Play Satie's first gymnopedie, badly.
Sit outdoors and pretend there's no wifi.
Sip seltzer, trying to notice
each bubble as it pops. Remember
there was no fizzy water in Cuba
because carbonation requires power.
This is a mistake: thinking about
the Special Period when people ate grass
is perilously close to thinking
about famine in Gaza and men with guns.
Besides, thoughts about Cuba lead to
thoughts about migrants, which land
my mind in "Alligator Alcatraz"
or facing la migra mounted on horses.
The feisty old woman on television
said "no matter what cages they build,
I'm free in here," tapping her heart.
She makes it look so easy.
The floodwaters of my mind carve
channels of worry, and I never know
when my river is going to overflow.
Repeat, "This is sadness, but I am not."
Widen the mind's mesh, and let
the grief float downstream,
somewhere out of sight.

The Special Period. See Wikipedia,

Famine in Gaza. See Entire Gaza population at critical risk of famine, BBC. 

Men with guns. See 59 Palestinians in Gaza Killed by Israeli airstrikes or shot dead while seeking aid, PBS News. 

Thoughts about migrants. See US undocumented field workers feel "hunted like animals," the Guardian.

Alligator Alcatraz. See Hundreds of detainees with no criminal charges sent to Trump's 'Alligator Alcatraz', the Guardian.

La migra on horses. See Reality TV spectacle: outrage as federal agents raid LA neighborhood with horses and armored cars, the Guardian.

When my river is going to overflow. See Maps show where devastating flash floods hit Texas, inclding Camp Mystic, CBS. 

Here the rise and fall of sound
is cicadas roosting in the trees.
A southern magnolia surprises me:
creamy white petals bruised by time,
almost a breath of mom's perfume.
No one makes it anymore.
I only remember its imprint,
faintest scent as distant
as the call of late-night trains
that could be going anywhere,
even as far as where you are.

The verse says "Jesus wept," but
it's in the wrong tense.
Jesus is still weeping.

He takes turns with Rachel
still lamenting her children
and Shekhinah, perennial exile.

This week they're crying
for children in bomb shelters
and even more for children outside them.

For the anorexia patient
who can't force themself to eat,
the mother whose hope has curdled,

the infant with HIV
no longer receiving medicine,
every heart in need of care.

The Holy One of Blessing
reminds them: they didn't promise
our path would be smooth.

They promised to walk with us.
It's up to us to notice
we're not alone.

The following words
are no longer permitted:
Accessible. Affirming.
Bias. Cultural differences.
Environmental quality.
Inclusive. Mental health.
Prejudice. Trauma.

The new head of FEMA
didn't know America has
a hurricane sesason, but
I'm sure firing
a fifth of the staff
who launch weather balloons
won't matter.

We are also forbidden
from saying anyone is
underserved or vulnerable.
No person in our nation
is vulnerable anymore.
Immigrants and refugees
don't count.

Is hope still
at the bottom of the box
or was it erased
along with clean energy
and safe drinking water
and the history
of the Enola Gay?

These words are disappearing in the new Trump Administration, New York Times [gift link]

"David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season." Heather Cox Richardson, June 2, 2025. 

Federal Government's Growing Banned Words List Is Chilling Act of Censorship, PEN.org. 

Enola Gay Aircraft -- And Other Historic Items -- Inaccurately Targeted Under Pentagon's Anti-DEI Purge, Forbes.com. 

Light

בְּאור פָּנֶיךָ / "In the light of Your face…"

I know the light of God's face

in how my face shines

when I see yours.

When the song of my heart

finds harmony, that's

the closest thing to wholeness

I know.

-- R. Rachel Barenblat, originally published at Bayit as part of Grant Peace

When I turned to the Shalom blessing in the amidah along with my collaborators in Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group, this is the first place it took me. I got caught by the Hebrew phrase  בְּאור פָּנֶיךָ, "in the light of Your face," and those words took me deep into my own heart. 

Our latest collaborative offering is out: poetry, liturgy, and art riffing off of the Shalom blessing in the Shabbat amidah. (This is the 8th offering in a series, and one more is forthcoming.) Shalom, peace, shleimut -- the word means so many different things to each of us.

The closing blessing of the Amidah asks for shalom: peace, wholeness, completion. What does this prayer mean to us today? What does it ask of God – and of us? What does it mean to ask for peace in a time of tumult and injustice? How can we ask for something we may not even wholly understand? This offering arises out of those questions and more. 

