About For Times Such As These
This contemporary companion to the Jewish year cycle is not only a bellwether for radical Jews who want their lives and practice to be rooted in their political commitments but also an educational resource in Jewish tradition, holidays, and ritual. With a chapter for each month of the Hebrew calendar, For Times Such as These offers spiritual practices and holiday rituals rooted in movements for racial justice, decolonization, feminism, and queer and trans liberation. Each chapter opens with an invocation by liturgist and healer Dori Midnight and illuminated by artist Sol Weiss. Highlighting each month’s spiritual and cultural qualities, Rabbi Ariana Katz and Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg summarize and provide commentary on Torah readings; examine the texts, histories, and contemporary customs of Jewish holidays; and offer questions to reflect on and engage spiritually with the month. This work provides a guide for creative action and ritual making throughout the seasons, an exploration of anti-Zionist Judaism, and spiritual-cultural invitation to embody and expand decolonial, anti-racist, queer, and feminist Jewish practice.
Published by: Wayne State University Press, March 2024.
Cover illustration and design by Lindsey Cleworth.
About the authors
In co-writing this book, we became chevruta, sacred-life-work-study-wives, on all of the challenges, joys and deep discoveries embedded in the yearcycle. In our chevruta, we attempt to deepen our understandings of Judaism through asking hard questions, pushing each other to go deeper at times when we might want to give up. Our chevurta builds awareness, through practices of self-reflection and loving feedback. We reflect together on our particular perspectives, especially the limits of our understandings that are shaped by experiences of privilege in our Jewish lives and the wider world, as white, class-privileged, currently able-bodied Ashkenazi Jews, with two Jewish parents, ordained as rabbis. We challenge each other to ask bigger questions, learn from more teachers, and hypothesize bolder answers.
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Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg currently resides on Dakota land, also home to the Anishinaabe, known as South Minneapolis. She was raised on Lenape land, in the Philadelphia suburbs, by Ken z”l and Shelley, accidental organizers who taught her that Jewish communities should be life-giving and values-aligned, and that it is up to us to build them. She became a rabbi in order to learn our people’s diverse and nuanced histories, and create spaces, ritual, and organizing that helps transform our relationships to past, present and future.
Ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, 2018, Jessica is a founding collective member of the Radical Jewish Calendar project. She organizes with Matir Asurim: Jewish Care Network for Incarcerated People and on the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. She worked as a national organizer at Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, and has served and learned from the visionary young people at Keshet’s LGBTQIA Teen Shabbatonim and the Jewish Congregation at SCI-Phoenix Prison. She authored an Introduction to Trauma, Healing and Resilience for Rabbis, Jewish Educators and Organizers, published by Reconstructing Judaism
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Rabbi Ariana Katz couldn't separate joy from Judaism if she tried. She was raised in a home that hosted "Shabbat Parades" each week--a parade of children and adults tooting through paper towel rolls, banging tambourines, and shaking egg shakers to usher in Shabbat and land in seats around the dinner table. She grew up dancing in the pew in synagogue, arguing politics around the Seder table, and always believing there should be a seat at the table for anyone who wanted one.
Ariana Katz is the founding rabbi of Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl, a warm and joyful congregation in Baltimore, MD. Rabbi Ariana graduated from the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in the spring of 2018. Katz is a member of the Jewish Voice for Peace Rabbinical Council. She is a queer white Ashkenazi femme 4th generation Philadelphian who sees rooted ritual and radical organizing as her Jewish legacy. Rabbi Ariana was the creator and host of Kaddish, a podcast about death and identity, and co-host of the forthcoming podcast God Crush with Pastor Lura Groen. She is passionate about abortion clinic escorting, diaspora-made Judaica, radical Jewish calendars, care webs, and queer aesthetics.