We met for our shabbat morning service on Saturday, 09/10. Our theme was seasonal – this moment of great turning of the seasons and of the Jewish year.

You can read our liturgy here.

Our torah talk topic was the wave of book banning across the nation – we learned about the “Moms for Liberty” group, whose ultimate aim is to end public education all together, about Banned Books Week, and about current books contested as too dangerous – queer books and books about Black Lives and system racism.

Breathe

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

Retiring a ritual

This month we did the “Prayer for an Accounting” ritual for the last time. It has served use well for two years, putting the ever-growing number of COVID dead into the prayer for healing during torah study. Saying the numbers aloud together ensured we were attending, helping us making the sheer scope of the losses real. As the numbers are no longer going up rapidly in this phase of the pandemic, we’re choosing to end this practice as 5782 winds down.