This offering turns that prayer in a kaleidoscope and reveals different ways our hearts might shine. Find it here: Grant Peace. 

Winter felt too long.
The world monochrome,
sapped of color.

We were trapped
beneath the heavy ceiling
of cruel news.

What can I wish on?
My heart is a candle,
flickering in the rain.

Hope, be
as unquenchable
as chives --

as effervescent
as dandelions gleaming
in a bed of green.

The trees are leafing out again at last.
Flying little chartreuse flags, crumpled
like wet laundry before they spread
and take up space.

If this were a love poem
I would say, I want you to take up space
and stretch toward the sun, exuberant
as the birds who can’t stop singing.

If this were a love poem
I could say anything at all
and you would know I really mean
all I want is for you to bloom.

If you like this poem, you might also like Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda Press).

Old magnolia: gaps just the right size
for my dangling legs, a branch to rest a book on.

The seaglass blue of sky over hills
like an embrace from the horizon.

Limestone painted pink at twilight,
rosemary between my fingers.

The light of Shabbat candles
after a brief whiff of struck match.

Singing the alto note in a chord,
holding and held.

For my birthday last month one of my nieces gave me a deck of illustrated cards depicting untranslatable words. I drew a card this morning: querencia.

"Describes a place where we feel safe, a 'home' (which doesn't literally have to be where we live) from where we draw our strength and inspiration. In bullfighting, a bull may stake out a querencia in a part of the ring where he will gather his energies before another charge."

Shabbat. Jerusalem. Harmony. A particular quality of sky. A tree that was chopped down decades ago.

Where are these places for you?

I think I started sharing Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach on this blog in 2007, though the haggadah existed long before that. Anyway: cue the fanfare, drumroll please: as of 2025, here's an updated edition, version 9. Find it here:

The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach

The gorgeous cover illustration is by my friend and Bayit colleague Steve Silbert, and his work appears in various places throughout the haggadah. 

There's new material here, including prayer-poems by me and by my fellow Bayit Liturgical Arts Working Group hevre Trisha Arlin, R. David Markus, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, and David Zaslow. And poems written by people I don't personally know, like Amnon Ribak and Linda Pastan. And I added a favorite piece from Marcia Falk's gorgeous Night of Beginnings haggadah, and some wisdom from the new A Quest for Our Times haggadah.

Some pieces appear both in long form and in shorter form. Some pieces appear in several forms (there are six different versions of the Four Children; which one speaks to you this year?) 

Most importantly to me: there's more attention to what freedom asks of us. When I started working on this haggadah for my own use 25 or 30 years ago, I was really focused on the inner journey of liberation. And... in today's world I am keenly aware that freedom comes with obligations to each other and to those who are not free. So there's more of that in here too.

As usual I also fixed typos, improved formatting, and adjusted layout. 

The PDF is available for download and as always, you're welcome to use it as your haggadah, or to intersperse these pages with the haggadah you already know and love, or to intersperse these pages with other readings that speak to you -- make seder your own. 

Again, find it at the Haggadah page at velveteenrabbi.com, or click the link below:

The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach

May your Pesach be everything you need it to be.

What does it mean this year to celebrate freedom?
What does it mean this year to claim we are free?

Are we free to speak – or only if we hold the “right” opinions?
Are we free to be who we are – or only if we fit a certain mold?

Can we celebrate liberation when innocents are shackled?
When “give me your tired, your poor” seems out of style?

When communities live in fear, Seder’s journey feels hollow.
What does Seder mean this year? What if we don’t feel free?

Sometimes Seder is about hope we don’t yet know how to feel.
We are not the first generation to live Passover in tight times.

We welcomed Elijah to our door during the Crusades.
We sang Seder songs in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the camps.

The world is not yet healed or whole. There is no sign of redemption.
That has never stopped us from building, singing, retelling, yearning.

The way things have been is not the only way the world can be.
It is our covenant to seek greater freedom for all who are bound.

Dr. King knew, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Justice everywhere is our destination. May this seder be our fuel.

Shared with gratitude to my first reader, whose wise suggestions made this better. 

This could be used as a responsive reading at seder. If you do that, I'd recommend having the whole room read the first couplet; that way the whole room is also reading the last couplet aloud.

