July/August 2021
Happy new moon! Welcome to the month of Av. Where I live, we are experiencing intense rains, as well as intense heat, and my garden is wild and busting out. The garlic I planted last fall is now almost as tall as me, waving yellowing ribbons in the heat, flagging that those spicy treasures are almost ready to harvest. The milkweed I let grow wherever it blooms is being chomped, bit by bit, by the dwindling population of Monarch caterpillars I pray and fret over. Av is hot, beautiful, abundant, and heartbreaking. As we move into Av, a month that was also full of intense weather for many of our ancestors, we continue the journey of grief and reckoning with loss that began in Tammuz. Tammuz takes its name from the Mesopotamian deity Tammuz, also known as Dumuzi, a consort of Inanna (later known as Ishtar). The story of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld is one of my favorite stories and one that comes through often as a remedy story in my healing practice.
My obsession with this tale of depth, death, and renewal began for me as a rageful teenager and I now tell my own queer, radical re-weaving of it (which I will share the whole version another time!) This story holds much meaning and power for those of us who have touched the depths and survived, who have moved between worlds, who have danced with death and trauma and lived to tell the tale, those of us who are lovers of transformation and flirt with edges. I often think about what drew Inanna to the depths of the underworld and feel that impulse in myself; I recall a chant drawn from Psalm 42:7 : “Deep calls unto deep,” — the depth in us magnetized, mirrored, is called to by depths, drawn to the unknown or unknowable. As Inanna descends, she must pass through seven gates, and at each gate, she is required to remove a piece of clothing or jewelry until at last, even her skin is taken from her and hung upon the wall. Inanna, completely disassembled in the land of death, is ultimately rescued by a cloud of bees sent by her best friend/lover and re-emerges, alive and intact, but profoundly changed.
This season, the transition from Tammuz to Av, is a season that invites us into depth and death, mourning and weeping, and we can use this time to go deep into grief and reckoning, and allow ourselves to be changed. We are spiraling towards the gates of the new year, the High Holy Days, which are very much like the gates Inanna passes through, and perhaps the tears we shed now prepare the soil of our hearts, soften us, motivate us, and begin turning our hearts towards teshuvah – returning to ourselves by way of being taken apart. But for now, we are not focused on doing – we are simply being with the grief.
We begin a period known as “the Three Weeks” in Tammuz – 21 days of grieving practices, which ends on the 9th of Av – Tisha b’Av – a fast day commemorating the destruction of the first and second temples. It is said “when Av begins, we decrease in joy.” We read from the book of Lamentations, we train our gaze on what is broken, we weep. One of the customs of Tisha b’Av is fasting, a collective practice often used in Jewish tradition to hone our attention and presence, as well as an expression of mourning and reckoning. Fasting from food can be inaccessible for many of us, for many reasons, but we can take inspiration from the prophet Isaiah, from a passage we read on Yom Kippur: “Is such the fast I desire, a day for people to starve their bodies? No this is the fast I require: open wide your prisons, tear down your separation walls, destroy your weapons of death, let refugees return home. Share your bread with the hungry. Open your homes. Clothe the naked. Do not turn away from your own kin.” (Isaiah 58) #freethemall
Isaiah reminds us that fasting is not about empty piousness, but about how we live, how we walk our talk. It is less important that we abstain from food and more important that we renounce and divest from practices and projects that oppress and kill people, that we feed others, that we use our aliveness in service to collective liberation. In movements for social change, fasting has often been a way of creating change, showing solidarity, and communicating urgency and what is truly at stake. Throughout time, people who are incarcerated have often used fasting as a means of resistance and rebellion.
In Av, we do not need to fast from food, but we can use this time and this practice to bring more rigor and focus to our work for justice and liberation, and to abstain from things that are not life-giving or life-sustaining, things that pull our focus or distract us when we are commanded to not look away. The beginning of Av is time of collective grieving, so for the first 9 days of Av, or perhaps on Tisha b’Av itself (July 18th), we can practice not looking away. We can consider, together, what we are grieving on a collective level. We can open to the feelings of grief that eventually will move us into the practices of the High Holy Days in 8 weeks: praying, accountability, repair and reparations.
Six days after Tisha b’Av, on the full moon of Av, we are ushered into aliveness and abundance on the holiday of Tu b’Av (July 23/24). Tu b’Av is considered the holiday of love – we go out into the fields and dance, wear borrowed clothes, engage in sacred cruising and hooking up, and fertilize the fields with our friends. It is a day in which we can lay our bodies and our grief upon the earth. Like Inanna, we emerge from the deep, feeling the warm summer sun on our faces, remembering our bodies through pleasure and dance and the contact of other bodies. We know how to do this- how to laugh and play and reconnect to being alive, while carrying a heavy or broken heart. This month is a fractal of our lives, full of deep pain and deep pleasure, full of the contradictions we hold in our hearts and bodies. How do we dance with joy on stolen land? How do we love this wild dying world? My teacher Joanna Macy talks about how grief and love are connected, how we only grieve what we truly love. What is the wisdom in this month of grief and love, and how do we let it widen us to be able to hold both?
PRACTICES FOR AV
GRIEVING
Grieving is a practice. How can we slow down and make some time and space for grief? How can we let our personal and collective practices support us- remembering we don’t have to do it alone?
