from You are who I love

Aracelis Girmay

​

You are who I love, writing letters, calling the senators, you who, with the seconds of your body (with your time here), arrive on buses, on trains, in cars, by foot to stand in the streets against the cool and brutal offices, saying: YOUR CRUELTY DOES NOT SPEAK FOR ME

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Blessing for Pursuing Justice

​

בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ שְכִינָה בְּתוֹכֵינוּ רוּחַ הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר

קִדְשָתְנוּ בְּמִצְוֹתֶיהָ וְצִוָתְנוּ לִרְדֹף צֶדֶק

B’rucha at Shekhinah, b’tocheynu, ruach ha’olam, asher kidshatnu b’mitzvoteha v’tzivatnu lirdof tzedek

​

Blessed are you, Shekhinah, who is within us, spirit of

the world, who infuses our lives with holiness

and commands us to pursue justice

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

שׁיר חָדָשׁ/ Blessing for New Songs

Dorshei Derekh Women's Haftorah Group

​

Bruchah At Yah, Simchat Ha-olam, בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ יָהּ שִׂמְחַת הָעוֹלָם

asher m’oreret אֲשֶׁר מְאוֹרֶרֶת

rucheinu la-shir shir chadash רוּחֵינוּ לַשִׁיר שִׁיר חָדָשׁ.

​

Blessed are You, Yah, Joy of the Universe,

who awakens our spirits

that we may sing a new song.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

נְקָבִים חַלוּלִים / Openings and Vessels

​

נְבָרֵך אֶת עֵן הַחַיִים אֲשֶׁר יָצַר אֶת הָאָדָם בְּחָכְמָה וּבָרָא בוֹ נְקָבִים נְקָבִים חַלוּלִים חַלוּלִים. גָלוּי וְיָדוּעַ לִפנֵי כִסֵּא כְבוֹדֵך שֶׁאִם יִפָּתֵחַ אֶחָד מֵהֶם אוֹ יִסָּתֵם אֶחָד מֵהֶם אִי אֶפְשָׁר לְהִתְקַיֵם וְלַעַמוֹד לְפָנֶיךָ.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יהוה רוֹפֵא כָל בָּשָׂר וּמַפְלִיא לַעַשׂוֹת.

​

N’varech et ein hachayim asher yatzar et ha’adam bechochmah uvara vo nekavim nekavim chalulim chalulim. Galuwi veyadu’a lifney chisey chevodeich she’im yipate’ach echad mehem o yisatem echad mehem i efshar lehitkayem vela’amod lefanecha.

Baruch ata Yah rofey chol basar umafli la’asot.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

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,

broken though this world 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 & *Miriam Geronimus

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

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Today, in the

soft animal

of my body,

I hold:

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Morning Blessings

Opening Phrase by Andrew Shaw

New Blessings by Elliott batTzedek

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

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

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Tomatoes

​

Joy Sullivan

I waited so long for love

and suddenly, here it is

standing in the garden, hands full

of heirlooms hot from the sun.

​

Soon, we’ll make a supper of them.

Salted slabs between slices of bread.

Your beard silvers. My hips ripen.

The mail piles up.

​

Phone calls go unanswered. Forgive us.

Our mouths are full of tomatoes.

We are so busy

being small and hungry and alive.

​

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

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 –

​

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

What can anyone give you

greater than now,

starting here,

right in this room,

when you turn around?

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

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

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

As the marsh swelters in August, it begins:

the sweet, dappled stain on our hands, the languid shadows.

Three languages between us. One endless task. Each berry

rolling heavily from the stem with drowsy liquid thuds.

When you're fourteen, and walk a summer under this buzzing canopy,

bathed in dusky racemes, the burgeoning winter is impossible

and irrelevant as adulthood. And you, a refugee

of the war, tossing berries high to catch in your mouth, laughing with glee

Blueberry Season, 1976

​

Eileen Walsh Duncan

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

I come from the weeds

green and brown

sturdy stems pushing out

fibrous leaves that will survive

sharp as mustard

​

I sprout bitter flowers

and many seeds able

on the edge of a filament

to float on a sigh

and travel far

​

There are burrs

woody barbs with curved sharp edges

Do Not Touch I say

my voice bright as poison ivy

breath a miasma of skunk cabbage

​

Looking for moist black earth

to settle into waiting for rain

I throw out roots grow

my crab-like grasses push up through sidewalks

or roll as tumble weed

I move unnoticed from day to day

and everywhere are my kin.

