Rimonim
Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation
Published on 9. January 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
122 pages
978-1-961814-17-2 (ISBN)
Description
"Aurora Levins Morales's poetry radiates wisdom, warmth, and fortitude. A prophetic, life-centered guide for times of tumult and struggle." -Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents
Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of rupture and uncertainty, beloved movement poet Aurora Levins Morales brings us a prayer book for the street, for reconstituting the future through our gestures in the present. In these poems of devotion and protest, Levins Morales speaks across and through time with an undeniably prophetic voice.
Written in collaboration with various communities looking to honor, unravel, and rebuild Jewish liturgies, Rimonim is a book of lyric in the most immediate sense-of poems that are meant to be read and sung. Rooted in tradition and flowering in the tumultuous present, these poems will both accompany specific Jewish practices and offer inspiration for the sacred work of human liberation, where joy meets justice.
Ultimately, these forty-nine poems honor the forty-ninth year, when it was taught that everything in the land would begin anew, everything redistributed and freed, when the people would see that everything on this earth was "ready to wake and bloom / just under the skin of what is."
Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of rupture and uncertainty, beloved movement poet Aurora Levins Morales brings us a prayer book for the street, for reconstituting the future through our gestures in the present. In these poems of devotion and protest, Levins Morales speaks across and through time with an undeniably prophetic voice.
Written in collaboration with various communities looking to honor, unravel, and rebuild Jewish liturgies, Rimonim is a book of lyric in the most immediate sense-of poems that are meant to be read and sung. Rooted in tradition and flowering in the tumultuous present, these poems will both accompany specific Jewish practices and offer inspiration for the sacred work of human liberation, where joy meets justice.
Ultimately, these forty-nine poems honor the forty-ninth year, when it was taught that everything in the land would begin anew, everything redistributed and freed, when the people would see that everything on this earth was "ready to wake and bloom / just under the skin of what is."
Reviews / Votes
"Aurora Levins Morales's poetry radiates wisdom, warmth, and fortitude. A prophetic, life-centered guide for times of tumult and struggle."-Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents
"Don't you need a blessing from the grandmothers? A reconsecration of your relationship to Earth? Then you need the words of this 'fierce Latina Jew holding out a rose to Palestine.' In these poems, as always, Aurora Levins Morales reminds us that who we are has never been simple but who we are is also holy. These are the poems that invite us to act accordingly."
-Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde
"An answered prayer! A prayer itself! This book is such a glorious remedy to carry us through our days and seasons. Drawing on a lineage of revolutionary poet-prophets, Aurora Levins Morales roots into the fertile margins and weaves the liturgy we need for these times of fire and crisis. Infused with water and stone, these prayer-poems irrigate and ground us, (re)orienting and (re)organizing us to earth, to each other, to ourselves, and to what we hold sacred. Blessed are we and blessed is she for bringing forth this generous, gorgeous, much needed and desired offering."
-Dori Midnight, community care practitioner, ritual leader, and writer
"Rimonim is a sacred offering. Simultaneously rooted and ephemeral, sensory and transcendent, of the earth and of the spirits, this book is a gift to organizers and seekers everywhere. Aurora Levins Morales weaves together our past with our present, daring us to imagine a future born from our most liberated dreams and desires. It's one of those 'keep by our bedside' books that I will return to over again, with deep admiration and gratitude."
-Audrey Sasson, executive director of Jews for Racial & Economic Justice
"Aurora Levins Morales's liturgical work is not just poetry; it's a divine echo of comfort, legend, and ethereal beauty that resonates deeply with those in need of ethically aligned spiritual nourishment. In Rimonim, Levins Morales masterfully weaves her ancestral spiritual heritage with sophisticated, nuanced, and precise understanding of the most urgent calls for justice and liberation of our time. This is the poetry of a true tzaddik, whose legendary work facilitates healing and opens portals of possibility and hope, guiding us toward a more inspired, compassionate, and just future."