If this speaks to you, you might also find merit in Bayit's new Passover collection, From the Depths.

Doikayt is a Yiddish word
central to Buddhist teaching:
"right here, right now."

Wait, that's wrong.
The definition said Bundist.
Labor unions, not zazen --

build better wherever we are.
Justice is the promised land
we may never reach.

But the mystics are right too.
When we're fully here, God
is in this place.

When I'm paying
continuous partial attention
to three different news apps

or biting back responses
to someone wrong on Facebook
I'm not really here.

But last night my son
danced with his double bass
and the headlines all fell away.

At shul the other night, someone mentioned doikayt, Yiddish for "hereness." I knew the word, but wanted to know more about its origins, so I resolved to look it up when I got home. I did, and promptly misread the first line of the definition. That's what sparked this poem. 

I love the idea of Buddhist doikayt, though.

For more on doikayt, and its origins in Yiddishist / diasporist labor circles, see Jewish Word | Doikayt: the Jewish Left is Here. For a more personal take, try this short instagram post from poet Aurora Levins Morales, including gorgeous art by Wendy Elisheva Somerson created for Morales' book Rimonim. 

I also love these words from poet Melanie Kaye / Kantrowitz, "Doikayt means Jews enter coalitions wherever we are, across lines that might divide us, to work together for universal equality and justice."

That dovetails with something I've been thinking (and writing) about a lot lately: how do we build coalitions toward justice across lines that might divide us when we are so divided as a community around Israel / Palestine? 

(And, relatedly: when we are turned against each other, who benefits? When we are busy with anger at one another, what opportunities for tikkun do we miss?)

Collaborating with members of Bayit's liturgical arts working group has become an integral part of my spiritual practice in recent years. As we brainstorm, create, workshop, revise, and polish new art and liturgy together, I feel more grounded in the now and also more ready for whatever is coming.

We just released a new collaborative collection for Pesach, and it moves me deeply. There's a lot of anxiety and grief here, which speaks from my heart (from all of our hearts.) There's also hope, to which I am clinging as fiercely as I know how. Maybe that's something you need this year too.

Here's one of the pieces I wrote for the offering:

(I'll also enclose it below in plaintext for those who need it in that format -- I know the screencap of the slide isn't readable to everyone.)

You can find the whole collaboration here: From the Depths -- available, as always, both as a downloadable PDF and as slides suitable for screenshare. I hope something here speaks to you in a way that will enliven your seders this year.

Multitude

We are a mixed multitude: some frozen in trauma,

some burning with grief. Each of us carries

at least one image of a child's unjust death

seared into our hearts. How do we walk free?

Tell me the story again of how God said,

"My children are drowning and you sing praises?!"

Every human being is a child of God,

even the ones on the other side.

This year nobody's cup of joy is full.  

Our souls feel as fragile as matzah.

Even if we and our children and our children's children

aren't certain what freedom would feel like, 

maybe we can agree that this state of brokenness

isn't it. I want to believe we can get there from here.

Maybe the only way is as a mixed multitude

holding hope for each other until we can feel it again.

R. Rachel Barenblat

There is no problem, I like to sleep.
When I'm sleeping, it's just dreams:

too many suitcases to carry, or
realizing I packed the wrong clothes

and nothing in this closet fits.
(This airport is too big, I can't find

the right gate, I forgot to turn in
the rental car...) The hum of anxiety

is constant, like a hybrid car singing
its quiet chord, but I know exactly

what I'm nervous about. Small potatoes.
Awake, the shadows are darker.

I know I can't control whether or not
this year's Haman is stoppable.

A couple of years ago I wrote a pair of Sukkot poems, Fragile and Rejoice. In the manuscript for my next book of poetry, they're a two-part poem titled "Shekhinah says." You could read them as written in God's voice to us, or as written in a human voice to a human beloved. (Or both at once.)

In recent months composer Adam Green (who is also the music director at my synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires) wrote a musical setting of those two poems. And yesterday, at our belated Tu BiShvat concert, the two-movement piece was premiered by the CBI Choir. 

It's an incredible honor to have a composer write music to uplift my words. Melody and rhythm give them a whole new layer of meaning. I love that one piece feels wistful and soft, like watercolors or fog in the valleys -- and the other, written in 5/4, feels multilayered, surprising, like it ends too soon.

