Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
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Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
29 Adar 1 5784 / 9 March 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 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.
ALL
from The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac
Mary Oliver
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
so why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
On the edge of Pesach
Elliott batTzedek
Blessed this edge where we wait, balancing,
weighing our own lives.
Will we choose, finally, liberation-
meaning everyone-
or will we choose ourselves
and leave others behind
still enslaved? Blessed are we
when our choosings
begin to form redemption
from every fragment
from any raw material. Sacred is this act
of taking responsibility
for the future of the worlds.
We will wrap ourselves in this knowing-
carry it across silence and sea
into a future
hanging
in the balance.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Remember
Susan Rothbaum
Remember (3X) we once were strangers,
Remember (3X) we also fled, we fled from danger
Let these memories remind us, we are bound
to deeds of kindness (2X)
That each soul shall have a home,
in the shelter of shalom (2X)
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
from “Daphne’s Broken Sonnet”
Iris Jamahl Dunkle
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Apples are imagining themselves
onto hillsides—pink petals stick out their
tongues from the dark mouths of branches and the
forest canopy ripens overnight
until it pulses like a green heart. Spring
frankensteins us all—softens our cyborg
brains (admit it: you were thinking about what
mysteries your phone will sing out!) while your
body turns like a tree toward the light. Reader,
some days it’s just too much: powder-blue sky,
light wind stirring the leaves as if they are
waving, no, beckoning me to root and
join in. How could I not give in? Trying
to find the song that’s buried in the soil.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
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.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
from Song of
Songs 4:1-7
translated by
Marcia Falk
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
How beautiful you are, my love,
my friend! The doves of your eyes
looking out
from the thicket of your hair.
Your hair
like a flock of goats
bounding down Mount Gilead.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Your neck is a tower of David
raised in splendor,
a thousand bucklers hang upon it,
all the shields of the warriors.
Your breasts are two fawns,
twins of a gazelle,
grazing in a field of lilies.
Your teeth white ewes,
all alike,
the come up fresh from the pond.
A crimson ribbon your lips--
how I listen for your voice!
The curve of your cheek
a pomegranate
in the thicket of your hair.
Before day breathes,
before the shadows of night are gone,
I will hurry to the mountain of myrrh,
the hill of frankincense.
You are all beautiful, my love,
my perfect one.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Ani Ldodi
Batya Levine
source: song of songs 6:3
ani l'dodi v'dodi li�ha'ro'eh ba'shoshananim (bashoshanim ha'ro'eh)
�translation: I am to my beloved, and my beloved is to me,
who shepherds in the roses
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Temptation to Believe
Andrea Cohen
Dumbstruck in the awesome
forest, spring leaping up through loam,
fiddleheads unfurling like giddy seahorses
under the green awnings of scotch pines
that don't close shop, one wants
to applaud, to throw or to be
roses, to address a thank-you note
to those responsible, to imagine
such splendor is never random,
and then, dizzy beneath the cornflower sky,
I apprehend how lost I am.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Symbols, This Year
R. Rachel Barenblat
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
The shankbone is for houses across Israel and Gaza
where the Angel of Death has not passed over.
�Maror for the hot tearful bitter sharp pain
of hostages held underground and children imprisoned.
�Haroset, for mortar: Gaza bombed to rubble.
The egg is roasted like charred kibbutz walls.
Everything is dipped in tears like the sea that closed
when God rebuked, "My children die, and you sing praises?"
�Matzah: cracker of liberation and affliction. (Gazans
approaching starvation know only one of these.)
�There’s no place on the seder plate for ambivalence,
survivors’ guilt, history’s persecutions telescoping into now.
�In every generation trauma traps us in Mitzrayim.
Will this be the year we begin to walk free?
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
from BP
Linda Baldanzi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
As weeks passed you were still on the same page
When you should have been on your knees for this.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
During a Genocide
Yahia Lababidi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
You will find that during a genocide
most words lose their meaning
Some sound empty & others strange
Apart from unceasing prayer,
eloquence takes the form
of tears or kindness and solidarity
Even a quiet moan or sighing
is preferable to false words or worse:
a loud and wounding Silence…
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
from BP
Linda Baldanzi
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
As weeks passed we were still on the same page
When we should have been on our knees for this.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Beneath Shekhinah’s Wings
Marcia Falk
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
She hovers over us,
her fledglings-
the bereaved,
the brokenhearted-
lifts us to her, takes our sorrow.
