“How do we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?”

Our Rise from Rubble ritual started inside the Church Center for the United Nations yesterday with this sad song, words from the Psalms, just as resonant now as they must have been then for the exiled Judean poet on the banks of the rivers of Babylon.

How do we translate our legacy of loss and longing, so much Jewish suffering condensed into one fast day, to a global group of humans seeking ways to fix the broken pieces of our world? 

Lab/Shul took a risk this year and adapted the fast of the Ninth of Av to the rubble of our larger reality – Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ teens, Islamphobia and domestic abuse, political violence and strife. All are temples shattered, rub