by Ariana Katz and Jessica Rosenberg
Wayne State University Press
3/1/2024, paperback
SKU: 9780814350515
A revolutionary guide to Jewish practice rooted in social justice, feminism, and queer liberation.
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.
Reviews:
"For Times Such as These is a beautiful, practical, abundant gift to Jewish radicals. It sets out a spacious, generative, grounded approach to thinking about Jewish ritual, Jewish resistance, and Jewish time. This book offers support for a wide range of ways to observe Jewish time and practice Jewish being right now, in these times of ecological crisis and rising fascism, where we badly need to plug into countercultural, earth-based wisdom about resistance and survival. It complements, updates, and expands the existing literature on the Jewish year, proliferating inroads toward radical, connective, restorative, inclusive Jewish practice. This book will become the dog-eared reference text, full of folded pages, dried flowers, and tear stains, that accompanies us through the tumult that is underway and that is on the way." -- Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid
"I wept when I read this book, recognizing its call in my bones. When my great-grandmother's grandmother, a rabbi's wife, walked out of her shul in Ukraine, she was walking toward the sacred, revolutionary, old/new Judaism this book proclaims. I am polishing my bedside table to receive it." -- Aurora Levins Morales
About the Author:
Rabbi Ariana Katz is the founding rabbi of Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl, a warm and joyful congregation in Baltimore, Maryland. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College.
Rabbi Jessica Rosenberg is an organizer, activist, and writer based in South Minneapolis. She is a graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and core organizer of the Radical Jewish Calendar project.