I Come from the Weeds

​

Toni Brown

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

from You are who I love

Aracelis Girmay

​

You are who I love, you who beat and did not beat the odds, you who knows that any good thing you have is the result of someone else’s sacrifice, work, you who fights for reparations

​

You are who I love, you who stands at the courthouse with the sign that reads NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE

​

each of us looking out from the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is another way of saying: You are who I love You are who I love You and you and you are who

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Although I watched and waited for it every day,

somehow I missed it, the moment when everything reached

the peak of ripeness.

A Warm Summer in San Francisco

​

Carolyn Miller

ALL

I felt very close, then

It wasn't at the solstice; that was only

the time of the longest light. It was sometime after that, when

the plants had absorbed all that sun, had taken it into themselves

for food and swelled to the height of fullness. It was in July,

in a dizzy blaze of heat and fog, when on some nights

it was too hot to sleep, and the restaurants set half their tables

on the sidewalks; outside the city, down the coast,

the Milky Way floated overhead, and shooting stars

fell from the sky over the ocean. One day the garden

was almost overwhelmed with fruition:

ALL

I felt very close, then

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

My sweet peas struggled out of the raised bed onto the mulch

of laurel leaves and bark and pods, their brilliantly colored

sunbonnets of rose and stippled pink, magenta and deep purple

pouring out a perfume that was almost oriental. Black-eyed Susans

stared from the flower borders, the orange cherry tomatoes

were sweet as candy, the fruit fattened in its swaths of silk,

hummingbirds spiraled by in pairs, the bees gave up

and decided to live in the lavender.

A Warm Summer in San Francisco

​

Carolyn Miller

ALL

I felt very close, then

At the market,

surrounded by black plums and rosy plums and sugar prunes

and white-fleshed peaches and nectarines, perfumey melons

and mangos, purple figs in green plastic baskets,

clusters of tiny Champagne grapes and piles of red-black cherries

and apricots freckled and streaked with rose, I felt tears

come into my eyes, absurdly, because I knew

that summer had peaked and was already passing

away. I felt very close then :

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

A Warm Summer in San Francisco

​

Carolyn Miller

I felt very close, then, to understanding

I felt very close then, to understanding

the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew

what it meant to be alive, as if my life had swelled

to some high moment of response, as if I could

reach out and touch the season, as if I were inside

its body, surrounded by sweet pulp and juice,

shimmering veins and ripened skin.

I felt very close, then, to understanding

the mystery; it seemed to me that I almost knew

what it meant to be alive, shimmering veins

and ripened skin.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Villanelle for America 2016

​

Katie Bickham

The American machine is far from broken,

but grinding bones the way it was designed.

No quiet now will hush the thing we’ve woken.

​

We try to pray, to pledge, to scream, but choke in

terror of the ledge we teeter on. Resigned,

we whisper low, America the Broken

​

come crown thy good with thorns, an oaken

anthem like a cage. We have been blind

and deaf to this red thing we’ve woken.

​

Wake up. While you were sleeping, hate has spoken

its own name and named us too, in kind.

The American machine is well-oiled, broken

​

in by centuries of bigots armed and cloaked in

stars and stripes. The flag sags in the wind,

wrung out and hung to dry by what we’ve woken.

​

I voted today, protected what I could. The token

clanged in the machine. The man standing behind

me would undo it. Send your tired, your broken

somewhere else. Tell them to run from what we’ve woken.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Praises for The world

Praises for The world

Praises for The world

Praises for The world

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

בָּרְכוּ / Bar’khu/ Pool of Blessing

Kohenet liturgy

​

בָּרְכוּ אֶת הַבְּרֵכָה הַמְבֹרֶכֶת

Leader: Barchu et haBereichah haMevorechet

Give blessing to the Pool of Blessing

​

בָּרוּכָה הַבְּרֵכָה הַמְבֹרֶכֶת לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד

Group: Beruchah ha Bereichah haMevorechet le’olam va’ed

Blessing to the Pool of Blessing in all the worlds throughout eternity

​

בָּרוּכָה הַבְּרֵכָה הַמְבֹרֶכֶת לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד

Leader: Beruchah ha Bereichah haMevorechet le’olam va’ed

Blessing to the Pool of Blessing in all the worlds throughout eternity

call & Response

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

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?

call & Response

It Is Ours to Praise

​

Marcia Falk

It is ours to praise

the beauty of the world

​

even as we discern

the torn world.

