Tayere ale,

What’s a Pirate’s favorite hebrew month? I-YARRRR

zayt mir moykhl I had to..

a gut Khoydesh iyar and blessed counting of the omer if you are doing so. (Today is 16 days of the omer: Gevurah within Tiferet! You can learn more about counting the omer here.)

Iyar Toyreh will follow information about the upcoming zoom concert~

Join us on Sunday, May 3 @ 4-6pm ET on Zoom for a concert featuring Der Tkhines Proyekt's latest tkhines songwriters cohort presenting their new songs live for the very first time. These tkhines lider/songs will cover all sorts of themes, from engaging with life-cycles, to shedding intergenerational aggression and trauma, to challenging abuse of power, to envisioning the world we want to be building

Tickets are available sliding scale. Suggested contribution $36+ / PWYC (pay what you can)

~ ~ ~

This iyar torah is לכבוד in honor of my beloved Aunt Mona Higuchi z’l, who has just passed away this morning after learning she had cancer only a few weeks ago, soon after my uncle also passed. Mona was an incredible political installation artist who traveled the world, and will be dearly missed. I hope to continue using art as a medium for disrupting the status quo and sparking questions in her and my uncle’s honor. {and— what a powerful thing to witness how people so deeply in love in life sometimes experience death very closely to each other.} Every experience of grief is such a teacher.

This fresh loss, and the death I have been sitting with the past few months has taught me:

1. Interview your elders (and ANYONE you feel you must interview) asap, because you never know what life brings.

2. Prioritize being with your loved ones as much as you can. Be with as many of them as you can.

3. I’m thinking about the quotes: “Grief is love with no place to go” and “grief is just unexpressed love”, which used to be helpful frameworks for me. As painful as death and loss and grief all are, I no longer believe that ‘grief is love with no place to go’. I think grief reveals the love that was actually there the whole time. I think this revealing has the power to push us to either expand or (protectively) contract our capacities for love. Moving and feeling and experiencing our grief, rather than sidelining and numbing it out can widen our inner capabilities for love and grief. Basically, grief can act as a workout for the heart muscle if we allow it to, as cheesy (or tbh annoying/frustrating) as that might sound. Stay tuned for more writing about grief in the Rosewater Tahara Book: Jewish Herbalism for End of Life, Death, Grief, and Memorial

This writing about iyar was first published in the Dreaming the World to Come Planner in 5785

Barukh HaBah, welcome Iyar!

in iyar we choose our own adventures. We hold the fluid, liminal energy of seasonal and embodied transition. we delve into the kabbalistic process of counting the omer, leading us into lag b’omer. we dive deep into iyar’s introspection, self-direction and healing.

yiddish tkhines are ashkenazi supplications that were prayed by, and centered the experiences of women, trans, and gender-non-conforming people. tkhines can go beyond the jewish liturgical cannon– they are an invitation for anyone to weave their lived experiences and yearnings in, and channel prayers in their vernacular tongue. many of the people who pray/ed tkhines are/were disabled, poor, and do/did not have access to hebrew or jewish learning. 

some tkhines, like the ~century-old one translated below, were preserved in zines and books. some were transmitted orally, and then severed by genocide and assimilation. most tkhines were channeled on the spot for that specific, sacred moment in time. 

across the diaspora, praying spontaneously is a traditional, heartful, powerful way to draw us close to G-d, ancestors, and angels. 

TKHINE RITUAL FOR IYAR 

1. Light a candle

2. Find your favorite cup and fill it with water. Like all water, this water is connected to the primordial traveling well that accompanied our ancestors

3. Lay a blanket down and sit on the ground 

4. Invite Miriam the prophet into your space. Holding your cup of water, gently summon Miriam with the ~century-old, translated tkhine and song below. Add your own heart-prayer-yearnings. Have a conversation with Miriam: ask for her support in tending inner wounds. Ask the questions resting on your heart

5. Listen

6. Once you feel it’s time to wind down, bless the prayer-infused water and drink it. Feel your body become satiated by this water

7. Thank Miriam. If you can, allow the candle to burn down completely

excerpt of a tkhine for iyar (english translation):

Compassionate Parent within and all around! אַב הָרַחֲמִים    

as we come before You to bless the month of iyar, we remind You: this is the month we became beloved to You, and You became beloved to us. in iyar, You gave us the holy shabbes, and us genderful folk were gifted the mitzvah of candle-lighting. may our fire-igniting elevate our mazal/luck, and preserve us from all weariness in body, soul, community, world– that might come during this month.

iyar is an acronym:“I am G-d your healer”. אֲנִי ה’ רפְאֶך

so— don’t You forget us, Your beloveds. please heal us! 

guide us courageously as the season transitions from spring to summer.

Teacher of the Universe! רִבּוֹנוֹ שָׁל עוֹלָם

in this month, You rained manna by moyshe rabeynu’s merit, peace be upon him. You created the primordial well on friday at twilight, which followed our ancestors through the wilderness, by miriam the prophet’s merit, peace be upon her. remember us, heal us, beloved G-d, by her merit– she prayed a song to You with the women when they were at the sea. so too, we should sing with all genderful people, now and when the moshiach comes. may we be redeemed speedily in our days, amen!

tkhine melody: https://soundcloud.com/tkhines/miryamhanoviyo

…. G-d to bless us! may we have enough food and drink, as G-d sustained the jews in the wilderness.

miriam, through your merit, may we be cleansed of our wounds and transgressions with your well of water, as the jews were cleansed while they were receiving the torah. 

thank you, miriam  

G-d– deliver your people and pray for our continuity. elevate our mazal and have mercy on us. as a parent has compassion for their children, bless this month of iyar to be for LIFE and HEALTH and BLESSING without any measurement, amen.