ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

​

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Tell the bees. They require news of the house;

they must know, lest they sicken

from the gap between their ignorance and our grief.

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

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,

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

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Here is an amazement—once I was twenty years old and in

every motion of my body there was a delicious ease,

and in every motion of the green earth there was

a hint of paradise,

and now I am sixty years old, and it is the same.

​

Above the modest house and the palace—the same darkness.

Above the evil man and the just, the same stars.

Above the child who will recover and the child who will

not recover, the same energies roll forward,

from one tragedy to the next and from one foolishness to the next.

​

I bow down.

From Am I Not Among the Early Risers?

​

​

Mary Oliver

​

​

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

​

Breathe

Batya Levine

​

Breathe breathe breathe in �Breathe breathe out

​

Let it go, let it go, let it go

​

Trust in what's coming�Trust in your knowing�It's deeper and wider and holy

​

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Usually, it’s the males. Maybe �they’ve gone out with buddies �in their leks, keeping their radar �tuned for female bees as they move �from sweet pea to mallow flower and �snapdragon, gathering pollen�in those hairy saddlebags called�corbiculae. Maybe they have �no place to return or are lost,�having gone too far from the nest.�Maybe the empty football fields�and elementary school playgrounds,�long unmowed since our common�isolation and teeming now �with yellow dandelions, proved�too much. Sweet alyssum, �phlox; wisteria cascading heavy �out of themselves. Honeysuckle

and evening-scented stock,�dianthus crowned with hint�of cinnamon and smoky clove.  �

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Ode to Tired Bumblebees Who Fall Asleep Inside Flowers with Pollen on their Butts

​

Luisa A. Igloria

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Female bees will also burrow�deep inside the shade of a squash�flower: the closer to the source�of nectar, the warmer and more�quilt-like the air. In the cool �hours of morning, look closely �for the slight but tell-tale�trembling in each flower cup:�there, a body dropped mid-flight,�mid-thought. How we all retreat�behind some folded screen as work�or the world presses in too�soon, too close, too much. 

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

How Would You Live Then?

​

Mary Oliver

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

What if a hundred rose-breasted grosbeaks

flew in circles around your head? What if

the mockingbird came into the house with you and

became your advisor? What if

the bees filled your walls with honey and all

you needed to do was ask them and they would fill

the bowl? What if the brook slid downhill just

past your bedroom window so you could listen

to its slow prayers as you fell asleep? What if

the stars began to shout their names, or to run

this way and that way above the clouds? What if

you painted a picture of a tree, and the leaves

began to rustle, and a bird cheerful sang

from its painted branches? What if you suddenly saw

that the silver of water was brighter than the silver

of money? What if you finally saw

that the sunflowers, turning toward the sun all day

and every day—who knows how, but they do it—were

more precious, more meaningful than gold?

High dangerous

is what my sons call the flowers—

purple, white, electric blue—

​

pom-pomming bushes all along

the beach town streets.

​

I can’t correct them into

hydrangeas, or I won’t.

​

Bees ricochet in and out

of the clustered petals,

​

and my sons panic and dash

and I tell them about good

​

insects, pollination, but the truth is

I want their fear-box full of bees.

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

High Dangerous

​

Catherine Pierce

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

This morning the radio

said tender age shelters.

​

This morning the glaciers

are retreating. How long now

​

until the space-print backpack

becomes district-policy clear?

​

We’re almost to the beach,

and High dangerous! my sons

​

yell again, their joy in having

spotted something beautiful,

​

and called it what it is.

from Last night while I was sleeping

Antonio Machado

​

​

Last night while I was sleeping

I dreamed—a blessed illusion!—

of a beehive working

deep down in my heart,

and from my old bitterness

the golden bees

were straining sweet honey

and white honeycomb.

ALL

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Tell the bees. They require news of the house;

they must know, lest they sicken

from the gap between their ignorance and our grief.

Speak in a whisper. Tie a black swatch

to a stick and attach the stick to their hive.

From the fortress of casseroles and desserts

built in the kitchen these past few weeks

as though hunger were the enemy, remove

a slice of cake and lay it where they can

slowly draw it in, making a mournful sound.

Tell the Bees

Sarah Lindsay

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

And tell the fly that has knocked on the window all day.