​

For nothing is whole

that is not first rent

​

and out of the torn

we make whole again.

​

May we live with promise

in creation’s lap,

​

redemption budding

in our hands.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Blessing of Creation / Birkat Y’tzirah בִּרְכַּת יְצִירָה

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

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”

call & Response

שְׁמַע / Sh’ma

Ariadne Joy Lieber

​

שְׁמַע אמִי /יִשְּׂרָאֵל הַשְׁכִינָה בְּקִרְבֵּינוּ הַשְׁכִינָה אַחָת

Sh’ma Ami/Yisrael ha-Shekhinah b’Kirbainu ha-Shekhinah Ahat

​

Listen, My People/Israel, the Shekhinah is in our inmost being, the Shekhinah is one

​

בָּרוּךְ שֵׁם כְּבוֹד מַלְכוּתוֹ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד

Baruch shem kevod malchuto le’olam va’ed.

​

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

/V’ahav’tוְאָהַבְתְּ

​

וְאָהַבְתְּ אֵת יְיָ אֱלֹהַיִךְ, בְּכָל-לְבָבֵךְ וּבְכָל-נַפְשֵׁךְ, וּבְכָל-מְאֹדֵךְ. וְהָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵֽלֶּה,

אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוָּתֵךְ הַיּוֹם, עַל-לְבָבֵךְ. וְשִׁנַּנְתִּים לִבְנֹתַיִךְ וּלְבָנַיִךְ, וְדִבַּרְתְּ בָּם,

בְּשִׁבְתֵּךְ בְּבֵיתֵךְ, וּבְלֶכְתֵךְ בַּדֶּֽרֶךְ, וּבְשָׁכְבֵּךְ וּבְקוּמֵךְ. וּקְשַׁרְתִּים לְאוֹת עַל יָדֵךְ,

וְהָיוּ לְטֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינַיךְ. וּכְתַבְתִּים עַל מְזֻזוֹת בֵּיתֵךְ וּבִשְׁעָרַיִךְ.

​

Ve’ahav’t et skekhinah elohayich, bechol levavech, uvekol nafshech u-ve’chol me’odech. Vehayu hadevarim ha’eleh, asher anochi metzavatech hayom, al levavech. Veshinantim l’vnotayich ul’vanayich, vedibaret bam beshivtech beveitech u’velechtech baderech, uveshachbech uvekumech. Ukshartim le’ot al yadeych, vehayu letotafot bein einayich. Uchetavtim al mezuzot beitech uvisharayich.

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.

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Such has been the patient sufferance...

​

We’re a mother’s bread, instant potatoes, milk at a checkout line; her three children pleading for bubble gum and their father. We’re the three minutes she steals to page a tabloid, needing to believe even stars’ lives are as joyful and bruised.

​

Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury...

​

We’re her second job serving an executive in a shark-grey suit absorbed in his Fortune magazine at a sidewalk café. We’re the shadow of skyscrapers like giant chess pieces in a game he bet his family on, and lost. We’re the lost. We’re a father who can’t mine a life anymore in a town where too much, too little has happened, for too long.

​

A history of repeated injuries and usurpations…

​

Declaration of Inter-Dependence

​

Richard Blanco

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

ALL

We’re the grit of his main street’s blacked-out windows and spray-painted truths. Or a street lined with Royal palms—home to a Peace Corps couple who now collect art and winter in Aruba. We’re their dinner-party-talk of wines and picket signs once wielded, retirement accounts and draft cards once burned. We’re their knowing it’s time to do more than read the New York Times, buy fair-trade coffee and grass-fed beef.

​

In every stage of oppressions we have petitioned for redress…

​

We’re the canned corn of a farmer who plows into his couch as worn as his back by the end of the day. We’re watching news having everything, nothing to do with the field dust in his eyes or his son nested in the ache of his arms. We’re his son. And a black son who drove too fast or too slow, talked too much or too little, moved too quickly, but not quick enough for a bullet. We’re our dead, our blood-stained blackboards, dance floors, church pulpits.

