sons fled into the wilderness.

After years of fighting a guerrilla-style war, the Hasmoneans came to power, reclaimed the Temple, and re-instated sacrifices. With their power came corruption, abuse, and in-fighting. Judas’ son Jonathan became both King and High Priest, even though Jewish tradition absolutely forbid one person from holding both civil and religious power.

He and the next generations used this power to attack Hellenized Jews, to expand territory, and to force conversions to Judaism among conquered people, and to destroy cities that refused to convert. This pressures of internal repression and vast sums spent on war lead to the Judean Civil War.

Squabbles over power led to the destruction of the Kingdom and the Temple, after warring brothers both reached out to ask for support from the biggest empire of their time. The empire, responding to the call, took power and destroyed Jerusalem.

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The story of the Maccabees/Hasmonean rulers’ battles against the Seleucid kings is told in the book 1 & 2 Maccabees. Yet these books are not included in the Jewish religious canon, only in the Catholic Bible. Why they are excluded is complicated:

Excluding them may have been the final salvo in the fight between the Hasmonean/Sadducees Temple Priest line and the Pharisees, who used the oral tradition as well as the written and became proto-rabbis.

The time period when the Tanakh was compiled was after the unsuccessful Bar Kokhba rebellion against Rome, and the rabbis trying to hold Jewish life together in exile might not have wanted to include the story of an earlier rebellion.

First and Second Maccabees were included in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible originally prepared for the Jewish community of Alexandria. However, the Septuagint became the official version of the Bible for the nascent Christian Church. When this happened, its authoritative nature was rejected by the Jewish community.

What we do know is that the rabbinical community – the Pharisees - invented the story about the “miracle of the oil” and attached it to candle/oil lamp lighting cultural traditions. The concept of “The Maccabees as brave Jewish warriors who fought for freedom” was suppressed for centuries, resurfacing only as a Zionist narrative in the 20^th century.

But the story is important to us now, as an Israeli government has empowered fundamentalists and is again conducting ethnic cleansing campaigns in Gaza and the West Bank.

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First Lesson from Hasmonean Rebellion/ Rule Applied to Today: Civil and Religious Power Should Not be Combined

The Hasmonean Kings took on the shared role of civil ruler and High Priest. In doing so, religious meaning became entirely subservient to empire, and therefore descended into fundamentalism in which the killing of other Jews was justified. This merging also turned all wars into “holy wars,” which allowed actions otherwise prohibited, such as murdering all the men when taking a territory, or forcing conversion to Judaism.

From The Antiquities of the Jews by Flavius Josephus, Book 13:5

As to Alexander Jannaeus, his own people were seditious against him; for at a festival which was then celebrated, when he stood upon the altar and was going to sacrifice, he poured the water libation on his feet causing the nation to rise upon him, and pelt him with citrons.

In the current Israeli government, civil power and religious power have merged, giving the fundamentalist settlers access to the power of the courts and the IDF. The destruction Israel is causing in Gaza also has elements of the religiously-legal “holy war:” the IDF is entering neighborhoods and arresting every teen and adult male, stripping them, and taking into holding sites in Israel; and rhetoric of revenge is allowing the mass slaughter of children.

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Second Lesson from Hasmonean Rebellion/ Rule Applied to Today: Fanaticism Divides and Harms Jews

Religious fanaticism/fundamentalism ALWAYS results in the fracturing of communities, religious identities, and tribal/ethnic groups. Like most self-proclaimed zealots, the Maccabees began violently and became more violent as they practice their zealotry.

The Hasmonean rebellion began with one Jew killing another because he had “assimilated.” The Hasmonean governments continued to denounce and attack “Hellinistic” Jews, and once they were appointed as Priests, they attacked traditional Jewish communities who did not recognize their claim to priesthood.

Today we see Jewish institutions demanding unquestioning obedience, and labeling Jews with different opinions as “self-hating” or “anti-Semites” and suggesting they be silenced and cut off from the Jewish people.

A deep divide has become evident and is only growing stronger between different kinds of Jews, and we struggle to see how we are connected when our world views are utterly divergent.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Mattathias of Modi'in killing a Jewish apostate

Engraving by Gustave Doré

19th Century Paris, France

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Third Lesson from Hasmonean Rebellion/ Rule Applied to Today: The merging of religious and military leadership turns belief into a weapon, every time.

