Download “Garlic on the Seder Plate” from Dori Midnight and Sol Weiss to bring the sweet stink of garlic to your seder table. The supplement includes garlic art and teachings, and a ritual to include garlic in your seder as a symbol of ancestral healing and dedication to collective liberation. EXCERPT: “Jews have identified ourselves […]
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miriam and the tachash
This week in the Torah, we read Parshat Terumah, in which we receive specific instructions for constructing the Mishkan, a portable dwelling place or sanctuary for the Holy One. This parsha particularly delights me because I love home decorating and fancy architectural details (I’m a Libra rising). Sometimes I imagine it is like Project Runway […]
QUEER MORNING BLESSINGS / birkot hashachar
written by Dori Midnight & Randy Furash- Stewart with Una Aya Osato, Tourmaline, Shoshana Akua Brown, Binya Koatz, Hadar Cohen, Jhos Singer, Satya Zamudio, adrienne maree brown, Morgan Bassichis, Koach Baruch Frazier, Michi Ilona Osato, Dori Midnight, Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, Nomy Lamm, Chani Nicholas Editing by Aleksei WagnerMusic by Batya Levine ABOUT QUEER MORNING BLESSINGS […]
HIGH HOLY DAYS IN PANDEMIC TIMES: finding awe in the unravel
with gratitude to collaborators Elan/a June Margolis, Annie-Rose London, contributing editors Rae Abileah and Morgan Bassichis, and to my teacher, Rabbi Jill Hammer 5780 has been wrought with profound change, loss, upheaval, disorientation, hope, resistance, and resilience. Many of us find ourselves at sea, overwhelmed and longing for connection. In this time of social, racial, […]
MORNING BLESSINGS/BIRKOT HASHACHAR
I am grateful my ancestors thought to create a prayer to bless the transition from sleep into waking. In the Talmud, it is said that sleep is 1/60th of death, and there is an idea that our soul wanders all night while we sleep and is restored to us upon awakening. If you have ever […]
wash your hands
We are humans relearning to wash our hands. Washing our hands is an act of loveWashing our hands is an act of careWashing our hands is an act that puts the hypervigilant body at ease Washing our hands helps us return to ourselves by washing away what does not serve. Wash your hands like you are washing the […]
the persistent desire
Lecha Dodi is a Jewish liturgical song sung at dusk on Shabbat. The words Lecha Dodi mean “come my beloved.” The beloved in the text is mysterious and multitudinous – we are welcoming friend, lover, shabbat, and/or G-d. I am in love with devotional liturgy — poems and prayers full of profound desire for connection, […]
hinenu: here we are
Last year I was part of midwiving a miraculous emergence of a radical, queer high holy day project in Western Mass called Nishmat Shoom. We weave traditionally non-traditional, reverently irreverent, deep, radically inclusive services from the eve of Rosh Hashanah through Ne’ilah, the closing of the gates on Yom Kippur. We are still unfolding into […]
on CSAs (community supported abortion gardens), herbal abortion, and knowing our limits
Maybe it’s my aries nature, but I often channel my fire and rage into a project. Many years ago, after a second, pretty intense and devastating miscarriage, I tore up a huge grove of bittersweet in our yard and then turned my tools to an old overgrown patch of daylilies and forsythia. My friends and […]
stone rematriation
After two years of vowing not to buy any new stones, last year I decided to take on a practice of ‘stone rematriation’: basically returning the precious bodies of rocks back to the earth. I have become increasingly heartbroken and disturbed by the mining, stealing, and selling of what so many traditional people understand to […]
jewish plant magic: rooting in (+ resources)
In honor of Tu B’Shvat, the New Year of Trees, and because so many people have been asking, I am compiling a list of some of my favorite resources for Jewish Plant Magic. At times, trying to find wisdom on this has felt like an old folktale journey into the forest: it’s dark, I don’t […]
Practical Magic: Essences for Personal and Community Resilience
What are essences? Essences can be described many ways- are energetic or vibrational remedies, plant spirit medicine, magic potions, some kids I know just call them “fairy drops” – essences are water-based infusions, usually made with blossoms of a flower or tree or a stone, that is then preserved with brandy (or vinegar.) A powerful, […]
