Our January service called us into winter’s opportunity to be quiet, calm, and inward-focused. Our liturgy called us into connection with the earth and the natural world and, as always, held space for joy and for sorrow.
Find the liturgy slide deck here.
Our music, some sung live and some recorded, included:
Batya Levine’s “We are good, we are flawed“
Linda Hirschhorn and Vocolot’s “Wings Span“
Craig Taubman’s “Adonai S’fatai“
We again did a new setting of Eitz Chayim that Otter has created from a Balkan folk song melody. We don’t have a recording of that yet, but bringing in the long beat/short beat pattern holds the words in a fresh way.
For torah study, Elliott taught about the history of the Women’s Peace Camp movement, focused on Greenham Common and The Women’s Encampment for a Future of Peace and Freedom at Seneca Army Depot. We learned about the variety of activists who came there and learned from one another, what they did to both protest the military and build communities of alternate values, and what their legacy has been. Fringes’ cofounders Elliott and Otter were involved in the Women’s Peace Camp for many years, and our havurah’s founding values, including non-violence, anti-militarism, and anti-nationalism, come from that experience.
To watch the photographer JEB’s slide show presentation on the first summer at the Seneca Encampment, click here to visit her archives at Smith
Fringes member Sue Hoffman talked about her work with a new organization called Third Act, which calls people 60 and over to take action around climate change and other issues. The national group is up and running, and state groups are coming soon. Visit their website to find out more.
Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah 