Shabbat, January 10 – After Services – Bring a Pareve/Dairy Dish to Share – Zoom Available
“Weaving – which consists of the intertwining of disparate threads – symbolically suggests the process of tikkun, or social repair.” – Maurice Berger and Joan Rosenbaum
“Sitting at the loom is itself a prayer.” – Kevin Aspaas, Diné Weaver
For thousands of years, communities around the world have woven textiles – from blankets and shawls to tapestries and ritual objects. Across cultural traditions, moreover, weaving continues to be a powerful metaphor for both creation and destruction, beauty and brokenness. Weaving, as both a practice and a metaphor, appears throughout Jewish sacred texts, from descriptions of the tabernacle to Kabbalistic tales about the creation of the world. In this session, we will reflect on several of these texts. We’ll begin by discussing the 39 Melachot, the categories of labor that are forbidden on Shabbat. We’ll take some time to appreciate Bezalel, the craftsman who led the construction of the tabernacle. Turning to the Book of Job and the Psalms, we’ll then reflect on God as a divine weaver. We’ll conclude by wrestling with a few complex and intriguing passages from Kabbalistic texts. Together, we’ll consider both how and why weaving appears in the Jewish tradition, and what this ancient craft can teach us about living in broken times.
Joshua Kurtz is a weaver, writer, and educator based in Somerville, Massachusetts. He recently completed a Masters of Divinity degree at Harvard Divinity School, where he studied Judaism, grief, and ethics. He has previously worked as a community organizer and educator in Washington, DC, and Brasov, Romania. His writing has been published in the Smithsonian Folklife Magazine, the Colorado Review, Gashmius, and several other magazines.