sonia | Entries tagged with kabbalah

rosefox's post on Yesod

Yesod is located in the pelvis, and to me it is about earthy, messy embodiment. No seriously, here we are, right here, exactly like this.

( Week of Yesod )

This doesn't directly answer any of the prompts, but I think it answers the essence of it, living our convictions, even when it's uncomfortable: In a zoom dance gathering I was helping to run (so I couldn't leave), I turned my video off to protest two people dancing together on video without masks even though they're not in the same household. They left the zoom call, which is a good enough outcome. I can't make anyone wear a mask, but I can be public about my passionate conviction that it's the right thing to do. At least I didn't have to watch them flaunting it and being a bad example to everyone on the call, like last time this came up.

rosefox's post on Malchut

Malchut is our embodiment of the divine, our connection to all that is, not from above coming into us, but toward the earth. All that *IS*, concretely, with dirt under our fingernails.

Here, have story that feels relevant, Pocosin by Ursula Vernon. Ran across it again today.

Is there something about Malchut and anxiety? Medicine in Malchut for anxiety? OMG the anxiety! One step, one breath at a time.

( Week of Malchut )

Election Day: I woke up thinking that sometimes not-knowing is the best part, as uncomfortable as it is, so I might as well enjoy the last few hours of it. So far nothing bad has happened, that I know of anyway (2:45pm PST). I would like this to be a Y2K scenario: a no big deal outcome because of all the work people put into preventing disaster.

Thanks again for doing this,

rosefox. It was interesting and useful as an activity to get through the time until the election, and a window on someone else's take on Kabbalah, and a reminder that the skills I worked very hard to acquire on my first run through a few years ago are still there.

rosefox's post on Netzach

I resonate with endurance and tenacity. Stubbornness. One foot in front of the other in front of the other. I don't resonate as much with vision, victory, and eternity. Except the kind of eternity that is an eternal present. I noticed around Tiferet that I feel injured in relation to vision. Flinchy, growly, like an injured cat.

( Week of Netzach )

Regarding mentors, I want to give a shoutout to RaceFail 2009, where I got a lot of my initial anti-racist education as I silently followed the blossoming of posts across the fannish internet. I appreciate all the people who turned their pain into posts and gathered links to move that struggle forward.

I like the idea of sitting with the ungraspable nature of being alive. Here we are, as bizarre as it is!

rosefox's post on Hod

( Week of Hod )

I like the idea, for tomorrow, of supporting something that's already good. I'm finding that kindness is so crucial right now, the small kindnesses of smiling, acknowledging someone's presence, making their life a little easier, appreciating when they do that for me. I have been ordering a bunch of stuff online lately, and while I'm giving the spending a bit of a side-eye, it also fits with supplying my future self, supporting artists and small businesses, and gathering gifts to send out later. I think something in me is trying to batten down for an unpredictable winter. Scared, and grieving, and reaching for comfort.

Thanks,

rosefox, for putting this structure together and giving me the opportunity to be with everything it brings up.

rosefox's post on Gevurah.

Gevurah is about strength and boundaries, and I feel like it's my home base, part of how I am in the world.

( Week of Gevurah )

I do small things toward making the world a better place all the time. Here's a goal: more people voting. This week I joined Vote Forward. I will write and send some letters.

rosefox's post on Tiferet.

Tiferet is the heart, kindness, compassion, warmth. My core, but I have trouble really sitting in it and feeling it for myself. See above about comfort zone.

( Week of Tiferet, with grumpiness )

I am posting here about my activism, and reading what others post all over dreamwidth about what they're doing, and that keeps me company. Having conversations with friends also helps not to feel so alone.

I am doing what feels right to do, balanced with my physical and mental health. I feel immensely, urgently pushed by the world disintegrating around us. I need to learn to push myself less, not more.

rosefox is adapting the Jewish practice of counting the omer, Kabbalah, to the seven weeks until the US election. See their initial post here: "Torah umitzvot, chukim umishpatim". The title looks intimidating (to me) but the rest of the post feels approachable and practical (to me). There are great links for suggested reading.