​

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor…

​

Declaration of Inter-Dependence

​

Richard Blanco

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

ALL

We’re the living who light vigil candles and the cop who didn’t shoot. We’re the inmate with his volunteer teacher diagraming sentences, the Buddhist alongside the stockbroker serving soup at a shelter. We’re the grandfather taking a selfie with his grandson and his husband, the widow’s fifty cents in the collection plate and the golfer’s ten-thousand-dollar pledge for a cure.

​

We hold these truths to be self-evident…

​

We’re them. They’re you. You’re me. We’re us: a handshake, a smile good morning on the bus, a door held open, a seat we give up on the subway. We tend restrooms or sell art, make huevos rancheros or herbed salmon, run for mayor or restock shelves, work a backhoe or write poems. We’re a poem in progress.

​

​

Declaration of Inter-Dependence

​

Richard Blanco

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

​

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people…

​

to fulfill the promise of being one people, necessary to abolish any government that becomes destructive of these ends, necessary to dissolve the political bans that keep us from speaking to each other, necessary to avow our interdependence, to look straight into each other’s eyes the way we behold the moon, and declare to one another:

​

I see you. I see you. I see you.

​

Declaration of Inter-Dependence

​

Richard Blanco

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

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.

​

from The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

​

Mary Oliver

​

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.

ALL

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

דִּבְרֵי תּוֹרָה/ Blessing for Revelation of Wisdom

A black woman stands with two toddlers hanging off her hips.

Her balance is perfect as she pushes her luggage with one leg,

​

the boys curl into her shoulders unaware of how

they all slide forward. I offer her my help. Her face is serious

​

when she says, Yes. On the bus, her boys nestle into their shared seat.

The driver, a white man, begins his headcount:

​

duck, duck, goose. He asks for her ticket. Says, Only one child is free,

tells her to pay for the other or get off. It is past 2 AM

​

and he threatens her with the mention of his superior.

What goes through his mind as he argues with a mother

​

juggling her children? Empty seats surround us like

silent witnesses; this time rules can't be broken.

Waiting for a Greyhound Bus at the Los Angeles Station

​

Cynthia Guardado

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Blessing of Redemption מָקוֹר תּקּוּן עוֹלֶּם

I stand up to say, One child is with me, but this young mother

doesn't trust me or the difference between us.

​

Another woman stands and says the child is with her

and then another woman says the child is with her.

​

Something beautiful is happening here, and the driver

can no longer fight our unity or the energy within us.

Waiting for a Greyhound Bus at the Los Angeles Station

​

Cynthia Guardado

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Blessing of Redemption מָקוֹר תּקּוּן עוֹלֶּם

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Amidah / Seven Breath Meditation

Rabbi Jill Hammer/ Kohenet

​

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Blessing Before Reading Torah

Dorshei Derekh Women's Haftorah Group

​

בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ יָהּ עֵין הַחַיִים אַשֵׁר מוֹשָׁה דִבְרֵי תוֹרָה

מִמַיִם-חַיִים בְּרַחַמִים רָבִּים

Bruchah At Yah, ein ha-chayim, asher moshah divrei Torah

mi-mayim chayim b’rachamim rabim.

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Blessed are you, Yah, Source of Life, who with abundant compassion draws words of Torah from living waters.

The American machine is far from broken,

but grinding bones the way it was designed.

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16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Emigration Depots - 1830

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President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act into law in 1830. Tens of thousands of Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Ponca, Winnebago and other indigenous peoples were forced from their homes at gunpoint and marched to prison camps in Alabama and Tennessee. Overcrowding and a lack of sanitation led to outbreaks of measles, cholera, whooping cough, dysentery and typhus, while insufficient food and water, along with exposure to the elements, caused tremendous death and suffering. Thousands of men, women and children died of cold, hunger and illness in camps and during death marches, including the infamous Trail of Tears, of hundreds and sometimes even a thousand miles.

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The “5 Civilized Tribes” forced into concentration camps then sent on death marches had been integrating into the US, white, slave-driven economy, and it is estimated that 4000 enslaved Africans/African Americans were sent to the camps and exile alongside the families that “owned” them. Let that sink in – the 5 tribes were living and functioning as US citizens, but whites wanted their land.

