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- Havdalah #25: Societies, Stones, & The Feast of the Assumption
Havdalah #25: Societies, Stones, & The Feast of the Assumption
14 Av, 5784 / August 17, 2024
White Rose RI
August 17, 2024
Greetings, neighbors.
I hope the summer has granted you all some leisure, or at least more time for rest.
In this issue’s Sidebar, Katherine kvells about her mom — excuse me, the Virgin Mary, just in time for the Feast of the Assumption. Catholics are, as per usual, having a normal one about Mary. Which, frankly, is one of my favorite things about the Catholics. Rock on, you funky little guys.
In addition, Tisha b’Av has just passed. I don’t have much to say about that, as it’s not a day I observe in my own Jewish practice. However, Rosza Daniel Lang / Levitsky penned a marvelous essay several years back, titled Tisha b’Av, Twice, which beautifully reflects my own sentiments on the matter. It’s free to view at that link provided by the author, and I encourage all of you to read it.
Lastly, tomorrow evening begins Tu b’Av, the Jewish holiday of love! Chag Sameach!
Bella Ciao.
James
Bodies and Societies: Exhibition by Liz Cowart
When:
Opening: Friday, August 23, 6:00pm-8:00pm
Viewing: Saturday and Sunday, August 24-25, 11:00am-3:00pm
Where: 189 Broadway, Providence, RI 02903
People with different identities experience the world very differently, and right now, the world feels like it’s falling apart. Trying to figure out who you are in a society that was built to break you feels impossible, but art can be a powerful outlet for so many of us.
Unfortunately, not everyone has the privilege to show their work and tell their stories. Liz Cowart, a young artist who exists in a body and sometimes hates it, and a first-time curator, prioritizes young artists, queer and trans artists, artists of color, and others who may otherwise not have an opportunity to display their work in this exhibition.
Black August 2024 All Ages Event
When: Saturday, August 24, 1:00pm-3:00pm
Where: DARE, 340 Lockwood Street, Providence, RI 02907
Convos and CommUNITY: Commemorative perspective on Black August pioneers and the ongoing struggle for liberation
Interactive activities, drumming, open mic, Black August video compilation and more
Free childcare, food, community resources, and info tables
Continuing Actions for Palestine
Jewish Voice for Peace Weekly Flyering
When: Every Wednesday, 5:00pm-6:00pm
Where: Providence Train Station, 100 Gaspee Street, Providence, RI 02903
JVP RI invites all to join them in their efforts to spread the word about their work and simple actions people can take to demand an end to the genocide in Palestine. They meet on the Statehouse side of the train station.
Weekly Kaddish
When: Every Sunday, 1:00pm-1:30pm
Where: Michael Van Leesten Pedestrian Bridge, Providence, RI 02903
Jewish Voice for Peace RI and allies will be hosting a weekly gathering on Sundays to recite the Mourners Kaddish and communally grieve the Palestinians murdered by the Israeli military. You need not be Jewish to attend; all are welcome to participate.
Power Half-Hours for Gaza
When: every day, Monday through Friday, 3:00pm EST
Where: online
Jewish Voice for Peace is holding Power Half-Hours for Gaza every day — join us as we channel our fury and sorrow into collective action to stop genocide.
Ceasefire Today Toolkit
This toolkit has a variety of links, including call scripts, groups accepting donations, phone banks, petitions, and more
News Coverage
As always, especially when getting news from social media, be aware of who is sharing information and why they’re doing it.
Al Jazeera Coverage of the War on Gaza has continued to be a reliable source
“Stories in Stone” Virtual Program
When: Monday, August 26, 12:00pm-1:00pm
Where: online on Zoom
Native people have been shaping stone to purpose for thousands of years. It’s no wonder that they adapted this skill to meet the needs of colonists to survive in a changing world. For generations, Narragansett stone masons have continued to transform the trade of masonry into an art form, creating beautiful, unique works of art in stone. Join the Tomaquag Museum for a viewing of the film “Stories In Stone” followed by a presentation.
RI Food Bank
The Rhode Island Food Bank distributed 16.2 million pounds of food this past year, and with the SNAP benefits partially cut in March, it was sorely needed. While it feels good to drop cans or cereal in collection boxes at your work place or apartment complex, the money goes farther and feeds more people if you give it to RI Food Bank directly (they can buy wholesale! And buy fresh veggies!).
Reoccurring donations, even if they’re a smaller amount than a one off, are often more useful because they mean the organization has a better understanding of its budget.
Katherine (she / her)
Catholics are weird about Mary.
Well, we’re weird about any number of things depending on the place and the person and the time, but you can mostly count on Catholics being weird about Mary regardless of any other particulars.
