After our many months of reading texts about the intersections of race, racism, white supremacy, and anti-Semitism, we're turning back to Torah to examine rabbinical ideas about what behaviors constitute "holiness." The parsha is Kedoshim, and we're using a Sefaria text sheet for the first time to pull together a thousand or so years of … Continue reading Fringes Text Study 05/11/2019 – Kedoshim
Category: Uncategorized
November Fringes 11/10/2018
Saturday 11/10/2018 10 a.m. Germantown Friends Social Hall 21 W. Coulter Street Philadelphia, PA 19144 A quick update about tomorrow's service. Otter and I have just talked through what we'll do be doing, and are extending a strong request for your presence as we seek comfort in our community of shared values and radical hopes. … Continue reading November Fringes 11/10/2018
Beside Still Waters: a journey of comfort and renewal
Fringe-Dwellers, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat and Bayit: Your Jewish Home are publishing a new anthology of traditional and new Jewish liturgy about grief and mourning. Beside Still Waters: a journey of comfort and renewal is a book for mourners, for those who will become mourners, and for those anticipating their own journey out of this life. … Continue reading Beside Still Waters: a journey of comfort and renewal
Fringes Fall Text Study – Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
For the next four months the texts for our Torah Study in Fringes' services will all come from the final chapter of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz's The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism. You can download all of these texts and read along with us: October 13, 2018: an introduction to the concept of Diasporism … Continue reading Fringes Fall Text Study – Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
5779 Martyrology: Honoring the Life and Legacy of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
In our Fringes Havurah/Tikkun Olam Chavurah High Holiday services in Philadelphia, our martyrology service this year was focused on the life, activism, and legacy of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. Fringes leader Elliott batTzedek opened the service by giving a talk about moments of Melanie's writing and activism that have meant the most to her. We had placed … Continue reading 5779 Martyrology: Honoring the Life and Legacy of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz
High Holidays 5779/2018
This year, for the 6th time, Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah and Tikkun Olam Chavurah are co-creating High Holiday services, led by Rabbi Linda Holtzman, Elliott batTzedek and Karen Escovitz. Our services are a combination of traditional and original liturgy, along with a rich musical experience, and social justice-centered talks and Torah study. We create … Continue reading High Holidays 5779/2018
Praying with Fringes July 2018
Fringes met on Saturday, July 14th in the social hall at Germantown Friends Meeting House. In response to the ugliness of the political world around us, we prayed, sang, and learned together about the history of ICE and strategies communities are using to confront it. You find our liturgy here: July 2018: and declare to … Continue reading Praying with Fringes July 2018
Prayer is meaningless unless
Prayer is meaningless unless it is subversive, unless it seeks to overthrow and to ruin the pyramids of callousness, hatred, opportunism, falsehoods. The liturgical movement must become a revolutionary movement, seeking to overthrow the forces that continue to destroy the promise, the hope, the vision. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, 1970
December 2017: Jerusalem, a shared service with Tikkun Olam Chavurah
On Saturday December 9th we gathered to pray for Jerusalem, for all of her peoples and in all of her contradictions. Read our liturgy.
Our December 2017 Service
Our Saturday, December 9th service will be shared with Tikkun Olam Chavurah, and we'll be meeting at Rabbi Linda Holtzman's house, 635 Westview in Mt. Airy. While we had planned on having a service about dreams, this week's news has made another topic much more urgent - Jerusalem. Ancient, complex, storied, layered, and a powder … Continue reading Our December 2017 Service