-April N. Baskin, founding director of Joyous Justice
"This healing, generous collection from the voice of a treasured, prophetic elder in medicine for the long haul. An abundant collection of seeds, the poems of Rimonim celebrate and affirm that we are interconnected, embedded in a sacred web of those who rest, rise, labor, love, sow, weave, grieve, and give. These breathtaking poems and prayers invite us to lay down our 'illusions of separation' and to know that 'each wound is full of possibility.' Rimonim offers so much to our multilingual, multiracial, intergenerational, diasporic Jewish communities and movements for justice. I am so grateful for this long-awaited collection and the world conjured within it. 'Bless me,' Levins Morales writes and generations will echo, 'for this is the time and I am awake.' Que viva! Amen!"
-Monica Gomery, author of Might Kindred
"Aurora Levins Morales has gifted us an exquisite collection of poetic prayer and prophecy that can lift our spirits, embolden us to listen to the truth of our innermost experience, and open the channel of holy connection that flows between us, our ancestors, and 'the breath of life in all things.' For those of us tho already engage with Jewish liturgy, this book will change the way we pray. For those of us who struggle to recognize ourselves in Jewish liturgy, this book will make it possible for us to pray. And for all of us, whether or not we have a relationship with Jewish prayer, this book opens a window into the beauty and struggle of a life lived with integrity, clarify, and sacred connection to all that is."
-Rabbi Dev Noily, Kehilla Community Synagogue
"Aurora Levins Morales has provided the words we need at a time when our pain and yearning have rendered so many of us speechless. Liturgy and lament, prose and praise, this collection represents an extraordinary exploration of the landscape of the soul. Simultaneously cosmic and intimate, Levins Morales's writing is populated with characters who live with and within you, from abuelos to garment workers to biblical matriarchs. This volume promises to be beloved in the bedroom and on the bimah, and everywhere in between."
-Rabbi Michael Rothbaum, Congregation Bet Haverim
"Morales's poems, which are a combination of prose poems, litanies, and lyrical verse, are grounded in appreciation of nature and the connectedness between the elements and all of humanity."
-Jamie Wendt, Jewish Book Council
"Rimonim asks its readers to ponder different ways of viewing Jewish tradition. One does not have to completely agree with Morales in order to appreciate the beauty of her writing. But where she excels is in challenging our complacencies. Her writing adds richness to the Jewish world and her poems/writing could easily find their place in religious services and rituals."
-Rachel Esserman, The Reporter
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations throughout (color and black & white)
Dimensions
Height: 278 mm
Width: 201 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
418 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-961814-17-2 (9781961814172)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Aurora Levins Morales is a cuir Ashkenazi Boricua writer of poetry, essays, and fiction. A child of blacklisted communist parents, she grew up immersed in social justice movements and the poetry of liberation, and came into public voice as part of the collective eruptions of radical art of the 1970s and '80s. She is the author of nine books, including Medicine Stories, Kindling, Remedios, and Silt. Her poetry is widely used in synagogues and churches, in schools and at rallies, painted on walls and recited at weddings, translated into seven languages and reprinted in dozens of anthologies. After forty years in the San Francisco Bay Area, she now lives at Finca la Lluvia, an agro-poetry project in the western mountains of Boriken, also known as Puerto Rico.The Story of What is Broken is Whole: An Aurora Levins Morales Reader will be published in 2024 by Duke University Press. Find her on Patreon and at www.auroralevinsmorales.com. Born in 1953, Juana Alicia had many rich cultural influences growing up in Detroit, near Diego Rivera's Industry murals, in a Spanish and Yiddish-speaking household within a majority Black neighborhood. In her teens and early 20's, she was swept up by the Chicanx Movement, particularly the United Farm Workers struggle. She was recruited by Cesar Chavez to work with the union in Salinas, which she did from 1971-76. This was key to her education as an artist and activist. She has worked as a muralist, printmaker, sculptor, illustrator, and studio painter since then. She worked for forty years as an educator: elementary, migrant, and bilingual education, in arts academies and universities, before retiring seven years ago to dedicate herself full-time to her artwork. Her experience as a mother and a grandmother has also informed and given greater meaning to her artistic production.