ALL

And tell the fly that has knocked on the window all day.

Tell the redbird that rammed the glass from outside

and stands too dazed to go. Tell the grass,

though it's already guessed, and the ground clenched in furrows;

tell the water you spill on the ground,

then all the water will know.

And the last shrunken pearl of snow in its hiding place.

Tell the Bees

Sarah Lindsay

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Tell the blighted elms, and the young oaks we plant instead.

ALL

Tell the blighted elms, and the young oaks we plant instead.

The water bug, while it scribbles

a hundred lines that dissolve behind it.

The lichen, while it etches deeper

its single rune. The boulders, letting their fissures widen,

the pebbles, which have no more to lose,

the hills—they will be slightly smaller, as always,

​

when the bees fly out tomorrow to look for sweetness

and find their way

because nothing else has changed.

Tell the Bees

Sarah Lindsay

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

May the bees fly out tomorrow

And find their way

Because nothing has changed

ALL

Tell the bees our losses, our grievings, our news

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Art by EffyWild

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

This I declare, the earth is not ours

This I declare, we belong to the earth

​

This I declare, we cannot live if the rains don’t fall

This I declare, we cannot live if the rivers don’t flow

​

This I declare, what we’ve planted we will reap

This I declare, what we’ve poisoned we will reap

​

This I declare, we must choose either life or death

This I declare, our harvest is upon us

​

This I declare, every act is a choice we make

This I declare, every breath is a prayer that it’s not too late

​

This I declare, the earth is not ours

This I declare, we belong to the earth

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

This I Declare

​

Elliott batTzedek

call & Response

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Today I’m sticking a shovel in the ground

and digging up the little green patch

between the hosta and the fringe bleeding heart.

I am going to plant bee balm there

and a few little pansies till the roots take

and the leaves spread out in both directions.

​

This is so the hummingbird will rage

outside my fireplace window; this is so

I can watch him standing in the sun

and hold him a little above my straining back,

so I can reach my own face up to his

and let him drink the sugar from my lips.

​

This is so I can lie down on the couch

beside the sea horse and the glass elephant,

so I can touch the cold wall above me

and let the yellow light go through me,

so I can last the rest of the summer on thought,

so I can live by secrecy and sorrow.

Bee Balm

​

Gerald Stern

2 Tamuz 5781/ 12 June 2021

​

ALL

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee

Emily Dickinson

​

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.

On a June morning,

any June morning

On Any June Morning I Would Head for Your Scent

​

Elliott batTzedek

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

Leafcutter bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

On a June morning,

any June morning,

moving about in my garden

in a breezy time of day,

I keep watch for You,

I follow silver slug lines,

sniffing for Your trail,

I call out “Where are You?”

And a bee

staggers out

of the peony.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Bombus pensylvanicus

There is a dark hum among the roses,

a murmuring of innumerable bees,

and to the murmur of bees—

a witchcraft—

I yield

to my desire for You.

Mason bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

On a June morning,

any June morning

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

If I were a bee and You

a flower,

I would head for Your scent,

oh my beloved,

I would land on Your petals

held wide apart,

flinging myself wildly

onto the wetness

that sends me tumbling

to the bottom of Your cup.

There such sustenance,

You feeding me, because only I

can ripen all this fertile exuberance,

food for those not yet born.

Squash bee

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

And would You let me go, coated with Your heaviness?

Or would You close Your petals,

keep me fast,

dissolving me slowly

into Your heart?

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

On a June morning,

any June morning

ALL

Sweat bee

Brown-belted bumble bee

And if You were the bee,

would You come to me,

fill Your small body

from this place, my source,

and moan in happiness?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Eastern carpenter bee

We are alike, You and I,

each created as the image of the other.

We fly from blossom to sweet

impossible blossom,

bartering pollen for nectar,

so we can make honey from the roses

honey from the rosemary, honey from the clover

honey from the peach blossoms

honey from the red and willing bee balm.

Sculptured Resin Bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

But what honey would You make

from me?

Orange-legged furrow bee

​

What honey could I make of You?

​

Confusing burrow bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Can we make honey from our failures?

Honey from our bitterness,

honey from our loneliness,

honey from the bare fields

of our hearts?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

Cuckoo bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Can I make wild honey

from what I have feared

to touch?

