Here is a D'var Torah I wrote for Leo Baeck College for Parashat Toldot. As usual it is about anger, love, injustice, feminism, heterotopias and a belly of a big fish. Well, I guess that part is unusual. Please have a read. Below I've put a copy of the prayer which comes at the end of the piece, originally writting for Yom Kippur Mincha 5785 at Finchley Reform Synagogue. (Photo by Randy Jacob on Unsplash).
If re-using - please quote author (me!).
As we surface from the belly of the fish, the sanctuary in the darkest deepest place, at the bottom of the ocean, away from land and humanity – may we emerge ‘upside down’.
May we question all that we thought we knew.
May we be confused with what is ‘right’ and what is ‘wrong’, who ‘we’ are and who ‘they’ are.
As we have inhabited strange, curious, dangerous spaces, as Jews, as women, as queer people, however and whoever we are – may we now choose to recognise other bodies that cannot find their place in time.
May we find others who are lamenting and travelling and questioning.
May we find hope that change is possible even in the most unlikely and terrifying of times.
May we come to know that empires will rise and fall, which is a relief and a curse. May we choose life so that empires cease to rise as we continue to inhabit these marginal spaces and emerge, vomited onto the land, anew.
And rather than saying amen (we concur, we agree), may we say, Aleynu, it is upon us.
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