High Holidays 5784
Wisdom from Nothingness
The Archetype of Intelligence
Rabbi Zach Fredman, the Epichorus & Friends
First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn
שנה טובה
Wishing everyone a sweet new year, new avenues of intelligence new doorways in the heart, new friendships, new stories, new songs, new tears. Click on the images below for our livestreams. Digital Prayerbooks for Evening Rosh Hashanah, and Rosh Hashanah Morning.
Join Rabbi Zach Fredman, the Epichorus & friends to celebrate the ceremonies of the New Year (in-person or live-streamed).
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 - Jewish not Jewish, and everything in between. We include the highlights of the tradition, our hearts attending to the repair of the personal and the collective.
We won’t have separate programming for kids, but they’re encouraged to join the party … sing, dance, scream and heckle the rabbi.
48 Monroe Place, Brooklyn, NY 11201
Tickets are pay-what-you-wish. Tickets are included with Annual Membership, which is also pay-what-you-wish. You can purchase tickets here.
Kol Nidrei (Sept. 24th, 6:30pm)
Yom Kippur (Sept. 25th, 10:00am)
Mincha/Neilah (Sept. 25th, 5:00pm)
First Unitarian Church of Brooklyn
The nature of the mind, and how consciousness sees itself is changing. What is intelligence? What are the metaphors of mind we use, and how do they shape us? Let’s make a map of the Archetype of Intelligence, in all of its strange idiosyncratic permutations, all the ways of knowing that break the bounds of the rational dualistic mindset that instigated the scientific revolution whose end has now arrived. Let’s include the intelligence of beekeepers, the intelligence of mushrooms, mystical knowing, the intelligence of land and how particular places give rise to thought, the relationship between emotional intelligence and the art an artist makes, machine learning and our attraction to crutches of being, the intelligence of birds, the language of thunder, all the knowings our sickened culture has ostracized. What would a map of intelligence look like, if these fringe knowings were relocated to the center?
The High Holiday Epichorus line-up will feature:
Zafer Tawil on Violin & Qanun, David Lizmi on Upright Bass, Nezih Antakli on percussion & special guests, including Yacouba Sissoko (First Day Rosh).
Homework
Elul, the month leading to the new year, offers a season hungry for introspection and practices of devotion. Before we gather, each of us begins to explore our thematic concepts: prayer, communion, the interplay of sacred and mundane in daily rhythms. Here are some books we are reading together: Emmanuelle Coccia’s Metamorphosis is a wild reflection on the nature of life, bodies, interconnectedness and transformation. Becoming Animal by David Abram is a slow meandering reflection on alternative approaches to inhabiting the world. Gaston Bachelard’s, Air and Dreams, is the philosopher’s reflections on the symbolisms of wings, air, clouds, constellations, and aerial trees. God Human Animal Machine, by Meghan O’gieblyn, digs into the yearnings of human beings to map the experiences of life and world, and the parallel systems of machine learning and old religion. And Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind, is a classic introduction to the Eastern concept of Big Mind.
Past Highlights
We were deep in pandemic living. But we found a way to bring in the new year, streaming from a church turned recording studio not far from Woodstock.
