Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
SINCE 2007
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
from October
Mary Oliver
Look, I want to love this world
as though it’s the last chance
I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
The law wants my body reasonable
My body won't fence in its demands
Expects the world to stop
Whenever it wants to lay down
Throws up its middle finger
At deadlines, task lists,
Long awaited meetings
It ain't open to negotiation
Wants you to stop telling it to
Calm down
It has three settings: rest, spark, flare
All that talk about your inconvenience & your hardship
It calls that Bullshit
Accommodation
Camisha L. Jones
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
It will not wait in line
It will not be polite
It will not use its inside voice
It wants all the space
In every room of the house
The entire sky & the full lawn of grass
It wants to set it all aflame
My body is a pyromaniac
My body is the art
Of Angela Bassett's right hand
Letting reason go up in smoke
Accommodation
Camisha L. Jones
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Let us bless the source of life, who shaped the human being with wisdom,
making for us all the openings and vessels of the body. It is revealed and known
before your Throne of Glory that if one of these passage-ways be open
when it should be closed, or blocked up when it should be free,
one could not stay alive or stand before you.
Blessed are You, Miraculous, the wondrous healer of all flesh.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
We will not
We will not
We will not be controlled
I am sovereign in my body
I am sovereign in my soul
-Abigail Bengson
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life –
You Reading This, Be Ready
William Stafford
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
You Reading This, Be Ready
William Stafford
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Am I not among the early risers
and the long-distance walkers?
Have I not stood, amazed, as I consider
the perfection of the morning star
above the peaks of the houses, and the crowns of the trees
blue in the first light?
Do I not see how the trees tremble, as though
sheets of water flowed over them
though it is only wind, that common thing,
free to everyone, and everything?
Have I not thought, for years, what it would be
worthy to do, and then gone off, barefoot and with a silver pail,
to gather blueberries,
thus coming, as I think, upon a right answer?
from Am I Not Among The Early Risers
Mary Oliver
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Wendy Elisheva Somerson
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
My heart is moved by all I can not save.
So much has been destroyed
I have to cast my lot with those
who age after age, perversely,
with no extraordinary power,
reconstitute the world.
-Adrienne Rich
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
from Gregory Orr
Ask the tree or the house;
Ask the rose or the fire
Hydrant - everything’s
Waiting for you to notice.
Everything’s waiting for you
To wrap your heart around it.
ALL
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods, in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by, there is
this thick paw of my life darting among
the black bells, the leaves; there is
this happy tongue.
August
Mary Oliver
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
This is the world I was born into.
I saw the wave and its white curl.
I saw branches coming from trees
like streams from rivers.
And the water poisoned
and the land.
I saw the whale leap out of the water
I saw my child’s eyes come out of me
her first cry.
And the air, the rain acid.
Kyrie eleison
Baruch atah
Hosanna
Adonai
Do you love the world?
This is the world
Susan Griffin
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
And G!d says: the thing you feared- that loss, that loneliness, that unbelievable thing - is inescapable. It is here. But your fear of it - that, you can leave behind. You want peace in this? Stop staring at the place where you buried your hope. Water it. Warm it. It will surprise you when it breaks through.
And G!d says: I am not the miracle. I am the ancient well, the water that Miriam called. Your weeping eyes, welling up, are this water. This water: fresh and life-giving, made salt in your grief, will fall through the earth and once again be the stuff of rivers and streams. Of growth. That is the miracle.
And G!d says: do not ignore the grief when it rises; do not muzzle it, or cage it, or stuff its howling mouth. Let it out when it comes, or suffocate in its fetid, feverish breath. Let it out, or live with its snarl at your heels. Let it out, or wake with its teeth in your chest.
from The Book of Solace
Dane Kuttler
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
We will be known as a culture that feared death
and adored power, that tried to vanquish insecurity
for the few and cared little for the penury of the
many. We will be known as a culture that taught
and rewarded the amassing of things, that spoke
little if at all about the quality of life for
people (other people), for dogs, for rivers. All
the world, in our eyes, they will say, was a
commodity. And they will say that this structure
was held together politically, which it was, and
they will say also that our politics was no more
than an apparatus to accommodate the feelings of
the heart, and that the heart, in those days,
was small, and hard, and full of meanness.
Of The Empire
Mary Oliver
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
from October
Mary Oliver
Look, I want to love this world
as though it’s the last chance
I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.
ALL
From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.
From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.
O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.
From Blossoms
Li-Young Lee
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.
From Blossoms
Li-Young Lee
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
our streets run thick with the smell of it
sidewalks choke with its debris
the world spills over with its progeny
sobbing stories no one wants to hear
and waiting in alleys with sharpened knives
to eat our feathered words
if somewhere there is no pain
then surely there is memory of it
or the skin-shuddering anticipation of it
pain has reached such proportions
our dancers and painters and poets cannot hold it
our shrinks and dealers and priests cannot hold it
there is nothing we can do
but wait in line and give it our name
there is too much pain in the world
Diedre Greenleaf Allan
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
We shake with joy
Mary Oliver
We shake with joy, we shake with grief.
