Shabbat Gathering: Jewish time travel.

Gud Shabbos Khaveyrim, as is our custom, we will gather tonight at 5.45p ct to welcome Shabbat. These are the coordinates:

Zoom
Meeting ID: 883 8469 4181
Password: 822665
Phone: +1 312 626 6799

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Becca Krantz has sent us a special note that I've put at the bottom of the newsletter. Please be sure to take a look.

Here we go.

Today is the 28th day of Cheshvan, a month referred to as a very bitter month. The reason Cheshvan has such a bad reputation is that it is the only month in our calendar without any holidays. That might feel like a relief following the previous press of the High Holy Days, nevertheless, Cheshvan has a bad reputation.

I have my phone set up so that whenever I pick it up I see the Hebrew date alongside the Christian date. I use a Jewish planner. I like the feeling of being centered in Jewish time. I wrote last week that I like to separate myself from the prevailing Christian culture and keeping track of Jewish time is one of the ways I do that.

Lately, I’ve been reading snatches from a new book: For Times Such As These: A Radical’s Guide to the Jewish Year, by Rabbi Ariana Katz and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg. The book has a chapter for each month of the Hebrew calendar and offers insights, spiritual practices, and rituals rooted in progressive Jewish movements. It’s a beautiful volume and I highly recommend you go to A Room of One’s Own bookstore and buy a copy. (You’re welcome, Mira.)

One of my dear friends from Torah Study also has the book and passed along the following passage that I, in turn, have been passing along to people I love who might be feeling low following what, on the surface, appears to be a cataclysmic turn of events in our nation’s politics. So, naturally, I'm passing the reading along to you too. It has offered me solace and re-roots me in the timelessness of Jewish time. Perhaps it will do the same for you.

...U.S. elections often fall during Cheshvan. Whatever our relationship to electoral organizing, the Jewish calendar in general, and this month in particular, offers us tools for staying afloat during the choppy waters of uncertainty, fear, and disappointment that pervade U.S. elections. Living in Jewish time helps us anchor in systems older than capitalism and collective organization older than nation-states. We know that elections are not be-all and end-all of how transformation to more just systems and humane ways of living happens; we know we need new forms of governance where actual democracy can be practiced and people can have meaningful say in the material conditions of their lives.

This I believe.

And may it be for all of us a blessing.

See you tonight!
Gut Shabbes!

All my love,
brian.

PS

Special Note from Becca Krantz.
Come shop and support peace and justice in the Middle East! One-of-a-kind hand-made ceramic sculpture and new functional work by Becca Krantz.

2116 Jefferson Street
9:00am-2:00pm

Friday, Nov. 29th
Saturday Nov. 30th
Sunday Dec. 1st
Sunday Dec. 8th

All proceeds to benefit Standing Together, a grassroots movement mobilizing Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel in pursuit of peace, equality, and social and climate justice.

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