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16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

The Long Walk - 1862

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When the Sioux/Dakota and other indigenous people resisted white invasion and theft of their lands, Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey responded with yet another call for genocide and ethnic cleansing. "The Sioux [sic] Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state," he declared in 1862, offering a bounty of $200 -- over $5,000 in today's money -- for the scalp of each fleeing or resisting Indian. Around 1,700 Dakota women, children and elderly were force-marched into a concentration camp built on a sacred spiritual site. Many didn't make it there. According to Mendota Dakota Tribal Chair Jim Anderson, "during that march a lot of our relatives died. They were killed by settlers; when they went through the small towns, babies were taken out of mothers arms and killed and women... were shot or bayoneted." Those who survived faced winter storms, diseases and hunger. Many did not make it through the winter.

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16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Fort Sumner, New Mexico - 1864

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Civil War general and notorious Indian killer James Henry Carleton forced 10,000 Navajo people to march 300 miles (480 km) in the dead of winter from their homeland in the Four Corners region to a concentration camp at Fort Sumner, New Mexico.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

This followed a scorched earth campaign in which famed frontiersman Kit Carson tried to starve the life out of the Navajo, hundreds of whom died or were enslaved by white settlers and rival tribes during what became known as The Long Walk. Those who survived the death march to Fort Sumner faced starvation, lack of wood for heating and cooking during the bitterly cold winters and ravaging diseases. Daily depredations included a ban on prayers, spiritual ceremonies and songs. It is estimated that some 1,500 people died while interned at Fort Sumner, many of them infants and children.

Contraband Camps – Civil War

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In August of 1861, the US Congress passed the Confiscation Act, which declared that any property used by the Confederate military, including enslaved people, could be confiscated by Union forces.

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The Union Army recaptured freed or runaway slaves and pressed them into hard labor in disease-ridden "contraband camps.” Some of these were hell zones: at one camp in Young's Point, Louisiana, Yeatman reported "frightful sickness and death," with 30-50 people dying each day from disease and starvation. One camp near Natchez, Mississippi held as many as 4,000 black refugees in the summer of 1863; by fall 2,000 had already perished, most of them children infected with smallpox and measles. At other camps, the army began to pay wages to Black workers, setting out on a new relationship between the formerly enslaved and the US government.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Benevolent Assimilation – 1901, the Philippines

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President William McKinley called for the "benevolent assimilation" of the Philippines into the burgeoning US empire. In December 1901, his general J. Franklin Bell declared that "all consideration and regard for the inhabitants of this place cease from the day I become commander." Bell gave the people of Batangas two weeks to leave their homes and report to the camp; everything they left behind -- their homes, farms, livestock, food stores and tools -- was stolen or destroyed by US troops. People who refused to report to the camp were shot, as were random prisoners whenever insurgents killed an American. Conditions were beyond horrific in many reconcentrados. Hunger, disease and torture, which included waterboarding, were rampant. In some camps, as many as 20 percent of internees died. In order to save food, 1,300 Batangas prisoners were forced to dig mass graves before being gunned down 20 at a time and buried in them. "To keep them prisoners would necessitate the placing of [US] soldiers on short rations," one soldier said. "There was nothing to do but kill them."

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Internment of Germans and German Americans – WWI & WWII

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With the U.S. entry into World War I after Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, German nationals were automatically classified as enemy aliens and held in four main internment camps Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wrote that "All aliens interned by the government are regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly."

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Shortly after the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor, some 1,260 German nationals were detained and arrested, as the government had been watching them. Of the 254 persons not of Japanese ancestry evicted from coastal areas, the majority were ethnic German. A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during the war, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program. However, their race and relatively high level of assimilation saved most from internment, and conditions were much better than they had been in previous US camps

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16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Internment of Japanese Americans – 1942

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During World War II, the United States forcibly relocated and incarcerated about 120,000 people of Japanese descent in ten concentration camps operated by the War Relocation Authority. About two-thirds were U.S. citizens. These actions were initiated by Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1942. About 127,000 Japanese Americans then lived in the continental U.S. About 80,000 were Nisei ('American-born Japanese with U.S. citizenship) and Sansei (the children of Nisei). The rest were immigrants born in Japan, who were ineligible for citizenship. In Hawaii, where more than 150,000 Japanese Americans comprised more than one-third of the territory's population, only 1,200 to 1,800 were incarcerated.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Japanese Americans had to leave their homes, businesses, and possessions since they were relocated to the internment camps. This also led to the collapse of many family-owned businesses, real estate, and their savings since they had been escorted to the camps. An estimated $400 million was stolen by the federal and state governments as well as by private businesses and individuals.

