Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
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Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
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Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
ALL
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
ALL
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 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.
Elliott batTzedek
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
הבשר והגוּף / The flesh and the body
Elliott batTzedek
It is one supposes, on some days, at some times, possible,
theologically speaking, to imagine a god who has
no body. God of Ideals. God of Spirit. God of Thought. God of
No Thing therefore God of Nothing. God, what a tragedy
that a human, all flesh and bone in her world of wood and
stone, water and earth, could be so disembodied herself
that she conceives a god without a body, without its hungers
and without its creaks, without its folds and its foldings,
without taste buds, without a pulse to quicken to pound
in the throat when the scent of the one she needs rules
over all sense. To love an idea can be quite quite
satisfying but only the body, beloved,
is holy, holy, holy.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
You Will Not Find Me
Kabir
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables,
When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
God is the breath inside the breath.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
And I say: Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.)
I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least, Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass,
I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is sign'd by God’s name,
And I leave them where they are, for I know that wheresoe'er I go,
Others will punctually come for ever and ever.
from Song of Myself: 48
Walt Whitman
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Here I Am, Lord
Michael Chitwood
The ribbed black of the umbrella
is an argument for the existence of God,
that little shelter
we carry with us
and may forget
beside a chair
in a committee meeting
we did not especially want to attend.
What a beautiful word, "umbrella."
A shade to be opened.
Like a bat's wing, scalloped.
It shivers.
A drum head
beaten by the silver sticks
of rain,
and I do not have mine,
and so the rain showers me.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Yo-Yo
Jane Ellen Glasser
If God is energy,
I sit in God's hand.
I ride a thread of desire—
my own—and not my own.
Longing spins me out.
There's genius in moving.
In dips and arcs I thrill
to the latitudes of air.
I love an unmapped country—
my spirit spooling away
from its body, dancing
at the end of a string.
Habit winds me home.
It is good to rest
in the ring of myself.
There's genius in stillness.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
self-portrait
David Whyte
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many gods,
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned,
If you can know despair or see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you.
If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand.
I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
from The Tide
Denise Levertov
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
How confidently the desires
of God are spoken of!
Perhaps God wants
something quite different.
Or nothing, nothing at all.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
ALL
from Holy the Firm
Annie Dillard
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.
I wake in a god. I wake in arms holding my quilt, holding me as best they can inside my quilt.
I open my eyes. The god lifts from the water. His head fills the bay. He is Puget Sound, the Pacific, his breast rises from pastures, his fingers are firs, islands slide wet down his shoulders. Islands slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage.
Today’s god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading colors, he arches, cupping sky in his belly, he vaults, vaulting and spread, holding all and spread on me like skin.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
A Little Stone in the Middle of the Road, in Florida
Muriel Rukeyser
God
Is anything, even a little stone in the middle of the road, in
Florida.
Yesterday
Nancy, my friend, after long illness:
You know what can lift me up, take me right out of despair?
No, what?
Anything.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Dear God
Alicia Ostriker
It used to be
I would fall to the floor and press my forehead to it
in moments of despair
I would say help me
help me
but listen
I am ok
but I just now found myself pressing my forehead
to the carpet of my stairs
about the waters in the flooded cities
poisoned by oilspill, chemicals, the dead
about the survivors forever traumatized
dear god
I am alive I am alive
help them
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Insha’Allah
Danusha
Laméris
I don’t know when it slipped into my speech
that soft word meaning, “if God wills it.”
Insha’Allah I will see you next summer.
The baby will come in spring, insha’Allah.
Insha’Allah this year we will have enough rain.
So many plans I’ve laid have unraveled
easily as braids beneath my mother’s quick fingers.
Every language must have a word for this. A word
our grandmothers uttered under their breath
as they pinned the whites, soaked in lemon,
hung them to dry in the sun, or peeled potatoes,
dropping the discarded skins into a bowl.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Our sons will return next month, insha’Allah.
Insha’Allah this war will end, soon. Insha’Allah
the rice will be enough to last through winter.