As C. S. Lewis puts it, she combines in one person the devotion of faith and the love of a maternal figure; she’s to all of us, our mother. There’s no severity in her, no unkindness; I’m certainly not an expert on Marian revelation, but I can’t think of one with harshness to it.
But, Catholics combine being weird about our religious mother figure with an obsessive love of theologic logic, which leads to stuff like: the Assumption of Mary, celebrated on August 15.
Now, the history, and the theology, of the Assumption is complicated, so caveat lector — if you want chapter and verse on the tangled web of this belief, send us an email; I’ll point you to some encyclicals. I write as a layperson, and a Catholic one at that; the Orthodox have their own perspective on the Virgin Mary Theotokos, and the Dormition of the Mother of God.
So, the Assumption of Mary is the belief that Mary was taken up, bodily, into heaven at the end of her life. This was a folk belief, and an early one — the 400’s, 500’s, have records of it. The details vary from telling to telling — whether she was taken up alive or whether she died and her tomb found empty afterwards.
It wasn’t officially proclaimed Vatican doctrine for centuries, but it was believed widely and fervently — and what, is the pope going to tell everyone that their religious mother didn’t get to go straight to heaven? And after all — she was his mother as well. It was so widely and popularly believed, in fact, that it wasn’t made “official” doctrine until the 1900’s, because no official sanction was considered necessary (and also politics. Always politics).
Mary is the feminine in our Catholic Church; not an original thought, of course, but there it is. There’s the saints, and holy sisters, but in terms of a presence, of an influence, that can rival the — let’s say cultural power (not theological, not even Catholics will go that far) of the Trinity, Mary stands alone, second only to the Godhead themselves. Three of the eight days of obligation belong to her; her prayer is one of the ones Catholics learn by heart, told ten times a round in the rosary; she alone was at both Jesus’ birth and death, both at the cradle and at Calvary; the first disciple, the Mediatrix, the Madonna, the Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, the God-bearer, Our Lady Star of the Sea, Our Lady of the Snows, Our Lady of Sorrows, Our Lady Gate of the Dawn, Our Lady of Consolation, Our Lady of Fatima, of Guadalupe, of Lourdes, of Knock, of Bethlehem, blessed art thou amongst women…
Our Holy Mother may or may not be the peak culmination of every suppressed desire for feminine representation in the Catholic church, of every co-opted and syncretized goddess, but if she is, can you blame us? She is the perfect mother we wish we had, the platonic ideal our actual mothers and aunts and grandmothers only touched on on their best days, if then. Kind, and loving, and forgiving, and perfect, and gently, gently, gently asking us to do better, to pick ourselves up when we fall, interceding for us when the demands of religion seem too hard, life too crushing. More concrete than the Holy Ghost, less stern than the Father, less guilt-inducing than Jesus, she is comfortable and caring, and endlessly malleable to whatever milieu she appears in. As Orsi says in his History and Presence, “the Virgin has many names and faces, but she is a single holy figure. Her faithful hold together the Virgin’s singularity with her plurality in their experience of her.”
She is Our Lady of Guadalupe, who appeared to Juan Diego and gave him a cloak of Castilian roses and spoke to him in his native Nahuatl; she is herself and still our mother.
She is Our Lady of Fatima, who appeared to Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta shining as bright as the sun, to tell them prophecy and prayer; she is herself and still our mother.
She is Our Lady of the Pillar, appearing to St. James during her own life, surrounded by so great a cloud of angels; she is herself and still our mother.
I am, in many things, a most obnoxious realist and skeptic (lower case s). I hold no truck with ghosts, and I think most miracles are likely to have rational causes. Marian visions, however? Come one, come all — who am I to gainsay that? Who am I to deny that they saw their mother?
We are very very weird about Mary.
Needle Drop: “Hail Holy Queen” from Sister Act
News Round-Up: Local
The miserable will be made even more miserable (Bill Shaner in Worcester Sucks and I Love It, August 4, 2024)
Foster-Gloucester School Committee under pressure to repeal policy that protects trans students (Steve Ahlquist, August 7, 2024)
Op-Eds & Deep Dives
Remembering Who We Are to Each Other (Kelly Hayes in Organizing My Thoughts, August 4, 2024)
The Frightening Intersection of Christian Nationalism and Techno-Fascism (Kelly Hayes in Organizing My Thoughts, August 8, 2024)
Pod Recs: Weird Little Guys and ICHH
Weird Little Guys (Molly Conger, Cool Zone Media, premiered August 8, 2024)
How Different is Kamala’s Border Policy (It Could Happen Here, August 7, 2024)
Fighting Antisemitism with Shane Burley and Ben Lorber (It Could Happen Here, August 8, 2024)
Why Tim Walz Called in the National Guard in 2020 (It Could Happen Here, August 9, 2024)
Shooter Without A Cause (It Could Happen Here, August 12, 2024)