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Bombus impatiens

Can You make thick honey,

amber and shining,

from this good life?

Modest masked bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

And who will eat this honey of yearning

and of the harvest

of ten thousand small flights?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

Spring beauty miner

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

And who will eat this honey of yearning

and of the harvest

of ten thousand small flights?

​

How this question gathers, rises,

swarms around me

with a hum both threat and lullaby,

and then departs,

unanswerable.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

And who will eat this honey of yearning

and of the harvest

of ten thousand small flights?

ALL

Every June morning

I pause to listen

for what I live to hear.

I watch the bees go honey-hunting

with yellow blur of wings,

and, delirious with desire

dance directions to my heart.

Perplexing bumblebee

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Pure green sweat bee

I know that You will come;

it is Your duty

to find things to love

to bind Yourself to this world.

Eastern carpenter bee

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

I know that You will come;

it is Your duty

to find things to love

to bind Yourself to this world.

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

call & Response

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

call & Response

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 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?

We are given the wind within us, the breath

to shape into words that steal time, that touch

like hands and pierce like bullets, that waken

truth and deceit, sorrow and pity and joy,

that waste precious air in complaints, in lies,

in floating traps for power on the dirty air

Yet holy breath still stretches our lungs to sing.

from Nishmat

Marge Piercy

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

We waste precious air in complaints, in lies,

in floating traps for power on the dirty air

Yet holy breath still stretches our lungs to sing.

ALL

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

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

call & Response

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 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

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Most likely, you think we hated the elephant,

the golden toad, the thylacine and all variations

of whale harpooned or hacked into extinction.

​

It must seem like we sought to leave you nothing

but benzene, mercury, the stomachs

of seagulls rippled with jet fuel and plastic.

​

You probably doubt that we were capable of joy,

but I assure you we were.

​

We still had the night sky back then,

and like our ancestors, we admired

its illuminated doodles

of scorpion outlines and upside-down ladles.

Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now

Matthew Olzmann

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Absolutely, there were some forests left!

Absolutely, we still had some lakes!

​

I’m saying, it wasn’t all lead paint and sulfur dioxide.

There were bees back then, and they pollinated

a euphoria of flowers so we might

contemplate the great mysteries and finally ask,

“Hey guys, what’s transcendence?”

​

And then all the bees were dead.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

It's all I have to bring today—

This, and my heart beside—

This, and my heart, and all the fields—

And all the meadows wide—

Be sure you count— should I forget

Some one the sum could tell—

This, and my heart, and all the Bees

Which in the Clover dwell.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

ALL

It's all I have to bring today

​

​

Emily Dickinson

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

At Any Moment, There Could Be a Swerve in a Different Direction

​

​

Ellery Akers

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

There was a moment

when shooting egrets for feathers became wrong.

There was a moment

when the Wilderness Act

changed the lives of billions of blades of grass.

I remember the moment when a river that used to catch fire

turned from flammable to swimmable.

A swerve smells astringent, like the wind off the sea;

it tastes red, the way Red Hot cinnamon mints

burn in your mouth;

it’s heavy, the way the weight of letters is heavy,

arriving in sacks at the Senate;

it sounds like the click of needles

as hundreds of thousands of women knit pink hats;

it looks like a coyote, crossing the freeway to go home.

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Amidah / Seven Breath Meditation

Rabbi Jill Hammer/ Kohenet

​

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

1. The UN did alter how it is reporting fatalities. They did NOT change the overall number of the dead – 35,000 at that point – but did decrease the number of those who are women and children, and increase the proportion of men among those killed.

​

2. As part of this, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) had been reporting fatality numbers from the Hamas-run Gaza Media Office. Now it is only reporting deaths when the body has been identified with a full name and identification by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. 

​

3. But of course those numbers are increasingly impossible to obtain and verify, as Gaza’s hospitals are destroyed and its doctors and public health officials killed or kidnapped.

​

In May there was a lot of excitement as the UN announced it was altering how it reported the dead in Gaza, and Israel began proclaiming “See, the numbers are made up, the media loves Hamas, and oh we’ve killed 14,000 Hamas fighters.

But what was really said?