Her style, akin to genres of contemporary Latin American literary movements, can be characterized as magical and social realism, and her work is frequently inspired by literature.
She has moved back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border for many years, and since 2006, has resided part-time in Merida, Yucatan, and in Berkeley, California. She has created murals in both places, and her binational experience has inspired the project which she is currently completing with her author husband, Tirso Gonzalez Araiza: to illustrate the Yucatec Mayanfolktale, LA X'TABAY, which will be exhibited this summer at the SanFrancisco Arts Commission Gallery and in the fall at the Museum of Anthropology in Merida. Working in both countries has enabled her to form connections and create projects with artists, environmental activists, feminists and indigenous communities in Mexico and the United States. Roan Boucher is a trans disabled Jewish artist, parent, and facilitator. In 2010 he cofounded the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA), a worker co-op of facilitators and strategists supporting movement organizations. He makes art about movements, queers, Judaism, and liberation. He is rooted in the Southeast, on Eno, Tutelo, Saponi, Occaneechi, Shakori, and Tuscarora land. Olivia Levins Holden (She/They) is a queer, mixed Boricuamuralist, organizer, artist, and educator living on Dakota homeland, Mni Sota Makoce, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Olivia's work explores many ways that the arts can transform and support movements, tell stories, plant seeds, and combat toxic narratives. They center processes of community involvement and collective design, drawing from conversations and people's history to create collaborative murals and public art, believing that the process is as essential as the final artwork. Since 2009, they have created and led the creation of murals Waves of Change/Oleadas de Cambio (2015), Defend, Nurture, Grown Phillips (2019), Wiidookodaadiwag/ They Help Each Other (2019), and Ritmos y Raices de Resistencia (2021). With her artist collective, Studio Thalo, Olivia created live painted mobile murals to reflect conversations and events.
Olivia is a 2022 McKnight Fellow for Community Engaged Artists, was a 2015 recipient of the Forecast Public Art project grant and has served as facilitator and mentor for project-based learning through programs such as Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES), Latinx Muralism Apprenticeship, Studio 400, and is a founding member of the Creatives After Curfew collective. She serves as the Art of Radical Collaboration (ARC) Manager at Hope Community, Inc where she has trained artists and led community murals with youth and adults through the Power of Vision (POV) Mural project since 2017 and facilitates the Transformational Creative Strategies Training (TRCSTR). She has a BA in History from Smith College. Ayeola Omolara Kaplan is a Black and queer Atlanta based pop-surrealist painter. Through depicting the intersections of identity, class, and spirituality, she hopes to contribute to the moving canon of revolutionary art. She creates with the belief that art can be weaponized as self-defense against an anti-truth culture plagued by unhealed generational trauma. Her work features empowering and electrifying imagery created to energize people, as well as celebrate marginalized folks carrying themselves with clout. The pieces exist as spiritual tools created with the intention to manifest a blissful and equitable future. Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist and social justice warrior/ healer. He is from Maricao, Puerto Rico and works out of a storefront studio in Minneapolis in the US. He closely connected with artists, activists and organizers throughout the social justice ecosystem.
Website: www.rlmartstudio.com Wendy Elisheva Somerson is a non-binary white Ashkenazi Jewish somatic healter, writer, visual artist, and activist who helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. They facilitate Ruach, body-based Jewish healing groups held in an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, and feminist framework.
Instagram: @wendyelisheva
Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CorvidCrossingStudio Arielle Tonkin is a queer mixed Moroccan and Ashkenazi Jewish artist, educator, and spiritual director working to dismantle white supremacy through arts & culture work and Jewish and interfaith education work. Arielle weaves relationships and materializes conversations: the Muslim-Jewish Arts Fellowship, Arts Jam for Social Change, Tzadek Lab, SVARA and Inside Out Wisdom in Action are among their networks of accountability, collective power, creative collaboration and care. Arielle's artwork and social practice presences, queers, and formalizes the belief that healing through relationship can shift the fabric of social space and eventually, one braided thread at a time, shift the structure of the physical world.
Her style, akin to genres of contemporary Latin American literary movements, can be characterized as magical and social realism, and her work is frequently inspired by literature.