In the depth of her shade: home.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
From Maggid
Ariana Katz & Miriam Grossman
of the JVP Rabbinical Council
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
A people must make themselves remember. The way forward for a people is to imagine and plan for a future that might not be possible. To trust midwives and healers, who birth babies, who heal a people, who fight back the skepticism and despair. The way out is to tell each other stories that freedom is possible and to believe each other.
�And finally, God remembered the promise of freedom but the people had already forgotten and “they were short of breath from the cruelty of their bondage” (Ex. 6:9). And despite miracles and plagues and wonders they could not remember.
�Pharoah forgot Joseph and his people.
�God forgot Joseph and his people.
�And the people forgot they could get free.
�Until, one night, with thousands of mighty outstretched hands, they painted their doors red with blood. They reminded themselves of who they were and what their bodies could do. They made a scene. They marked their homes as places of rebellion, households that stood against Pharaoh. Places where a story of freedom could be told. And in the morning, with Mitzrayim rocked to its core, the people marched out towards the sea.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Tired
Langston Hughes
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
I am so tired of waiting,
Aren’t you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two –
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
from The Body of the Beloved
Gregory Orr
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
How easy to give up hope.
How easy to draw death over you
Like a black cloak. Cover
Your face, your eyes. Stand
There like a dead tree.
I did that, claiming it was penance,
Claiming I was sorry I was
Alive after the beloved died.
Who was I fooling? No one
Demanded I act that way,
Least of all the ones I loved
Who longed to live again
And could not unless I uttered
Their names, unless I told
Their stories, unless I felt
In my own bones
How much they loved the world.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
If We Jump Up
Minnie Bruce Pratt
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Let new words leap out of our mouths.
Let our hands be astonished at what we have made, and glad.
Let us follow ourselves into a present not ruled by the past.
If we jump now, our far will be near.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Let new words leap out of our mouths.
Let our hands be astonished at what we have made, and glad.
Let us follow ourselves into a present not ruled by the past.
If we jump now, our far will be near.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 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
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
call & Response
Ingratitude
Carl Dennis
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Spring, I remembered you all these months.
I spoke of the green yard under the snow
To my slumped visitors.
I sobered the giddy neighbors.
"You may think you're still happy,"
I cautioned, "but recall the tea roses,
The lost leaves of the dogwood tree."
But now you have fallen upon us, Spring,
Without warning,
So much greener than I remembered.
Friends I kept from forgetting
Laugh at me as they run outside
For falling so short in your praise.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Your Child Will Ask
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Your child will ask
why do we observe this festival?
And you will answer
it is because of what God did for us
when we were set free from the land of Mitzrayim.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Your Child Will Ask
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Your child will ask
were we set free from the land of Mitzrayim
that we might hold tightly
to the pain of our enslavement
with a mighty hand?
And you will answer
we were set free from Mitzrayim
that we might release our pain
by reaching with an outstretched arm
to all who struggle for freedom.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Your Child Will Ask
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Your child will ask
were we set free from the land of Mitzrayim
because we are God’s chosen people?
And you will answer
we were set free from the land of Mitzrayim
so that we will finally come to learn
all who are oppressed
are God’s chosen.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Your Child Will Ask
Rabbi Brant Rosen
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Your child will ask
were we set free from the land of Mitzrayim
that we might conquer and settle
a land inhabited by others?
And you will answer
we were set free from the land of Mitzrayim
that we might open wide the doors
to proclaim:
Let all who are dispossessed return home.
Let all who wander find welcome at the table.
