From the Depths - new from Bayit

Collaborating with members of Bayit's liturgical arts working group has become an integral part of my spiritual practice in recent years. As we brainstorm, create, workshop, revise, and polish new art and liturgy together, I feel more grounded in the now and also more ready for whatever is coming.

We just released a new collaborative collection for Pesach, and it moves me deeply. There's a lot of anxiety and grief here, which speaks from my heart (from all of our hearts.) There's also hope, to which I am clinging as fiercely as I know how. Maybe that's something you need this year too.

Here's one of the pieces I wrote for the offering:

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(I'll also enclose it below in plaintext for those who need it in that format -- I know the screencap of the slide isn't readable to everyone.)

You can find the whole collaboration here: From the Depths -- available, as always, both as a downloadable PDF and as slides suitable for screenshare. I hope something here speaks to you in a way that will enliven your seders this year.

 

Multitude

 

We are a mixed multitude: some frozen in trauma,

some burning with grief. Each of us carries

at least one image of a child's unjust death

seared into our hearts. How do we walk free?

 

Tell me the story again of how God said,

"My children are drowning and you sing praises?!"

Every human being is a child of God,

even the ones on the other side.

 

This year nobody's cup of joy is full.  

Our souls feel as fragile as matzah.

Even if we and our children and our children's children

aren't certain what freedom would feel like, 

 

maybe we can agree that this state of brokenness

isn't it. I want to believe we can get there from here.

Maybe the only way is as a mixed multitude

holding hope for each other until we can feel it again.

R. Rachel Barenblat