The Jewish Voice for Peace Havurah Network has created a small online zine with 21 practices for the three weeks/Tisha b’Av with the intention of “arousing our hearts” specifically around the occupation of Palestine. I wrote about Kriah – the tradition of tearing garments.
KRIAH: the tearing of garments
Kriah (hebrew for tearing) is an ancient Jewish tradition of tearing one’s clothes in grief upon hearing of the death of a loved one or in a ritual prior to burial. The tearing of garments is a powerful, embodied grief practice – the feeling of the fabric shredding in our hands and the sound of the rip create an opening for us to really feel and process the loss. As we hold the torn pieces, we also hold the ways in which we have been rendered and changed and will never be the same. Today, many people use a small black ribbon that is cut while reciting a blessing and worn on the clothes, sometimes for the period of shiva (7 days) or for shloshim (30 days). The ribbon is like a grief flag: with no words, we are able reflect to the world that we are literally torn up, that we are carrying a broken heart. This ritual invites us to not look away at the horrors of occupation and gives our bodies a way to process grief, with the hopes that this grief work moves us and sustains our work towards Palestinian liberation.
Kriah ritual for Tisha b’Av:
This can be done alone or in community, in private or as a public grief ritual
Find a piece of cloth to tear Spend time reading testimonies from Palestine (here or here), and in honor of each story, for each person, for each loss, make a rip in the fabric, it can be large or small, allowing yourself to make sounds as you tear. You may choose to wear a piece of the fabric during the days of Av, place it on an altar, or bring it to hang on a tree or other public space. You can find more grief practices for this month in this beautiful offering here: 21 GRIEF TECHNOLOGIES from JVP Havurah Network
FASTING
We can fast from anything that distracts us or doesn’t give us life- technology, unkind speech, buying from evil online empires, social media, habits or patterns that keep us asleep and dull. It can be helpful to do this with a friend or in a small group to check in with.
If you are interested in fasting from food, you can connect with the group Jewish Fast for Gaza, a group which supports a monthly water-only fast every third Wednesday of every month, from sunrise to sunset. On fast days, the Jewish Fast for Gaza will sponsor online sessions with Gazans, activists, organizers and other experts to learn more about the ongoing crisis in Gaza. Participants are invited to donate the money they save on food to organizations that provide ongoing relief to Palestinian refugees in Gaza
LOVE
We need sweetness. We need it especially when we are tender and raw. This month, for Tu b’Av, the holiday of love, consider dedicating a day to love. Just like our grief, our love too can be personal and intimate as well as expansive and collective. Write a love letter to everything- starting from the big and ending with yourself. Drip honey on your tongue. Go out dancing in the fields. Lay on the earth and cry. Make love with/near trees or stones. Dedicate your orgasms.
HONEY LOVE SPELL
In one of my dives into ancient Jewish plant practices, I found a mind-blowingly gorgeous tradition from the 5th-6th century. After a wedding, the married couple each took a leaf and wrote their name on it with honey, then gave it to each other to eat- literally eating each other’s sweet name! Inspired by this tradition, I invite you to write your own name on an edible leaf (a sage leaf works well!) in honey and eat it in a ritual of self-love. You can read/hear more about this honey spell from my little interview on This is Your Magic podcast with Michelle Tea.
TZEDAKAH
The holiday of Tisha b’Av has been employed in Zionism to fuel and justify land theft, and is often a major fundraising day for Zionist organizations. This month, if you are able, please consider giving money to supporting Palestinian liberation. You can find a long list of mutual aid projects and other organizations here: Palestine funds
Inspired by Isaiah, this is beautiful time to dedicate ourselves to abolition. I’m honored to be supporting SWEET FREEDOM FARM , a BIPOC and abolitionist led farming project feeding and protecting our Black, indigenous, communities of color, is calling on our dear and beloved community [aka YOU] to help with their GROW FOOD, NOT PRISONS Campaign aiming to fundraise $200k by July 21.
OTHER RESOURCES FOR AV
Dr. Koach Baruch Frazier’s talk on Resilience through the Practice of Lament
Rebellious Mourning : The Collective Work of Grief edited by Cindy Millstein
Interview with Cindy Millstein on collective care, grief, and mutual aid
A Lamentation for Gaza for Tisha b’Av by Brant Rosen
Interview with Joanna Macy, On Being
PLAYLIST for AV: grief and love
✨UPCOMING/NEWS ✨
NEW OLAM HABA PLANNER! I’m so excited to share that the new Olam haBa planner for 5782 is available for pre-order here: www.dreamingtheworldtocome.com Find Hebrew, Gregorian and moon calendars all in one gorgeous sparkling spiral bound book! New art, intuitive writings, and ritual offerings from amazing people for each month, plus, space to write down dreams, plans and reflections. You can use coupon code EARLYBIRD through July 15 for 10% off!
JEWISH PROTECTION MAGIC! Stay tuned for dates and registration info for October/November 2021 GARLIC IN OUR POCKETS: jewish protection magic immersion with Herban Cura!
NEW POTION! TESHUVA ELIXIR ~ a remedy for the Days of Awe, will be available beginning in Elul (next month) through our stockists! It is a delicious potion made with honey and essences to support us in our season of renewal and return.
May Av bring you to the ground with love and grief, and may you find what nourishes and sustains you there.
With love,
Dori
