Oct
1
2024
Dear Reader,
Every year, I look forward to Kol Nidre. The service I attend is an itinerant one—for the last few years it’s taken place in someone’s spacious living room, outfitted with folding chairs. In the days of Covid lockdowns, it was held on rooftops. There is no rabbi, but the leaders—two musical friends about my age—light the way through the service with transcendent communal song, many of them traditional Hasidic niggunim, or melodies. A different person gives a d’var torah every year—a small insight into Jewish text—without the pressures or pretenses of rabbinic authority. Last year, an artist opened the service with an offering: a clay object for each of us in the negative shape of a closed fist, to hold during the vidui, where we beat our chests to the litany of our collective transgressions.
I know for many of you reading this, communal life has become increasingly fraught, if not impossible, as nearly all of our institutions have failed to ethically respond to the genocide in Gaza. These kinds of informal, interstitial spaces are all we have. I’ve heard from many of you over the last year that Jewish Currents is just such a space: a home for communal reflection and agitation and fortitude, and increasingly, a live gathering place for thought and expression. I know that I am committed to sustaining those Jewish spaces that are fortifying me on this new year. Will you do the same?
Thanks to a generous donor, if you contribute to Jewish Currents during the High Holidays, your gift will be matched—that means every dollar you give will be doubled. Can you help ensure that Jewish Currents can continue to create space for us to come together in 5785?
As we go into Yom Kippur, I am trying to meditate on our power in community. I hope you can help us build that power at Jewish Currents.
Gmar tov,
Arielle Angel
Editor-in-chief