We met in August for a kabbalat shabbat service. After several months of intense services created to pull us into connection with our difficult, tonight we set that world aside for a short time and let ourselves be comforted by words and music and community. You can find our liturgy as Google slides or as … Continue reading Fringes August 2022: Stars rise. Moths flutter. Apples sweeten in the dark.

Today we met to pray together carrying our wounded hearts - all of us filled with worry about our lives in this country, the effects of Supreme Court rulings on our lives and on the world, the overwhelm and exhaustion of yet more and more gun violence in another bloody week. Our prayer services always … Continue reading Fringes July 2022 – My heart is moved by all I can not save

We met to do our traditional June service - built around images of bees and honey - and also to acknowledge the grief we all carry, surrounded as we are by violence and loss. You can find today's liturgy here: Fringes June 2022. We use the folk tradition of "telling the bees" in order to … Continue reading Fringes June 2022: Grief is sacred, grief is an honor

We met one week after the announcement that Roe would be overturned, and in a way that attacks the bodily autonomy and right-to-love-who-we-love of everyone in our community. And the week that Covid deaths have reached the awful milestone of 1,000,000 in the U.S. In our service we prayed words of grief and worry and … Continue reading Fringes May 2022: make safe her choice

Pesach 2022 Additions to Honor UkraineElliott batTzedek / Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah The Sunflower Seed on the Seder Plate Reader: On our seder plate tonight is a new symbol, a sunflower seed. Why a sunflower seed? Reader: Because, on February 22nd, the 2nd day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a woman confronted the … Continue reading Pesach 5782/2022 Haggadah Additions for Ukraine

Our April, 2022 service pulled liturgy and emotions from both Passover and the slowly budding spring. Using words from many of our favorite liturgists - Dane Kuttler, Alicia Ostriker, Marge Piercy, Denise Levertov, and translator Marcia Falk - we moved from the Song of Songs to today's Ukraine, from the maggid to praising the yellows … Continue reading Fringes April 2022: redemption from every fragment

Fringes met via zoom for what is, for us, a regular March service, honoring the natural world’s awakening from winter here in the holy land where we dwell. We also marked the reality of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, honoring the shock we all feel and our fear for the people being attacked. Download our … Continue reading Fringes March 2022: we shake with joy/we shake with grief

Fringes: a feminist, non-zionist havurah turned 15 this month. How have 15 years gone past since we started this radical little idea in a freezing cold 2nd floor room in a house in the Germantown neighborhood of NW Philadelphia? We wanted a prayer life that respected our politics, our spirits and our minds, and together … Continue reading Fringes 15th Anniversary Service, February 2022

We did a modified service this month, shorter than our usual shabbat morning, built around the combined themes of winter, secular new year, and honoring trees in anticipation of Tu B'Shvat. We also marked a difficult milestone - the 11th month of saying kaddish for founding member Barbara Granger. Download a PDF of our January … Continue reading Fringes January 2022 – to come back to still water

Ever since Fringes was founded our December service has revolved around honoring the wisdom of the dark time of the year. Founded in part by witchy Jews, we know the dark is part of our natural cycle, not something to fear or dread, and we actively resist the western tradition that associates the dark with … Continue reading Fringes December 2021 – to know the dark, go dark