Join the Temenos community, Rabbi Zachi Asher, master musicians, teachers & friends to celebrate the ceremonies of the New Year (in-person or live-streamed). Please bring a plant friend … in any form, in a pot, as medicine, to gift to friends or bring home changed.
Our ceremonies are woven with transportive music, philosophical depth, breathing and meditative quiet, playfulness, tenderness, moments for healing, mourning, vulnerability and transformation. Everyone is welcome! Human ceremonies, born of Jewish and post-Jewish traditions. We include the highlights of the tradition, our hearts attending to the repair of the personal and the collective.
We will have services in Brooklyn and Upstate, see service times and locations below:
First Unitarian Congregational Society of Brooklyn
119 Pierrepont Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201
CEREMONIES
Erev Rosh Hashanah (Sept. 11th, 6:30pm Brooklyn/Streaming)
Rosh Hashanah Day 1 (Sept. 12th, 10am Brooklyn/Streaming)
Rosh Hashanah Day 2 Morning (Sept. 13th, 10am Kiva, Stoneridge)
Rosh Hashanah Day 2 Concert (Sept. 13th, 6pm Full Circle, Gardiner)
Kol Nidrei (Sept. 20th, 6:30pm Brooklyn/Streaming)
Yom Kippur (Sept. 21st, 10am Brooklyn/Streaming)
Neilah (Sept. 21st, 5pm Location Upstate TBD)
All Brooklyn events will be live-streamed.
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OPENING QUESTIONS
How would a plant teach you to sing? Whose exhalations are you breathing? Which plants compose you? What things do you do that a plant does? Do you eat light? Do you communicate alchemically? Do you root? What are you rooted to? How do you root? Can a plant be evil or destroy? Is eating salad murderous? In the private tenderness of your being when you greet a flower, what happens? Are we humans the newest shoots of the Tree of Life, with the most to learn from those that precede us? Monotheism banished trees from the sanctuary - how have we severed plants from the sacred and how are we returning them to each other? What role do plants play in colonialism? What materials are you putting your hands in? What metaphors are you filling your imagination with? In days of climate destruction and AI insanity, what is the role of plants? Do plants have Buddha nature? What are the plants teaching you? Which plants are you bringing to services?
Homework
Inspirations