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

4. The new estimates are that the number of confirmed fatalities is 24,686 identified dead people in Gaza as of April — 10,006 men, 7,797 children, 4,959 women, and 1,924 elderly people, according to the Ministry of Health. Then “[t]here’s about another 10,000-plus bodies who still have to be fully identified, and so then the details of those — which of those are children, which of those are women — that will be reestablished once the full identification process is complete,” which would bring the total numbers of deaths so far to approximately the 35,000 figure that has been widely reported. 

​

5. Everyone acknowledges that this death toll is likely an undercount: By some estimates, there are an additional 10,000 people who may have died but were not taken to a morgue or hospital, or are still trapped under the rubble in Gaza, where, according to the World Bank, about 60 percent of residential buildings have been destroyed.

​

6. It is always hard to be precise and to provide real-time data in a war zone.  But before the war, Gaza had a robust data collection system. “I think what’s rare, and this is what allowed us to do some of our projection reports early on, is that this was a middle-income territory, so they had really, really good data and data collection systems,” Paul Spiegel, director of the Center for Humanitarian Health at Johns Hopkins University, told Vox in an interview.  In the earlier part of the conflict, death toll data from all of Gaza’s hospitals and the Palestinian Red Crescent flowed to a central database in al-Shifa hospital, the Associated Press reported in November. Shortly after that story ran, Israeli forces began a multi-day siege and raid on the hospital on the grounds that Hamas used the facility as a logistical hub, bombing and utterly destroying the hospital and any records it held.

​

7. What is the ID that is used to officially record Gazans killed in this horror? It is an Israeli- issued ID. Not a Hamas ID. Not a PA ID. Because the Israeli government and military still controls every aspect of Palestinian public, private, and civil life. Israel will not accept as dead any name without its Israeli ID number.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Why the Emphasis and Struggle Around the Number of “Women and Children”?

​

1. The Gaza Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in Gaza, does not distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths, so all Western groups that use their numbers also can’t distinguish between “civilian” and “combatant” deaths. Therefore, the proportion of women and children killed is seen as the best available proxy for the civilian death toll.

​

• Yes, that does mean that all the reported numbers count the same way God and Moses count in Bamidbar – every man above a certain age is assumed to be a fighter.

​

• This assumption is behind Israel’s assertion that they have killed 14,000 Hamas militants, although they have never offered any actual evidence of this.

​

• This assumption is also used as “evidence of guilt” for the thousands of Gazan men and boys who have been violently kidnapped and hauled into military sites in Israel, where they are held under torturous conditions – stripped, blindfolded, handcuffed, left in cages out in the weather with food and water withheld for days at a time. Both the few men from Gaza who have managed to be released and IDF soldiers breaking silence to report what they’ve seen verify these conditions.

​

• The reports in the media and in the memes and activism notices from the U.S. Left that always and only emphasize “women and children” contribute to the false narrative that all adult men in Gaza are Hamas fighters. This is a dangerous assumption that threatens the lives of men and boys, feeds Israeli lies about Gazans being the same as Hamas, AND feeds western bigotry about Arab and Muslim men. It is long past time to confront this lie.

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Freedom is Coming

​

lyrics & music by Kathleen Hannan

text drawn from interviews with Black South Africans

in line to vote for the first time in 1994

That this should finally happen in my lifetime

I am filled with joy like a dreaming child

We only know what has gone before

who can say what is coming now

​

But this has finally happened in our lifetime

We are filled with joy like the mountainside

and so we stand in lines, thousands at a time,

to be counted

​

Count my heart which is beating

Count my eyes which are open

Count my children, my sisters, my brothers

whose hearts were once beating

their voices once sang with us

their spirits will always sing

Their spirits will always sing:

Freedom is coming

Freedom is coming

Freedom is coming

We’ve paid with our lives

because no one gives freedom away

​

Freedom is coming

Freedom is coming

Freedom is coming

We’re coming to take it

cause no one gives freedom away

​

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Blessing After Torah Reading

Dorshei Derekh Women's Haftorah Group

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah

Someone Forgot to Whisper Your Death to the Bee

​

Ansel Elkins

Someone forgot to whisper your death to the bees �And so all the bees have left �And the fruit trees have died.

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024

ALL

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

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 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

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 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.

2 Sivan 5784 / 8 June 2024