How lightly we learn to hold hope,
as if it were an animal that could turn around
and bite your hand. And still we carry it
the way a mother would, carefully,
from one day to the next.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
God’s Grief
Ellen Bass
Great parent
who must have started out
with such high hopes.
What magnitude of suffering,
the immensity of guilt,
the staggering despair.
A mind the size of the sun,
burning with longing,
a heart huge as a gray whale
breaching, streaming
seawater against the pale sky.
Man god or beast god,
god that breathes in every pleated leaf,
god of plutonium and penicillin, drunk
sleeping on the subway grate,
god of Joan of Arc, god of Crazy Horse,
Lady Day, bringing us to our knees,
god of Houdini with hands
like a river, of Einstein, regret
running thick in his veins,
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
God’s Grief
Ellen Bass
god of Stalin, god of Somoza,
god of the long march,
the Trail of Tears,
the trains,
god of Allende and god of Tookie,
the strawberry picker, fire in his back,
god of midnight, god of winter,
god of rouged children sold
with a week’s lodging
and airfare to Thailand,
god in trouble, god at the end of his rope-
sleepless, helpless-
desperate god, frantic god, whale heart
lost in the shallows, beached
on the sand, parched, blistered, crushed
by gravity’s massive weight.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
desperate god, frantic god, whale heart
lost in the shallows, beached
on the sand, parched, blistered, crushed
by gravity’s massive weight.
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
call & Response
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
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
ALL
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
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
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
And you must love The One, your God, with your whole heart, with every breath, with all you have. Take these words that I command you now to heart. Teach them intently to your children. Speak them when you sit inside your house or walk upon the road, when you lie down and when you rise. And bind them as a sign upon your hand, and keep them visible before your eyes. Inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
ALL
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
When men were children, they thought of God as a
Father;
When men were slaves, they thought of God as a
Master;
When men were subjects, they thought of God as a
King.
But I am a woman, not a slave, not a subject,
not a child who longs for God as father or mother.
I might imagine God as teacher or friend, but those
Images,
like king, master, father or mother, are too small for
me now.
God is the force of motion and light in the universe;
God is the strength of life on our planet;
God is the power moving us to do good;
God is the source of love springing up in us.
God is far beyond what we can comprehend.
A Woman’s Meditation
Ruth F. Brin
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
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.
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.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
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.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
How to Pray While the World Burns
Hila Ratzabi
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.
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.
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.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
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
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Alternate images of the Divine in Jewish Text
Such richness has been with us all along
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
While post-exilic Judaism claims to have always been monotheistic
Other stories live on in our symbols, traditions, languages, & prayers
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Inside our Creation story
Tehom, Tohu, Tahamat, Tiamat - The original Serpent Goddess, the primordial ocean, all that was before anything came to be, is preserved in Genesis – tohu v’vohu – and encoded in the blessing of creation. Our liturgy connects us to a concept thousands of years old, and to a world of many different gods interacting.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Exodus 25: 31-39
You shall make a lampstand of pure gold; the lampstand shall be made of hammered work; its base and its shaft, its cups, calyxes, and petals shall be of one piece.
Six branches shall issue from its sides; three branches from one side of the lampstand and three branches from the other side of the lampstand.
On one branch there shall be three cups shaped like almond-blossoms, each with calyx and petals, and on the next branch there shall be three cups shaped like almond-blossoms, each with calyx and petals; so for all six branches issuing from the lampstand.
And on the lampstand itself there shall be four cups shaped like almond blossoms, each with calyx and petals: a calyx, of one piece with it, under a pair of branches; and a calyx, of one piece with it, under the second pair of branches, and a calyx, of one piece with it, under the last pair of branches; so for all six branches issuing from the lampstand.
How well do you know the menorah?
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
How well do you know the menorah?
vs
2nd temple menorah
Illustration of an Asherah from the side of large storage jar also showing illustration of “Yaweh and His Asherah”
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
How well do you know the menorah?
Temple Menorah
by Mariano Shulman, 2001, Argentina
Hanukkah Lamp, Eastern Galicia or western Ukraine, 1752 or 1753.
Fray Juan Ricci, sketch of Menorah as described in Exodus ~1640
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
How well do you know the menorah?