Were these Concentration Camps?

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in the early '90s, Karen Ishizuka, the chief curator at the Japanese American National Museum, created an exhibition about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. She called it “America’s Concentration Camps.” When the exhibit was set to move to the museum at Ellis Island, she was asked to change the name, as the use of “concentration camps” would “offend Jews.” The position of the American Jewish Committee was that the term, even though it had existed historically long before the Shoah, could not be applied to Japanese American experience because of the “difference between them and Nazi camps, where millions of people were murdered.”

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Benjamin Mead, a Holocaust survivor, resolved the dispute by having both sides come up with a shared definition of “concentration camp.”

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Were these Concentration Camps?

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“A concentration camp is a place where people are imprisoned not because of any crimes they committed but simply because of who they are. Although many groups have been singled out for such persecution throughout history, the term concentration camps was first used at the turn of the century in the Spanish American and Boer Wars. During World War II, America's concentration camps were clearly distinguishable from Nazi Germany's. Nazi camps were places of torture, barbarous medical experiments and summary executions. Some were extermination centers with gas chambers. Six million Jews and many others, including Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals and political dissidents, were slaughtered in the Holocaust.

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In recent years, concentration camps have existed in the former Soviet Union, Cambodia and Bosnia. Despite the difference, all had one thing in common - the people in power removed a minority group from the general population, and the rest of society let it happen.”

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

WWII Concentration Camps and Ghettos

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Ice Facilities before 2024

With the

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Ice–Police Partnershipsbefore 2025

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

אָנָא אֵל נָא / Prayers for Healing

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When the world is sick, can’t no one be well,

but I dreamt we was all beautiful and strong

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אָנָא אֵל נָא רְפָא נָא לָה/לֹה

Ana el na r’fah na lah/loh

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Please God please heal her/him.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Blessing After Reading Torah

Dorshei Derekh Women's Haftorah Group

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בְּרוּכָה אַתְּ יָהּ אֱלֹהֵינוּ לֵב הָעוֹלָם אֲשֶׁר שָׂמַה לֵב אֵלֵינוּ וְשׁוֹמָעַת קוֹל לִבֵּינוּ רַחֲמִי עָלֵינוּ וְיִשָׁמַע קוֹל דְמָמָה דָקָה

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Bruchah At Yah, Eloheinu Lev Ha-olam, asher samah lev eileinu v’shoma’at

kol libeinu; rachami aleinu v’yishama kol d’mamah dakah

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Blessed are You, Yah, Heart of the Universe, who attends to us and hears the voice of our hearts; have compassion on us and make audible the still, small voice.

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Aleynu / עָלֵינוּ

We stand in the midst of a burning world

primed to burn with compassionate love and justice,

to turn inward and find holy fire at the core,

to turn outward and see the world that is all

of one flesh with us, see under the trash, through

the smog, the furry bee in the apple blossom,

the trout leaping, the candles our ancestors lit for us.

from Nishmat by Marge Piercy

Fill us as the tide rustles into the reeds in the marsh.

Fill us as the rushing water overflows the pitcher.

Fill us as light fills a room with its dancing.

Let the little quarrels of the bones and the snarling

of the lesser appetites and the whining of the ego cease.

Let silence still us so you may show us your shining

and we can out of that stillness rise and praise.

To know that the atoms

of my body

will remain

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to think of them rising

through the roots

of a great oak

to live in

leaves, branches, twigs

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perhaps to feed the

crimson peony

the blue iris

the broccoli

It Is Enough

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Anne Alexander Bingham

and some might drift

up and up into space

star dust returning from

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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

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some atoms might become a

bit of fluff on the wing

of a chickadee

to feel the breeze

know the support of air

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16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

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

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Yehey shemey raba mevarah le’alam ulalmey almaya.

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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.

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

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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 קַדִּישׁ יָתוֹם

Mourner’s Kaddish / Elliott batTzedek

So often am I lost,

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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.

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

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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

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

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

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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

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16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

16 Tamuz 5785 / 12 July 2025