Our liturgy this month centered us in the space where we dwell - balanced between Jewish liturgical history and our lives today in our cities in North America. We moved between the moment when Jewish prayer switches to beseeching the rains to come and the arrival of autumn. You can download a PDF of our … Continue reading Fringes October 2021 – blue-gray sentinels, nearly motionless

In 2021/5782 most of our services will again be online. We'd hoped to have some events in person, but the rise of the COVID Delta variant has made that unsafe. Next year, in person! Our communities don't require tickets of any kind for our services - but we do need donations from those who can … Continue reading High Holidays 5782 with Fringes and Tikkun Olam Chavurah

As a non-zionist havurah, our community was founded on the idea that all people are chosen and all land is holy. We therefore celebrate the cycles of our own natural year even as we mark the ritual cycles of an ancient, nearly-imagined homeland contained within Jewish liturgy. In July we honor the berries coming ripe … Continue reading Fringes July 2021: to be holy something must exist in relationship

Our June service for many years now has centered around poems about bees and honey and sweetness. While last year our liturgy had very little sweetness, as we prayed our response to the growing COVID crisis and the murder of George Floyd and the response to that murder, this year we made space for the … Continue reading Fringes June 2021: Tell the Bees

Our May, 2021 service honored the Brood X periodical cicadas that are crawling to the surface in the millions all around Philadelphia. We offered praise to the wonders of the natural world, and grief for the human destruction of that world. The slide show for our liturgy this month is here. We listened to Aly … Continue reading Fringes May 2021: Even skin must crack open

With palpable relief that SOME accountability had happened, and mired in the grief that yet another Black teenager had been murdered by police, we gathered to mark the morning after the verdict of the Chauvin trial Download the slide pack for our morning liturgy here. Resources used in the service: Jericho Brown reading his poem … Continue reading After the Verdict, We Gathered

Again this year, for the 8th time, Fringes and Tikkun Olam Chavurah are creating engaged, political, and creative High Holiday services. Co-led by Rabbi Linda Holtzman and Fringes leaders/members Karen Escovitz, Elliott batTzedek, and Sue Hoffman, the services will this year be held on the Internets rather than in the lovely historic stone Mennonite church … Continue reading High Holidays 5781/2020 with Fringes and Tikkun Olam Chavurah

Prayer For a People Facing DangerElliott batTzedek, Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah download Holy Breath and Holy Name – Today we face a danger we cannot yet fully comprehend. We are frightened, we are confused, we are lost. We need the most basic information, yet we live in a time and in a country where … Continue reading Prayer for a People Facing Danger