She has moved back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border for many years, and since 2006, has resided part-time in Merida, Yucatan, and in Berkeley, California. She has created murals in both places, and her binational experience has inspired the project which she is currently completing with her author husband, Tirso Gonzalez Araiza: to illustrate the Yucatec Mayanfolktale, LA X'TABAY, which will be exhibited this summer at the SanFrancisco Arts Commission Gallery and in the fall at the Museum of Anthropology in Merida. Working in both countries has enabled her to form connections and create projects with artists, environmental activists, feminists and indigenous communities in Mexico and the United States. Roan Boucher is a trans disabled Jewish artist, parent, and facilitator. In 2010 he cofounded the Anti-Oppression Resource and Training Alliance (AORTA), a worker co-op of facilitators and strategists supporting movement organizations. He makes art about movements, queers, Judaism, and liberation. He is rooted in the Southeast, on Eno, Tutelo, Saponi, Occaneechi, Shakori, and Tuscarora land. Olivia Levins Holden (She/They) is a queer, mixed Boricuamuralist, organizer, artist, and educator living on Dakota homeland, Mni Sota Makoce, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Olivia's work explores many ways that the arts can transform and support movements, tell stories, plant seeds, and combat toxic narratives. They center processes of community involvement and collective design, drawing from conversations and people's history to create collaborative murals and public art, believing that the process is as essential as the final artwork. Since 2009, they have created and led the creation of murals Waves of Change/Oleadas de Cambio (2015), Defend, Nurture, Grown Phillips (2019), Wiidookodaadiwag/ They Help Each Other (2019), and Ritmos y Raices de Resistencia (2021). With her artist collective, Studio Thalo, Olivia created live painted mobile murals to reflect conversations and events.
Olivia is a 2022 McKnight Fellow for Community Engaged Artists, was a 2015 recipient of the Forecast Public Art project grant and has served as facilitator and mentor for project-based learning through programs such as Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES), Latinx Muralism Apprenticeship, Studio 400, and is a founding member of the Creatives After Curfew collective. She serves as the Art of Radical Collaboration (ARC) Manager at Hope Community, Inc where she has trained artists and led community murals with youth and adults through the Power of Vision (POV) Mural project since 2017 and facilitates the Transformational Creative Strategies Training (TRCSTR). She has a BA in History from Smith College. Ayeola Omolara Kaplan is a Black and queer Atlanta based pop-surrealist painter. Through depicting the intersections of identity, class, and spirituality, she hopes to contribute to the moving canon of revolutionary art. She creates with the belief that art can be weaponized as self-defense against an anti-truth culture plagued by unhealed generational trauma. Her work features empowering and electrifying imagery created to energize people, as well as celebrate marginalized folks carrying themselves with clout. The pieces exist as spiritual tools created with the intention to manifest a blissful and equitable future. Ricardo Levins Morales is an artist and social justice warrior/ healer. He is from Maricao, Puerto Rico and works out of a storefront studio in Minneapolis in the US. He closely connected with artists, activists and organizers throughout the social justice ecosystem.
Website: www.rlmartstudio.com Wendy Elisheva Somerson is a non-binary white Ashkenazi Jewish somatic healter, writer, visual artist, and activist who helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. They facilitate Ruach, body-based Jewish healing groups held in an anti-Zionist, anti-racist, and feminist framework.
Instagram: @wendyelisheva
Website: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CorvidCrossingStudio Arielle Tonkin is a queer mixed Moroccan and Ashkenazi Jewish artist, educator, and spiritual director working to dismantle white supremacy through arts & culture work and Jewish and interfaith education work. Arielle weaves relationships and materializes conversations: the Muslim-Jewish Arts Fellowship, Arts Jam for Social Change, Tzadek Lab, SVARA and Inside Out Wisdom in Action are among their networks of accountability, collective power, creative collaboration and care. Arielle's artwork and social practice presences, queers, and formalizes the belief that healing through relationship can shift the fabric of social space and eventually, one braided thread at a time, shift the structure of the physical world.