Let all who hunger for liberation
come and eat.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Remember
Susan Rothbaum
Remember (3X) we once were strangers,
Remember (3X) we also fled, we fled from danger
Let these memories remind us, we are bound
to deeds of kindness (2X)
That each soul shall have a home,
in the shelter of shalom (2X)
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
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
call & Response
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 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
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
ALL
Exodus II
Dane Kuttler
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Don’t think. Run. Don’t think. Move. Squint into the cloud of sand and shouting. Ignore the sun blistering your shoulders, blink, blink, blink, don’t stop. Shoulder the dough and keep going. The gates will only be open for as long as we hold them, so go. So go. So go. The children are barefoot. Go. Who will care for the cat? Go. There is too much we can’t take with us, too much of ourselves that won’t follow us out. Go. Don’t think. Don’t stop. Fling yourself into the avalanche. Go. The road to freedom isn’t paved with anything. You must clear it yourself as you go.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 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.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
A History Lesson – Seneca, Greenham, and “Zapping”
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
https://lethalindisguise.org/crowd-control-weapons/acoustic-weapons/
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Meet “Lavender,” “The Gospel,” & “Where’s Daddy”
or
How a violent surveillance state removes all human morality
to choose victims through “impartial evidence” for slaughter
at machine speeds
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Lavender
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Where’s Daddy?
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
The Gospel
“You don’t want to waste expensive bombs on unimportant people — it’s very expensive for the country and there’s a shortage [of those bombs],” said C., one of the intelligence officers interviewed.
In an unprecedented move, according to two of the sources, the army also decided during the first weeks of the war that, for every junior Hamas operative that Lavender marked, it was permissible to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians. For high-level, it was permissible to kill 300 or more.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
The result, as the sources testified, is that thousands of Palestinians — most of them women and children or people who were not involved in the fighting — were wiped out by Israeli airstrikes. During the first six weeks of bombing, more than 50% of the casualities, more than 6,000 people at that time, came from a small population percentage of families. This was expression of intending to destroy entire families as pressure on Hamas. The AI and the way it was used created the possibilities for that.
In the current war, however, at least in relation to junior militants marked using AI, sources say this procedure was abolished in order to save time. No one knew how many civilians were actually killed in each strike, and for the low-ranking suspected Hamas and PIJ operatives marked by AI, they did not even know whether the target himself was killed.
“You don’t know exactly how many you killed, and who you killed,” an intelligence source told Local Call. “Only when it’s senior Hamas operatives do you follow procedure to know.
In the rest of the cases, you don’t care. You get a report from the air force about whether the building was blown up, and that’s it. You have no idea how much collateral damage there was; you immediately move on to the next target. The emphasis was to create as many targets as possible, as quickly as possible.”
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham on Democracy Now explained:
And I think, you know, when speaking with sources, like, just to describe — like, many of these sources, you know, they were drafted to the military after October 7th. Many of them were shocked by atrocities that happened on October 7th, their families, their friends. Some of them did not think they would be drafted to the military again. They said, “OK, we have to go now.” There was this sense that — and gradually, when they realized what they were being asked to do, the things that they are involved in, not — I wouldn’t say that all six (sources for the article) are like this, but at least some of them felt, again, shocked by committing atrocities and by being involved in things and killing families, and they felt it’s unjustifiable. And they felt a responsibility, I think. They felt a need to share this information with the world, out of a sense that people are not getting it.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
26 things you would have loved about being Palestinian
@iiamdanial
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
a letter to Wadea Al-Fayoumi
Olives. A bowl of zaatar always being on the table. Dreaming of the deep blue Mediterranean in Yaffa. Seeing yourself in Ghassan Kanafani novels. Feeling a deep soul connection to hundred year old olive trees you’ve never met. Handala. The glisten of Alaqsa on a hot summer day. Pictures of the snow in Jerusalem. Msakhan, and the sour tinge of sumac. Dabke with strangers at a wedding. The feeling of spotting a Kuffiyeh in public. Being the main characters of the Arab world. Ramallah. Fallahi/madani feuds. Only buying olive oil from that one little store. Never getting tired of hearing your grandpa’s repeated stories. Dads being obsessed with Mahmoud Darwish poetry. Banksy. Watermelons. The smell of hot knafeh. Our strife. Our rage. Our solidarity. Our unity. Our joy. Our undying love for Palestine.
I wish you could have grown up and seen it all.
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
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
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 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
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024
Adon Olam / Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
Upcoming Services
Saturday May 11 @ 10 am
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Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
5 Nisan 5784 / 13 April 2024