Judas Maccabeus saw himself as a charismatic, divinely appointed leader, like Gideon, who tore down other peoples religious icons and then slaughtered them. Judas would pause in his guerrilla tactics to assemble his men to “watch and pray” and to read the Torah together.

To us, the use of a weapon for killing being used as a yad to read Torah is a desecration. Yet as Gaza is destroyed, it makes perfect sense to the destroyers.

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Fourth Lesson from Hasmonean Rebellion/ Rule Applied to Today: Power over is violence

From Rabbi Jeremy Schwartz

The history of the Hasmoneans shows the fruits of their zealotry. Within just a generation, they usurped the Davidic throne, took on Greek names and practices, and persecuted — even murdered — Torah scholars. To paraphrase Lord Acton, ‘Zealotry tends to corrupt and absolute zealotry corrupts absolutely.’

Of course the Maccabees were originally fighting against cruel and terrible religious persecution. Sadly, though, history has proven that those who fight oppressors are not necessarily freedom fighters. Were the Bolsheviks freedom fighters because they reacted to czarist oppression? Was Khomeini a freedom fighter because he opposed the dictatorship of the Shah?

It is morally disastrous to believe that just because we Jews have been oppressed, we are incapable of becoming oppressors. Our prophets tell us that when the descendants of the slaves who came out of Egypt gained power in their own land, they themselves oppressed the widow, the orphan, the hired worker and the stranger.

The Maccabees provide another example. They didn’t want Antiochus to impose his system; they wanted to impose theirs. Their dynasty perpetuated blind zealotry, not the humble desire to do God’s will. […] The history of the Maccabees teaches us that the certainty that “God is on our side” is dangerous.

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Fifth Lesson from Hasmonean Rebellion/ Rule Applied to Today: Corruption Leads to Civil War

Many Hasmonean rulers were assassinated or came to other violent ends. As they grabbed more power and more land, the treachery and in-fighting grew. While continuing to denounce and punish assimilated Jews, the ruling class took on more and more Hellenistic values and practices. When their power became utterly corrupt, a destructive civil war raged for 8 years.

Eventually their rulers became the kind of upper-class conservatives keeping power by waging a culture war who is painfully familiar to all of us.

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Sixth Lesson from Hasmonean Rebellion/ Rule Applied to Today: Empire hates you.

Power drawn from asking Empires for support can never be trusted, and will eventually be used to destroy you.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Hasmonean rule came to end when two brothers who both wanted to be king each asked Rome to come to their aid – Rome came and killed thousands, burnt the city, and took over.

Yet today, Israel entirely depends on the US empire, and is utterly willing to betray Jews in other nations to keep their support from empires. Christian nationalist leaders – the same ones who support and increase white supremacy and open anti-Semitism in the US – are welcomed by the Israeli government even though they create a climate of fear and violence for Jews here.

No empire has given support to a minority group because they wanted us to succeed. Empires use tools, and discard them after their usefulness has ended.

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If I must die

Refaat Alareer

If I must die,

you must live

to tell my story

to sell my things

to buy a piece of cloth

and some strings,

(make it white with a long tail)

so that a child, somewhere in Gaza

while looking heaven in the eye

awaiting his dad who left in a blaze--

and bid no one farewell

not even to his flesh

not even to himself--

sees the kite, my kite you made, flying up above

and thinks for a moment an angel is there

bringing back love

If I must die

let it bring hope

let it be a tale

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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.

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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

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

70 of 72

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.

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

71 of 72

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Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784

72 of 72

Dear Lord, I have swept and I have washed but

Still nothing is as shining as it should be

for you. Under the sink, for example, is an

Uproar of mice—it is the season of their

many children. What shall I do? And under the eaves

And through the walls the squirrels

have gnawed their ragged entrances—but it is the season

When they need shelter, so what shall I do? And

the raccoon limps into the kitchen and opens the cupboard

While the dog snores, the cat hugs the pillow;

what shall I do? Beautiful is the new snow falling

In the yard and the fox who is staring boldly

up the path, to the door. And still I believe you will

Come, Lord: you will, when I speak to the fox,

the sparrow, the lost dog, the shivering sea-goose, know

That really I am speaking to you whenever I say,

as I do all morning and afternoon: Come in, Come in.

Making the House Ready for the Lord

Mary Oliver

9 December 2023 /26 Kislev 5784