Every time we sing these poems, I'm hyperlinked to what I was feeling when I wrote them. I can call the exact feelings to mind and heart. And now the poems also have another layer, because I hear them in harmony! Adam also switched the order of the two poems, which (for me) subtly changes their arc.

When I wrote the poems, I was praying for a trajectory from fragility to rejoicing. I began with what's broken, and closed with the hope of wholeness. Adam's choice to put them in the other order makes an existential point: even within wholeness, we are fragile. But in that fragility, we are not alone.

The recording you'll hear, on the YouTube video embedded above, isn't a perfect studio recording. This was recorded live at our concert, which moved through the four seasons the way a Tu BiShvat seder does. (Here's the program as a google doc, in case you're curious what other pieces we sang.)

Making music with the CBI choir is one of my great joys. Singing in harmony connects me with God more immediately and wholly than anything else I know. I feel lucky that I get to sing with this ensemble, and that together we get to learn from and with Adam -- and savor the music he writes.

The sheet music is available for download at Adam's website, along with music for his setting of my Baruch She'amar poem, which we premiered last November. Let me know if you decide to sing either of these where you are -- words and music are both available under a Creative Commons license.

When my angled knife cuts through
the air smells sharp and clean.
Shreds of cabbage pile up.
Fennel, apple, scallion, celery.
Lemons, olive oil, kosher salt.

I learned this as "Shabbat salad."
Searching for its origins, I find
salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese,
and another variation (same name)
on a Palestinian cooking blog.

File this alongside salat katzutz
(or salata falahiyeh, same thing,
the chopped one with the cucumbers) --
one of those foods everyone wants
to claim as ours. Someone

I don't know yelled at me
recently on Facebook that there's
"no standing together with evil,"
which is what he said "all of them"
are. I hear this from both sides.

I wish I could set a banquet with
no chairs empty. This is medicine:
like the first shoots of spring
that I believe with a perfect faith
(though it tarry) will someday come.

I learned this as Shabbat salad. See Shabbat Salad at Sivan's Kitchen (video and recipe).

Salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese. See salatet malfouf. See also A Jew Cooks Palestinian: Cabbage Salad Edition.

Salat katzutz / salata falahiyeh. See Salata Falahiyeh (Palestinian or Farmers Salad). In the Jewish Diaspora it's often called Israeli salad; in Israel it's usually either called סָלָט קָצוּץ / salat katzutz (chopped salad) or סָלָט עֲרָבִי / salat aravi (Arab salad.) Its Arabic name is سلطة فلاحية  salata falahiyeh.

With no chairs empty. See The Empty Shabbat Table.

I believe with a perfect faith. "In the coming of the Messiah. Though he tarry, nevertheless do I believe that he will come." From the prayer Ani Ma'amin, adapted in turn from Rambam (d. 1204), arising out of his commentary on mishnah (c. 200 CE.)

For more background: 

• Anthony Bourdain Explains the Israel-Palestine Conflict Through Food, The Washington Post, 2013. Watch the episode of Parts Unknown here on YouTube, or read the transcript - though watching is more powerful. The second half of the episode in particular lands differently now than it did 12 years ago. 
• Here's why Palestinians object to the term 'Israeli food', Reem Kassis in The Washington Post, 2020. All About Israeli Food (a response to the previous piece), Ilana K. Levinsky in The Times of Israel, 2022.
• In a new war over eating Middle Eastern food, eating hummus and shawarma has become a political act, Andrew Silverstein in The Forward.  2023.

May all be fed, may all be nourished, may all be loved. 

I believe the days are getting longer. I believe this nation can become the land of promise my mother understood it to be. I believe we have obligations to each other. I believe every human being is made in the divine image. I believe in science. I believe fundamentalism damages the spirit. I believe truth matters. I believe everyone should be ethical. I believe hope is a discipline. I believe what I see with my own eyes. I believe vaccines work. I believe we shall overcome someday. I believe life is always better with music. I believe we are stronger together than we are apart. I believe a better world is possible. I believe as a Jew I am obligated to love the stranger. I believe there is more than enough to go around. I believe it takes work not to swing at every pitch in the dirt. I believe I would be a terrible baseball player. I believe no race or gender is superior. I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I believe healing the world is everyone’s responsibility. I believe it’s the government’s job to care for all of its citizens. I believe human beings are meaning-making machines. I believe Star Wars Episode IV is the best of the bunch. I believe humanity can be better than we have been. I believe that spring will come. I believe that love matters. I believe it is not incumbent on me to finish the work. I believe I am enjoined to begin anyway.