I worked through counting the omer in 2015 with a focus on connecting with my body. That was an intense experience! I'm tentatively going to follow along with

rosefox's posts, although rereading [locked] posts from 2015 gave me a rush of nausea. Intense, like I said.

My issue with political donations is that they're used for advertising, and I hate advertising. As

rosefox says, I'm giving myself permission to go with what works for me. I made a couple of donations to group slates recently on ActBlue. I also donated to local mayoral candidate Sarah Iannarone, since I have Opinions about our current mayor.

But mostly I like to donate to local organizations that help people directly. I often donate to Sisters of the Road Cafe who feed houseless people. I just made a donation to Street Roots, our local street newspaper, and I put "In Memory Of Ruth Bader Ginsburg" because why not. We are each working toward justice in our own way, and justice requires that everyone have shelter and food.

For my long-term organization, I recently joined the NAACP, on the theory that they know what they need and how to get there, and I can hand them money to support that.

My own social change actions: writing my articles and making them freely available, continuing to read and learn about social justice, biking for transportation, buying locally grown food... As much as I can, I've tried to shape my life to be part of the world I want to create.

Looking forward to seeing what other folks post about this as well! I think it might be a useful process whether you have a Jewish background or not.

Kabbalah helps us repair internal and external connections.
Weave Your Body Whole

New book response at Curious, Healing. Have you read this? Comments welcome!
"Rising Strong" by Brene Brown

Word of the Year
Last year's word was "music." I took a year of piano lessons and went to a week-long singing camp in the summer. This year's word is "ease". I want to treat myself with kindness as I choose what to take on. What is your word of the year for 2016?

Curious, Healing is a blog, and you're welcome to comment there or here about the books. The articles don't have a comment section. You're welcome to comment here or send me email with any thoughts.

If you want the monthly newsletter in your inbox, along with news about my practice, you can subscribe here.

I'm gathering resources and information about Kabbalah by women. I'll update this post as I learn more.

http://kolaleph.org/2015/03/30/jewish-renewal-omer-offerings-online/ has lots of resources, some of which I'm listing here. (via a coworker, who also said, "I liked that idea about not acquiring some already-formed idea like a feminist reading of kabbalah...but being a feminist reading kabbalah." I like that too.)

Through the Gates: A Practice for Counting the Omer by Susan Windle (link has a Kindle preview).

An Omer calendar with meanings for the sefirot, by Rabbi Goldie Milgram. Also Omer blog posts, sadly interrupted by computer troubles.

Daily Omer poetry by the Velveteen Rabbi, Rachel Barenblat (via

liv).

Two books about feminist Judaism: Lynn Gottleib's "She Who Dwells Within", and Leah Novick's "On the Wings of the Shekhinah" (via

batdina). I got one of these at Powells, and requested the other at the library, and hope I can keep up with the stack of books to read.

This search helps me notice how many wise strong Jewish women I have in my life. What a gift.

"The higher truth is that our experiences are absolutely fitting for each of us." I thought the Holocaust would prevent any Jew from letting that pass their lips, much less committing it to writing in a "spiritual" book.

I find it personally, viscerally offensive. I can't live in a world where I chose or deserved, at any level, the terrible things that were done to me. Not as part of the Holocaust, but perhaps as a sort of backwash from it, since I was raised by people directly affected by it.

How could a Rabbi say that, one old enough that he might have been alive during the Holocaust? In a chapter about compassion and empathy, no less. Look someone in the eye and say that, someone with a number tattooed on them. Look at a photo of skeletal people rescued from a death camp and say that. Look at someone raped as a child and say that.

I was just writing with my aunt about her aunts and uncles, and she wrote, this one and this one and that one were assassinated in the Holocaust. (In Spanish.) They couldn't possibly have deserved that. Nor did my aunt deserve to grow up without extended family around her.

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Sonia Connolly

Entries tagged with kabbalah

Counting up to the election: Yesod and Malchut

Counting up to the election: Netzach and Hod

Counting up to the election: Gevurah and Tiferet

Counting up to the election: Chesed

January Sundown Healing Arts Newsletter

Kabbalah, by women

I can't believe a Rabbi wrote this

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June 2025

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