We met again for Shabbat Shuvah, the time that stands in balance between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur. Our extended morning service included a selichot section focused on our relationship to Palestinians and the genocide in Gaza, as that is our urgent moral issue.
Our liturgy was built around the deeply human questions posed by Hillel, with words about guarding and valuing our own lives, words about the necessity of our connection to community in order to be sane and whole, and the challenge of where we are now and where we’ll go next
We premiered a new song, too, composed last week by Karen Escovitz/Otter, setting the “im ein ani li” text along with the extra questions Fringes has added over the years: Adrienne Rich’s “If not with each other, then how” and Dane Kuttler’s, “If not here, then where.” We’ll try to get a recording up soon.
For Torah Study, we read a very few examples from the extensive testimony on genocidal intention gathered by Al Haq. Find their full list here – warning, it is just as brutal, or more, than you expect. In between these testimonies, we read lines from Rabbi David Seidenberg’ Eikh esh’al – How can I ask forgiveness?” A piyyut in response to the Gaza war since October 7, for Selichot and Yom Kippur. Find the full text of that work here.
After we read these aloud, we were asked the question, “How are you doing right now, as a Jew? How is Judaism sitting with you.” The answers went deep, including moments of hope and joy as the grip of AIPAC is slipping and this week we saw thousands rise up in support of the right to call for freedom for Palestinians. Then Elliott shared one thing she has been learning this year – how Jewish communities have always lived dispersed because we wanted to be. While there has a forced diaspora, especially after the Bar Kochba rebellion, at the time of the Second Temple more Jews lived in communities around the Mediterranean than in Israel, with centers of learning and even other temples in other cities. One way Zionist mythology has shaped a century of Jewish education and prayer is to ignore those parts of Jewish history and focus only on The Diaspora and the “need” to return to “The Land.” It is our collective project to identify and unlearn these distortions. For an amazing visualization of Jewish communities around the world visit The Jewish Diaspora.
For our Ashamnu, we read a combined piece, Hiba Abu Nada’s poem “I Grant You Refuge,” written in October, 2023 just days before she was murdered by an Israeli bomb. The slides for this are below.
