{"id":1943,"date":"2018-02-13T11:18:57","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T08:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/2018\/02\/13\/a-havdalah-poem-3"},"modified":"2018-06-12T13:36:27","modified_gmt":"2018-06-12T10:36:27","slug":"a-havdalah-poem-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/2018\/02\/13\/a-havdalah-poem-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Blessing Over Separations: A Havdalah Poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

This poem<\/a> by Shelby Handler<\/a> focuses on the power and beauty of the special space created by distinguishing between two things. Written as a prayer to God, with emotive language and imagery, the author lists many different things between which we separate, including both basic physical distinctions and deep, spiritual concepts. Shelby Handler is a writer, performer and organizer who explores ritual and queerness. This poem was submitted to\u00a0The Open Siddur Project<\/a>, an initiative that aims to\u00a0liberate the creative content of Jewish spiritual practice as a collectively shared resource for students, scholars, artists, and educators to adopt, adapt, and redistribute.<\/em><\/p>\n

Blessing Over Separations<\/h2>\n

Blessed are you, Spirit of the Universe, who creates distinctions
\nbetween a ripe persimmon
\nand an unripe persimmon,
\nbetween the hot water urn and the whistling kettle,
\nbetween brine and saltwater,
\nbetween our mothers and ourselves,
\nbetween the choices of ancestors and the choices of ourselves
\nbetween stars and the black beyond,
\nbetween the moon and the face of a lover beneath it, paled and glowing too,
\nbut warm and here and singing,
\nbetween a button and a buttonhole,
\nbetween the ripped cotton of grief and the ripped denim of play,
\nbetween the separations that hold the world intact, and the separations that tear at its seams,
\nbetween sewing needles and pine needles,
\nbetween kneading dough and needing to rise on our own,
\nbetween hawks and sparrows,
\nbetween dew and frost,
\nbetween curds and whey,
\nbetween the moment after you have spoken
\nand the moment after you have sung,
\nbetween who we were and who will we become,
\nbetween the soul of the week and the soul of the sabbath.<\/p>\n

Blessed are you
\nwho gives a space to stare at both sides of
\nthe everythings,
\nto gallop into this infestation of brokenesses
\nand make an altar to the between.<\/p>\n

Here, what we hold in our palms:
\none small single broken,
\nthis split, this severance, this separation all our own.
\nAlongside it, a beaming braided flame,
\nthe fire of collectivity hot in our hands.
\nEach wick yearning alongside each other.<\/p>\n

Bless each one, holy in its separateness and
\nblazing as a chorus \u2014
\neach red boundary required
\nfor the great fire
\nwe will need to sustain a hearth,
\nto cast a path towards another world,
\nto make a lantern strong enough
\nto show us our shadows.<\/p>\n

Blessed are you, Great Murmur and Stillness of the World,
\nwho creates a land between what is broken
\nand what is endlessly, effervescently more whole.<\/p>\n

Blessed are we to reach into and towards the infinite,
\nto sing to that space, just within earshot
\nand ever widening in the distance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBlessing over Separation, by Shelby Handler\u201d\u00a0is shared by Shelby Handler with a\u00a0Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike\u00a04.0\u00a0International<\/a>\u00a0copyleft license.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This poem by Shelby Handler focuses on the power and beauty of the special space created by distinguishing between two things. Written as a prayer to God, with emotive language and imagery, the author lists many different things between which we separate, including both basic physical distinctions and deep, spiritual concepts. Shelby Handler is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1944,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[359],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post\/"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4\/"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments\/?post=1943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1988,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1943\/revisions\/1988\/"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1944\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/?parent=1943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories\/?post=1943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kol-ami.kulam.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags\/?post=1943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}