Notes Before Shabbat

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

A few things:

Despite a couple of brief technical glitches, the gathering with Vanessa Hidary last night was inexpressibly wonderful. Around 80 of you came and both the zoom chat and my inbox afterward were flooded with grateful tears, wild appreciation, and the affirmation that this event was what we badly needed at the end of an absolutely brutal week.

At one point, around 45 minutes in, the site ended the session abruptly — a perfect excuse for people to drop out if they weren’t totally into it. What happened next stunned me: seemingly every single person logged in again. It also ran around half an hour longer than scheduled, with very few people leaving at the appointed time, and it was only when I — not wanting to prevail upon Vanessa’s generosity too much — created a hard stop after 90 minutes that people slowly left.

Only one thing dimmed my happiness over the way the event went, and it showed me that I have to adjust course and never again try to do what I tried to do yesterday:

Despite hours of effort spent on getting the link to every single vetted audience member individually — checking and re-checking every single email folder, Facebook message and RSVP on the book club site against my list — a few people who wanted to attend still did not receive the link and I feel absolutely terrible about that. If you were one of them, please know I’m deeply sorry for that failure.

What I learned from this is that I can never again try to do it this way. If trolls show up in an event, we will immediately mute them and boot them, but going forward, I need to create a link that more or less gets dropped into a few different semi-private spaces and let go of perfect control of the attendance list.

I also just want to say I’m incredibly grateful to everyone who sent contributions to Vanessa. Her career has undergone a sea change after October 7th so I wanted to send her all the moral and material support we could muster. The evening was restorative and healing for her too, which was very important to me. Profound thanks to everyone who helped make that happen.

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Because I like to bring you good things as we head into Shabbat, I also want to let you know about our August workshop, led by Hannah Yerington.

Hannah Yerington is a poet, Jewish magic arts educator, and the director of The Bolinas Poetry Camp for Girls. She is the author of Sheologies, published by Minerva Rising Press in 2023, where she explored what it means to heal lineage, center women’s magic as community care, and call on a feminine God. Her upcoming collection, Garlic Moon, coming Fall 2026/Winter 2027 with Monkfish Book Publishing, focuses on Jewish folklore, surreal world-building, sacred whimsy, and creative ritual. She received an MFA in Poetry from Bowling Green State University.

Her work can be found in Porkbelly Press, Prism, Room Magazine, Half Mystic Press, Hey Alma, and Cascadia Daily News. She is a friend of all flowers, and she lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her warrior partner, Kris, her priestess kitten, Tala, and her imp puppy, Poe. Find her on Instagram @hannahyerington or at hannahyeringtonwriting.com.

Class Description

Writing The World To Come:

Jewish Magic Realism, Eco-Poetry, & Folktales

A Generative Poetry Workshop

In this generative workshop (comprising three sessions), we will explore the Jewish concept of creating Olam HaBa (The World to Come/The World That is Coming) through poetry. We will delve into a rich Jewish Feminist lineage of imagining and building a more just and equitable world through text study and poetry as a form of prayer.

We will engage with feminist midrashic poetry, eco-feminist poetry, magic realism, and folktales. Authors will include Alicia Jo Rabins, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, Hila Ratzabi, Marge Piercy, selections from Ecclesiastes and Song of Songs, and more.

Together, we’ll envision and write of a more joyful, peaceful, and playful world to come, with a desire to create that reality now. Open to all. No poetry experience necessary, just an imaginative spirit!

WHEN & WHERE:

Zoom, three Wednesdays in August, 15th, 20th, 27th, 5:30-7 pm PST.

COST AND REGISTRATION:

Sliding scale, ($36-72 USD). Register Here.

Read more about the conception behind this class here.

Have questions? Send an email to hello@windbloomstudios.com

Please note: if you’d like to take this course and the cost is an issue, please feel free to let me know privately at elissa_karen@msn.com so I can help work something out. We never want money to be a reason someone can’t attend.

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Finally, I have been slow to get MAZL, my Magazine of the American Left, into full swing but that will change next week, when I’ll be bringing you three essays from two Jews and a member of the Righteous Among The Nations.

I’ll be scheduling these ahead because I will spending next week in a national park with extended family and will be back here after August 10th.

I’ll be honest: it feels like the right time for a week away for several reasons.

One of the most painful aspects of this moment is that even left-leaning pro-Israel Jews are now at odds with each other over the hunger in Gaza. Many people I love, admire and respect — who are not pick-me Jews and who care very much about Israel — are now in one way or another protesting the Jewish nation because of the threat of starvation in Gaza which is finally real this time, though nowhere near the level the global media has sought to portray.

I will own the truth that I was slow to believe the starvation crisis was real. After two years of histrionic claims of famine that weren’t true, after tsunami after tsunami of disinformation and distortion, and in the face of such rank western hypocrisy and anti-Semitism, I will own really, really not wanting to join the chorus of condemnation. I still don’t want to do that. It has been very, very hard to know what’s true. And I know in my bone marrow that there was no good way to conduct this war — absolutely none.

Nonetheless, I can’t deny the sea change that’s taken place both in Gaza and in the Jewish world. As far as I can tell, no one there is skeletal from hunger alone — if they were, then no one would need to use kids with cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy as poster children. And here I’ll also say I’ve seen no photos of Palestinians as emaciated as hostage Rom Braslavski, who was shown in all his suffering in an absolutely annihilating video sent out by Hamas this week.

But we can’t let it get to the point where people truly are starving. This I fully agree with. And as 80% of Israel wants this war to end — even with Hamas still in power, even with the hostages still in captivity — then I certainly don’t feel it’s my place to advocate otherwise.

I do have more controversial opinions that I’ll get into when I come back to town. As of now, I don’t believe it would be immoral for Israel to take back the Strip. In fact, I can’t think of any other solution that would finally end this cycle. This doesn’t mean I’m actively advocating for that — Israelis are exhausted and demoralized and it’s likely that such an effort would be too costly in the immediate future. But I don’t share the progressive opinion that taking back the Strip would be a moral atrocity. I don’t see another way out. I’m open to persuasion if anyone else has a vision that does not involve Israel relinquishing primacy within the nation or any Right of Return for Palestinians that would leave Israel’s Jewish population a minority.

But that is a conversation for another day.

For now, I truly hope our Sabbath can bring some measure of peace for all of us. I’m gathering tonight with friends I desperately need to see. The Sabbath ritual has actually become a lifeline for me. I love baking the challah. I love picking out flowers and wine. I love the chance to connect with Jews I love. I love the space to just be, to breathe, to rest.

I’ll be back with you sometime soon after the 10th. In the meantime, I’m holding you all in my heart. I’m wishing you sanity and clarity and camaraderie. I know we will get to the other side of this terrible time somehow, together.

Shabbat shalom.

Am Yisrael Chai.