We’ll erect a mourning tent…
THIS THURSDAY:
The Shalom Center’s
Tent of Mourning
Bay Area Ta’anit Esther / Fast of Esther Actfest
More than a month after the attacks of October 7th, we learned that Israeli activist and co-founder of Women Wage Peace, Vivian Silver — who was thought to have been abducted by Hamas — had actually been killed at her kibbutz in the south of Israel. Immediately, amidst the shock and devastation of the loss, came beautiful and poignant tributes.
This one, written by Samah Salaime, a Palestinian feminist and peace activist and a friend and colleague to Vivian, especially moved me. After sharing about Vivian’s life and accomplishments, and how she kept imagining that Vivian would be eventually found safe, Salaime declares, “We’ll erect a mourning tent out of misery and regret over the mountain of victims and the destruction that remains.”
At that time, we at The Shalom Center were trying to discern what we could offer to our broader community in the aftermath of October 7th. As an organization committed to reimagining Jewish holidays as portals for public prophetic action, we were asking what was the actifest — “actifest festival” — that we could organize, that would serve this moment and our community.
We had already been brainstorming different ways that we might transform Purim for that purpose. And so we devised, with the help of Arlene Goldbard, the Chapter 9 Project — original rewrites of Purim’s bloody Chapter 9 — which was released last week and has already received rave reviews and some great coverage from JTA and the Forward.
The other project we began to mount was inspired directly by Salaime’s words: we would actually erect a mourning tent. On Ta’anit Esther. The Fast of Esther. Which directly precedes Purim and serves as a day of communal mourning. Because we needed — and still need — a place to grieve.
Before even getting to mourn the victims of October 7th, our hearts broke as Gaza began being bombed and Gazans began being killed by the Israeli military, first in the thousands, and then the tens of thousands.
We are all — all of us whose hearts are open and tender enough to grieve both Palestinians and Israelis — in a state of prolonged and bone-deep grief. And even if the killing were to end today — Please YHVH, may it be so! — there are well over 30,000 innocent people in Gaza and Israel whose lives have been taken for what? Hundreds of thousands of people who have lost a loved one. Entire family lines wiped out. Hostages still being held. Prisoners still being held. Entire communities razed. Hopes and dreams for something better buried under the rubble next to severed limbs and precious lives taken decades too soon. The mountain of victims and destruction over the last 163 days — and the years and decades before that, too — is calling on us to grieve in ways our ancient fast day was humbly designed to hold.
This Thursday, on Ta’anit Esther, you are all invited to mourn with us. Find a spot on the floor, or on a pillow, and simply sit. Or take a walk. Or do laundry. Quietly. Letting the mourning wash over you.
And if you’re in the Bay Area, please drop by the Tent of Mourning, a full day event — from 5:30am-9:30pm — with over twenty facilitated sessions and workshops, self-directed art and ritual, a day-long sacred grief fire, and a communal break fast, all designed to help us embody Ta’anit Esther this year in ways that are so desperately needed. All designed to crack open in us something new, a new sense of possibility, rooted in the humanity of all life, pointing and beckoning and praying us towards a new path forward. Because we so desperately need a different way.
See below for the day’s schedule. Check out the website. If you’re in the Bay Area, we’d love to see you there. If you’re not in the Bay Area, please forward this email or the website link or the blurb below to friends or family or colleagues who are there, encouraging them to join. And as we continue to grow into a national movement of sacred justice rooted in the Jewish calendar cycle, we look forward to working with you — wherever you are in the country — to bring transformative actifests to your communities.
One last note: when Mordechai goes to Esther in the Purim story, trying to convince her to approach the king and save their people, Esther agrees on one condition: that Mordechai must go gather the rest of the Jews of Shushan and have them mourn also. This moment calls on all of us — Jew or non-Jew — to gather together and mourn. And YHVH willing, through our communal grief, we can stop the violence and then begin to put the pieces back together in a way that honors the sacred and divine dignity of all of life, so the next tent we build and gather in, will be one of celebration and rejoicing.
B’shalom,
Rabbi Nate DeGroot
Associate Director, The Shalom Center
Tent of Mourning — Ta'anit Esther Actifest
Thursday, March 21 2024, 5:30am-9:30pm
Urban Adamah, 1151 Sixth St, Berkeley, CA 94710
This Ta'anit Esther / Fast of Esther (March 21st), The Shalom Center is erecting a Tent of Mourning for all whose hearts are open and tender enough to grieve both Palestinian and Israeli lives lost since and beyond October 7th. In collaboration with over a dozen local and national partners, and inspired by Queen Esther's ritualized grief in the Purim story, we are curating a full day of sessions, teachings, and self-directed ritual to support attendees in deepening and expanding their grief. With a mix of traditional and creative mourning practices, we are opening to the possibility that, through our shared mourning, new paths towards peace might shake loose for us as individuals and more broadly. Read more about the Tent of Mourning actifest (activist festival) here.