What a time they have, these two
housed as they are in the same body.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
No matter how fast you run, your shadow
more than keeps up. Sometimes it’s in front.
Only full, overhead sun diminishes your shadow.
But that shadow has been serving you,
What hurts you blesses you.
Darkness is your candle.
Your boundaries are your quest.
I can explain this, but it would break the glass cover
on your heart, and there is no fixing that.
You must have shadow and light source both.
Listen, and lay your head under the tree of awe.
When from that tree, feathers and wings
sprout on your soul, be quieter than a dove.
Don't open your mouth for even a cooooo.
from The Trees of Awe
Rumi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Go outside.
Find a patch of grass, sand, dirt.
Sit, kneel, place a hand or just
A finger to the soft earth.
Feel it pulse back.
Open your palms and divine
The words creased between.
Rub the specks of dirt
Between your fingers,
See how they cling to skin,
How they listen in their soft-rough way.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
The earth will hold you better
Than God can.
God could not stop the bullets
Or the sale of weapons.
God could not block the open
Synagogue doors.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
But we keep saying, Shema,
Listen.
Israel.
Our God is One.
Singular.
Invisible.
Hiding in plain sight.
But listen, Israel, our God is beneath
Our feet, between
Our fingers, coursing
Through our veins.
Our God is trapped
In the poisoned grass,
Where the blood of our brothers cries out,
Where the ants heave centuries on their backs.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Pray to the God who sharpened the tiger’s teeth,
Who stored the roar in its throat.
Pray to the God who gave you lungs and tongue
To sing and groan and hum.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
I swear to you
When the leaf shivers in the wind
You have given it chills
From all its listening.
The earth hears your prayer.
There is nowhere for God to hide.
Get down on your knees and let
This precious earth soften for the weight of you.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
You are held.
You are heard.
The wind pulls its blanket over your back,
Smooths the hair from your face,
Touches your cheek
With its cool, trembling hands.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Put Your Roots Down
Molly Hartwell
Put your roots down
Put your feet on the ground
You can hear the earth sing if you listen
Cause the sound of the river as it
moves across the stones
Is the same sound as the
blood in your body as it moves
across your bones
Are you listening?
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
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
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
call & Response
this house
in danger of being torn apart
by stones of fear.
If these words can do anything
if these songs can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars.
Transfix us with love.
Creation Story
Joy Harjo
I'm not afraid of love
or its consequence of light.
It's not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.
I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot.
The stars who were created by words
are circling over this house
formed of calcium, of blood
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
And G!d says: this is where you make yourself whole.
Repay what you borrowed against yourself. Restore what you took from yourself.
As newborn skin flushes with the first cries, so does your soul fill with every breath.
Crying counts. Gasping counts.
Breathe, weary ones.
The world needs you whole.
from “The Book of Rest”
Dane Kuttler
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
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
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
call & Response
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up,
when you go out and when you return. In times of mourning
and in times of joy. Inscribe them on your doorposts,
embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders,
teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies,
recite them in your sleep, here in the cruel shadow of empire:
ALL: Another world is possible.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales
Thus spoke the prophet Roque Dalton:
All together they have more death than we,
but all together, we have more life than they.
There is more bloody death in their hands
than we could ever wield, unless
we lay down our souls to become them,
and then we will lose everything. So instead,
imagine winning.
ALL: This is your sacred task.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales
This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry, that the beggars are fed,
that the old man under the bridge and the woman
wrapping herself in thin sheets in the back seat of a car,
and the children who suck on stones,
nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales
Lean with all your being towards that day
when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune
out of the heavy clouds, and justice rolls down like waters.
ALL: Defend the world in which we win
as if it were your child.
It is your child.
Defend it as if it were your lover.
It is your lover.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales
When you inhale and when you exhale
breathe the possibility of another world
into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body
until it shines with hope.
Then imagine more.
Imagine rape is unimaginable. Imagine war is a scarcely credible rumor
That the crimes of our age, the grotesque inhumanities of greed,
the sheer and astounding shamelessness of it, the vast fortunes
made by stealing lives, the horrible normalcy it came to have,
is unimaginable to our heirs, the generations of the free.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales
Don’t waver. Don’t let despair sink its sharp teeth
Into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams.
Make them burn so fiercely that you can follow them down
any dark alleyway of history and not lose your way.
Make them burn clear as a starry drinking gourd
Over the grim fog of exhaustion, and keep walking.
ALL: Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining.
So that we, and the children of our children’s children
may live.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
V'ahavta
Aurora Levins Morales
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Amidah Seven Breath Meditation / 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.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
To know that the atoms
of my body
will remain
to think of them rising
through the roots
of a great oak
to live in
leaves, branches, twigs
perhaps to feed the
crimson peony
the blue iris
the broccoli
It Is Enough
Anne Alexander Bingham
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
and some might drift
up and up into space
star dust returning from
whence it came
it is enough to know that
as long as there is a universe
I am a part of it.
or rest on water
freeze and thaw
with the seasons
some atoms might become a
bit of fluff on the wing
of a chickadee
to feel the breeze
know the support of air
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
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
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
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022
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.
10 Tammuz 5782 / 9 July 2022