Rimonim New Liturgy Project Seeks Short Term Volunteers

Rimonim New Liturgy Project Seeks Short Term Volunteers

This is Aurora Levins Morales, a resident poet of Kehilla.  You’ve heard me read my work during services for years. Now, other synagogues are using my poetry, too, and asking me to write pieces for them.  While it’s fun and rewarding, it’s a disorganized and mostly unpaid way to work.

Rabbi Dev and I put our heads together to think about a bigger and more systematic way for me work deeply with progressive Jews nationwide to write a collection of new and rewritten liturgy.  We’re launching the Rimonim New Liturgy Project and we’d like your help with that launch.  We’re organizing a network of established and emerging progressive synagogues to create a two year paid collective poetry residency for me, focusing on the development of liturgy that speaks to the experiences of Jews of Color, and to the development of thriving diaspora-minded Jewish communities.  The Rimonim Liturgy Project will support me to spend time listening to people, especially People of Color, about their spiritual needs, learning from many different rabbis and texts, and writing joy-driven, visionary, globally inclusive liturgy that both honors the deep rooted words of our traditions and responds to the urgencies of our time.

The first stage of the project will be funded through a crowdfunding campaign with a team made up of a couple of volunteers from each participating synagogue who will work together to prepare, launch and maintain a month-long campaign in April.  It should be no more than two hours a week for the next month, and less than that once the campaign is launched.  The team will be led by two experienced crowdfunders.

If you would like to know more, or just sign up, email me at aurora@historica.us