We met in August for a kabbalat shabbat service. After several months of intense services created to pull us into connection with our difficult, tonight we set that world aside for a short time and let ourselves be comforted by words and music and community.

You can find our liturgy as Google slides or as a downloadable PDF. We opened and closed with a new song by Dane Kuttler, drawn from her forthcoming collection “Rest.” Pre-order it here and you’ll get a link to the song when the book is published!

We also used two songs from Minneapolis singer/songwriter Susan Rothbaum, whose cassette tape of mainly original songs I purchased in a Jewish bookstore in St. Louis Park sometime back in the 90s. I can’t find her work anywhere online, so have uploaded the ones Fringes uses to SoundCloud:

Ani Nacha (I am resting on the breasts of the Holy One)

Machor Hachalomot (Source of dreams, speak to me)

Before kaddish, we acknowledged the people, especially the children, killed in Gaza in the newest round Jewish Israeli bombings, and the death of butch Jewish lesbian feminist author Elana Dykewoman.