Ur
Early Dynastic IIIA period (2600-2500 BCE), a high point in the history of Sumerian culture.
Ask me about: Inanna and Her Wonderous Vulva
Back-Talking Women
The exiles who returned to rebuild the Temple invented a monotheistic, priest-caste based religion that was in conflict with living traditions
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Back-Talking Women
Jeremiah 44: 17-19
“On the contrary,” the women said, we will do everything that we have vowed —to make offerings to the Queen of Heaven and to pour libations to her, as we used to do, we and our ancestors, our kings and our officials, in the towns of Judah and the streets of
Jerusalem. For then we had plenty to eat, we were well-off, and suffered no misfortune. But ever since we stopped making offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pouring libations to her, we have lacked everything, and we have been consumed by the sword and by famine. And when we make offerings to the Queen of Heaven and pour libations to her, is it without our husbands’ approval that we have made cakes in her likeness and poured libations to her?”
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
God is All
Justin Lewis
all images are from mystical Jewish literature
God is all. God is an apple orchard. God is a beggar. God is the beginning. God is a breastfeeding mother. God is breath. God is concealed and totally unknown. God is clouds. God is crowns. God is the days of Creation. God is death. God is desire. God is an eagle. God is the earth. God is eyes. God is faces. God is fear. God is purple silk. God is fire. God is a flowing gushing stream. God is the Garden of Eden. God is gateways. God is a gazelle. God is holiday guests. God is the Holidays. God is Jerusalem. God is a lion. God is love. God is a matzah. God is a menorah. God is mirrors. God is the moon. God is a mountain of darkness. God is night. God is North, East, South, West. God is nothing. God is a nursing child. God is olive oil. God is the oldest of the old. God is a palace. God is peace. God is prayer. God is a rainbow. God is rivers of balsam. God is a rose. God is shadow. God is a shofar. God is a silkworm. God is silk. God is silver. God is skies. God is a snake. God is song. God is the soul of the soul. God is sparks. God is the sun. God is a tent. God is time. God is the Torah. God is the Tree of Life. God is voices. God is wine. God is wind. God is words.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Blessing in a Time of
Violence
Jan
Richardson
Which is to say this blessing is always.
Which is to say there is no place this blessing does not long to cry out in lament, to weep its words in sorrow, to scream its lines in sacred rage.
Which is to say there is no day this blessing ceases to whisper into the ear of the dying, the despairing, the terrified.
Which is to say there is no moment this blessing refuses to sing itself into the heart of the hated and the hateful, the victim and the victimizer, with every last ounce of hope it has.
Which is to say there is none that can stop it, none that can halt its course, none that will still its cadence, none that will delay its rising, none that can keep it from springing forth from the mouths of us who hope, from the hands of us who act, from the hearts of us who love, from the feet of us who will not cease our stubborn, aching marching, marching,
until this blessing has spoken its final word, until this blessing has breathed its benediction in every place, in every tongue:
Peace.
Peace.
Peace.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Blessing for the Brokenhearted / Jan Richardson
Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.
Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—
as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,
as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,
as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.
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.
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.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 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
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
Adon Olam / She Carries Me by Jennifer Berezan
She is a boat, she is a light
High on a hill in dark of night.
She is a wave, she is the deep.
She is the dark where angels sleep.
When all is still and peace abides
She carries me to the other side.
She carries me, she carries me,
She carries me to the other side.
And though I walk through valleys deep,
And shadows chase me in my sleep,
On rocky cliffs I stand alone;
I have no name, I have no home.
With broken wings I reach to fly;
She carries me to the other side.
She carries me, she carries me,
She carries me to the other side.
A thousand arms, a thousand eyes,
A thousand ears to hear my cries.
She is the gate, she is the door;
She leads me through and back once more.
When day has dawned and death is nigh,
She carries me to the other side.
She carries me, she carries me,
She carries me to the other side.
She is the first, she is the last,
She is the future and the past.
Mother of all, of earth and sky,
She carries me to the other side.
She carries me, she carries me
She carries me to the other side.
She carries me, she carries me,
She carries me to the other side.
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024
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Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah
3 Sh’vat 5784 /13 January 2024