Havdalah #18: Honoring Palestinian Mothers, Food Bank, and the Feast of the Ascension

4 Iyar, 5784 / May 11, 2024

, and

May 12, 2024

Hello Neighbors,

It is springtime, and I am living in dissonance. I see trees overflowing with raucous color, while people in power continue to support oppression here at home and genocide here in our world. I am doing my best to be with it all, to be with prayer and picnics and vigils and action — not to do it all, but to do what I can and to be with it. I remind myself that none of us are holding this alone. I am thinking of, among others, the students across the country protesting in support of Palestine, and the student journalists covering these protests. We do not all hold everything the same; we are all, in our own ways, holding this painful and wondrous springtime. I’m grateful for that.

Read on for some ways to advocate and for a moving reflection from Katherine on the Feast of the Ascension.

In solidarity,

Lee

The words "What's On" in front of a silhouette of protestors, with roses on either side

Community Gathering Honoring Palestinian Mothers

When: Sunday, May 12, 2:30pm
Where: Michael S. Van Leesten Memorial Bridge, Providence, RI 02903
This Mother’s Day, join multiple community organizations to honor Palestinian mothers — despite their suffering, Palestinian mothers and the women-led resistance are a vital part of the Palestinian struggle. In the face of massacres, expulsion, dispossession, genocidal wars, and the surveillance and control tactics of occupation, Palestinian mothers have shown Sumud that declares to the occupier: You may break our bones, but you cannot break our spirit! Join this community gathering to honor the mother-martyrs, to pray, to rally and to share food together, with resolve and commitment for a Free Palestine.
Please bring a dish to share with the community and a message to share with mothers in Gaza.
Info for Gathering Honoring Palestinian Mothers

Continuing Actions for Palestine

Power Half-Hours for Gaza

When: every day, Monday through Friday, 3:00pm EST
Where: online
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) is holding Power Half-Hours for Gaza every day — join us as we channel our fury and sorrow into collective action to stop genocide.
Power Half-Hours for Gaza Registration

JVP RI Weekly Flyering

When: Every Wednesday, 5:00pm-6:00pm
Where: Providence Train Station, 100 Gaspee Street, Providence, RI 02903
JVP RI invites all to join them in their efforts to spread the word about their work and simple actions people can take to demand an end to the genocide in Palestine. They meet on the Statehouse side of the train station.

Weekly Kaddish

When: Every Sunday, 1:00pm-1:30pm
Where: Michael Van Leesten Pedestrian Bridge, Providence, RI 02903
JVP RI and allies will be hosting a weekly gathering on Sundays to recite the Mourners Kaddish and communally grieve the Palestinians murdered by the Israeli military. You need not be Jewish to attend; all are welcome to participate.

Ceasefire Today Toolkit

This toolkit has a variety of links, including call scripts, groups accepting donations, phone banks, petitions, and more.
Ceasefire Today Toolkit

News Coverage

As always, especially when getting news from social media, be aware of who is sharing information and why they’re doing it.
Al Jazeera Coverage of the War on Gaza has continued to be a reliable source.
- Note: you may have heard that Al Jazeera has been banned from Israel; it is still trying to do good reporting in Gaza and Palestine. However, it has been shut down from operating in, reporting from, or broadcasting to Israel, and the future of information output from Gaza is still up in the air.
- Al Jazeera description of the shutdown

The words "Bill Tracker" next to a set of scales, with roses on either side

Expand Medicare Savings Program

Bill Number: S2399 / H7333

Summary: This bill will expand eligibility for the Medicare Savings Program and make healthcare more affordable for many lower-income seniors and people with disabilities.

Our position: FOR / IN SUPPORT OF

Current Status: These bills are currently being “held for further study”, and we are urging our legislators to move them forward for a vote.

Resources: The Protect Our Healthcare Coalition has an excellent summary of the bills and a template you can use when contacting your legislators: S2399 / H7333 Advocacy Guide.

The words "Mutual Aid" surrounded by interlocking hands, with roses on either side

RI Food Bank

The Rhode Island Food Bank distributed 16 million pounds of food this past year, and it was sorely needed. While it feels good to drop cans or cereal in collection boxes at your work place or apartment complex, the money goes farther and feeds more people if you give it to RI Food Bank directly (they can buy wholesale! And buy fresh veggies!).
Reoccurring donations, even if they’re a smaller amount than a one off, are often more useful because they mean the organization has a better understanding of its budget.
RI Food Bank Annual Report

Donation Link for the RI Food Bank

The word "Sidebar" between a scroll and a courtroom, with roses on either side

Katherine (she / her)

This last Thursday was the Feast of the Ascension. Tomorrow is also the Feast of the Ascension, because Anglo-American Catholics only like to go to church on Sunday. It is the feast commemorating Jesus’ rise (ascension! We’re not clever with names) into heaven in the presence of the apostles, and comes near the end of the Easter Season, the forty days after He rose from the dead, during which He made a number of rather interesting house calls.

Now, aside from the many, many, many legitimately theological implications of this (the subsequent sending out of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ return to the Godhead, so on and so forth) the bit that’s always struck me is how defensive a certain type of scholar gets about it. If you’re the sort of nerd to have study Bibles and read theology (me), you keep running across commentaries that take great pains to explain away why Jesus goes “up” into heaven, often with a heavy dose of pity and condescension for the first century observers. They were primitive, they didn’t understand that heaven wasn’t actually in the sky, etc. etc.

We get it. God ain’t hanging out on the moon. And honestly, methinks the lady doth protest too much. I’m pretty sure that the people watching whatever happened there two millennia ago also thought it was weird; thus why they wrote it down to try and make sense of it, and the best sense they could make was to say that “He had been taken up into a cloud”.

But up doesn’t just mean the sky. I read a book on semiotics ages ago, and one of the things it talked about was the physicality of the metaphors we use — we grow up, we stand tall, we rise to the occasion. And for all that a certain type of scholar (and a certain type of person, if we’re being honest) likes to throw shade on the apostles, here we are, 2000 years later, and we still need directional metaphors to talk about… everything really.

I can’t speak to all cultures, obviously, or even all people, but to me — the sky is freedom, the domain of birds and flight. It’s awe and beauty, littered with stars and the moon and the sun and eclipses. Height is hard work and triumph, skyscrapers built and mountains climbed, a place from which you can see how far you’ve come. It means remoteness, distance, hope, Voyager 1’s code reprogrammed from 15 billion miles away to bypass a malfunctioning chip, our voices in fifty-five different languages telling the universe hello. These aren’t the only things that “up” can mean, of course: the sky can be a threat; height could be vertigo. But that’s not what I think of, not my first association.

I understand the impulse to explain away what happened, to make it purely metaphorical, to make it spiritual, disconnected from the gross matter of the world. Hell, when I’ve got a headache or stomach cramps or I’m so tired my eyes feel like sand — I get it; I hate physicality too. But no luck; we live in bodies and we die in bodies and if the Bible’s right when we’re resurrected we’ll have bodies then too. Perfected, presumably no longer with headaches (or periods, knock on wood) but still bodies. Jesus ate, He spoke, He had his scars still; they’re how Thomas recognized Him.

And if Jesus had a body, then that body had to leave, had to go somewhere — unless you’re in favor of teleportation, in which case, you do you. And if He does go — where better than up, to freedom, to awe, beauty, triumph, distance, joy…

Where else would He go but up?

Needle Drop: “But the Wages”, Hozier