We spoke with Aurora Levins Morales about the Rimonim Liturgy Project. The Rimonim facebook page describes the project as a “collectively sponsored poet-in-residence project for Puerto Rican Jewish poet Aurora Levins Morales to create new liturgy that is fully inclusive of Indigenous Jews and Jews of Color, rooted in global, diasporic Jewish cultures, is in accountable relationship with local indigenous people wherever we’re located, and recognizes the danger and opportunity of our ecological crisis.”
On her website, Aurora Levins Morales describes her goals for the project:
I am imagining liturgy that is rooted in global diasporic Jewish cultures, fully integrates Jews of Color, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews into the center of Jewish practice, not the margins, is joyous and radical and richly blends the depth of meaning we find in words repeated for thousands of years with the spiritual, moral and political needs of this moment, in which we either dismantle the systemic injustices that drive the destruction of our ecosystem or we watch our world crumble away.
Aurora’s poem “V’ahavta” and her Yom Kippur sermon on joy and social justice are glimpses of what this project will look like!
Learn more about the Rimonim Liturgy Project and support their efforts via their IndieGogo page.
If you want to listen to other discussions that we’ve had with Aurora Levins Morales, check out Episode 24: Aurora Levins Morales, Episode 36: Understanding Anti-Semitism, and Short: Letters from Earth.
