We met for our annual service to honor the dark. As always, our liturgy explored the richness and necessity of the dark in all natural cycles, and to honor this time of when we go can inward, rest, and prepare for new growth. As Jewish liturgy doesn't encode this understanding, we draw even more heavily … Continue reading Fringes December 2025: without darkness nothing comes to birth

We met for our November tradition, a service about time, growing from Heschel's writing about how shabbat is a cathedral in time. This year we focused more about living in this time - in this moment of so much fear and grief and uncertainty, with the need to avoid surrendering to despair. You can download … Continue reading November 2025: you must go away from the screech of dissonant days

We met for our annual water/rain service, using the history of Shemini Atzeret to reflect on our connections to the natural cycles that sustain all life. Far more so that most of our services, this one is based in Jewish textual history - Rashi on Genesis 2, Af-Bri the angel of rain, Honi the Circle … Continue reading Fringes October 2025: Shemini Atzeret is a Prayer for Rain

Elliott batTzedek's talk for kol nidre 5786 @Tikkun Olam Chavurah This is Yavneh, not Tzion Over the past two years, as part of an on-again, off-again book project, I’ve been writing a long essay about everything I’ve learned over the past 20 plus years of inventing a non-zionist Jewish spiritual practice, and tonight I want … Continue reading This is Yavneh, not Tzion

We met for our annual High Holidays service on Shabbat Shuvah in a time of great peril in the U.S. and genocide and expulsion in Gaza and the West Bank. Our liturgy embedded us in the High Holidays and in the uncertainty, fear, and grief of this moment, including the gun violence that is now … Continue reading Fringes September 2025: Shabbat Shuvah

We met on the shabbat morning when a second US city has been placed under threat by federal forces, people continued to be disappeared, and the world still seems unable or unwilling to stop a live-streamed genocide. And, as always, we met for the solace of companions, a community that helps us strengthen our hearts … Continue reading Fringes August 2025: my own bursting heart

We met in July, when each morning's news carries some new outrage or terror. Our service celebrated the wonder of berries, as is our July tradition, and also the power and urgent necessity of interdependence. As always, we took comfort in our familiar liturgies, such as our Blessing for Pursuing Justice, and in song, and … Continue reading Fringes July 2025: Cruelty Does Not Speak for Me

We met for a kabbalat shabbat service so we could all go pray with our feet on Shabbat afternoon. Our liturgy reflected the precarious moment we are in, the connections we have, and the power of how shabbat comes, every Friday at sunset, no matter what is happening in the world. Download our liturgy here. … Continue reading Fringes June 2025: Erev Protest

We met as the world around us gets more fragile, more endangered, more overwhelming. Insisting on our right to celebrate the joy of the beauty of spring, we all carried with us our worry, our fear, and our fury. Our theme was "spring," and our liturgy was full of images of flowers, leaves, and the … Continue reading Fringes May 2025: we feast on the abundance of the trees