That's one of my contributions to a new collection of liturgical poetry and artwork arising out of the avodah blessing of the Shabbat amidah, co-created by members of Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group. (I'll enclose my prayer below in plaintext for those who need it in that format.) 

We begin our offering by asking some of the questions this piece of liturgy prompts for us:

Is service the same as prayer? Is all work a form of service? How do we (want to) serve today? These questions, and others, animate our collective offering on the theme of avodah. We hope that our offering serves to open up your deep questions, too.  

You can find the whole offering here: Avodah / Service. There's work by Trisha Arlin, Joanne Fink, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, R. David Zaslow, and me.  I love how we each chose different facets of the prayer to unpack, riff on, and uplift. As always, I think that together our contributions make up something that's greater than the sum of its parts. 

I serve today

I serve today by turning off the news.

I serve by refusing to blame everyone or anyone.

I serve by re-training myself not to check 

to find out what terrible thing has happened 

in the last fifteen minutes. I serve by affirming

it’s okay to feel joy even in times like these. 

By taking teenagers to the nursing home

and afterward praising the adolescent boy

who answered the repeated questions kindly

as though each time were the first.

I serve by admitting I don’t have the answers.

By promising I’m here for what you need

and meaning it. By reminding us to focus

on the horizon, the fixed point, our hope for better

that we may not live to reach. And that’s okay.

Judaism was here long before we were.

Someday our childrens’ childrens’ children

might cross the border into promise –

into lions lying down with lambs, into vines 

and fig trees and enough water to grow them,

and no one ever again will take our rights away,

no one ever again will make us afraid.

--Rachel Barenblat

Reading the news
is like
waking into
still having
dead parents.

Microplastics
and wars
persist.
Permafrost melts.
Hillsides burn.

Soon, in charge
of health:
a guy
who doesn't trust
vaccines.

No limbic system
was made
for this.
I am
a cracked jar.

I don't like
what I've woven
from my outrage,
every ugly headline
a bold slash
of the wrong color.
What dissonant plaid,
plasticine fabric
dyed with arguments
about who counts.
Righteous indignation
too easily curdles.
Every choice
lays a thread.
Source of Mercy --
Shekhinah wearing
embroidery glasses,
Your golden scissors
like the ones
my mother used --
untie my tangles.

Plasticine fabric. I just read the fascinating essay Ghana Must Go, so those ubiquitous bags are on my mind. 

Arguments / about who counts. This moment in the United States seems full of those: are immigrants fully human? Are trans people? (Yes and yes, obviously.)

Every choice. In the words of the Maggid of Kozhnitz on Chayyei Sarah, "The days of our lives are garments for the soul." 

Source of Mercy... untie my tangles. See אנא בכח, part of Friday night liturgy.

"Make the ark with rooms and pens."
Include thick creamy paper, soft
as brushed cotton, and enough ink
to write our way through.

None of us asked to be born into
the generation that might lose
everything: not just homes
falling into the waters

from North Carolina to Alaska
but also democracy. Not just
a free press, freedom to be Jewish,
freedom to not be pregnant

but also the capacity to draw
a full breath. Who does that anymore?
God, please tell me that somewhere
on this rickety boat, tucked

beside hay bales or the barrels
for collecting rain, I'll find hope.
We understand the physics
behind rainbows now, but

I'm still holding You to Your promise
that the cycles of day and night
will never again be blotted out
from the face of the earth.

"[Make it an ark with compartments (kinim)” - with rooms (kilin) and pens (medorin).]" Genesis Rabbah 31:9. Yes, I know the original text is referring to animal pens, not fountain pens.

North Carolina to Alaska. I'm thinking of Hurricane Helene on the east coast, and of recent devastating floods in Kotzebue in the far north and west.

But also democracy. See Trump tells supporters they won't have to vote in the future.

A free press. See We must fear for freedom of the press under a second Trump administration.

Freedom to be Jewish. See Trump says Jewish voters will bear 'a lot' of blame if he loses.

Freedom to not be pregnant. See If Trump wins the election, Idaho's extreme abortion ban could go nationwide. 

Capacity to draw / a full breath. See What is the no. 1 leading cause of stress for you?

"Your promise." See Genesis 8:21-22.