Birkot HaShachar: A Variation by Marrok/Yitzhak Sedgwick
In Fall 2024, fourteen Tzedek Chicago members began our first Lifelong Learning Cohort, a year-long learning community with educational sessions facilitated by members of Tzedek Chicago, with topics including chanting Torah, the history of the Bund, antizionism in Israel today, and healing from ancestral trauma through somatic practice.
Our year culminated in a hybrid Shabbat morning service on Saturday, May 24, where members celebrated their learning in the way that was most meaningful for them, including attending the service, becoming b’nai mitzvah, and sharing or creating liturgy.
Birkot HaShachar - Morning Blessings
Recommitting with and to our values for a new day.
Interpretation by Marrok/Yitzhak Sedgwick, inspired by Disability Justice Principles and a political action format taught by The Living Theater.
(together) Nevarech et ruach ha’olam, whose day dawns and offers new opportunities to repair the world.
(callers) I promise to meet your needs as best as I can. Can you promise me the same?
(responders) I promise to meet your needs, as perfectly imperfect as I may do so, in recognition that collective liberation comes from leaving no one behind.
(together) Nevarech et ruach ha’olam, whose mitzvot call us to tzedek, tzedek.
(callers) I promise to honor the wholeness of your personhood. Can you promise me the same?
(responders) I promise to honor the wholeness of your personhood, in recognition that every life is worth a world.
(together) Nevarech et ruach ha’olam, whose creations are holy, not commodities.
(callers) I promise to resist all which unmakes our interdependent relations with each other, human and more-than-human. Can you promise me the same?
(responders) I promise to honor our collective holiness as YAH’s one interdependent creation, which allows us all to thrive in a beautiful balance with lands and waters, through climate justice.
(together) Nevarech et ruach ha’olam, whose peoples sing and dance in defiance of slavery and genocide.
(callers) I promise to lead my actions with hope and love, even when I am hopeless and burdened with hatred. Can you promise me the same?
(responders) I remember that Miryam found water in the desert and shared it with her people, and promise to pour love and hope into each other's cups to sustain us for generations to come.
(together) Nevarech et ruach ha’olam, who gives us the responsibility of struggling.
(callers) I promise to recognize that those who are most impacted by injustice understand the fight the best. Can you promise me the same?
(responders) I promise to follow those who are most impacted, especially when unjust systems call into question their worth, their wisdom, and their humanity. I promise to strive for the humility and grace to accept their wisdom, even when I am the one who has harmed them.
(together) Nevarech et ruach ha’olam, whose days and nights and seasons bring opportunities for renewal through teshuvah.
(callers) I promise to view justice as a skill that requires lifelong learning. Can you promise me the same?
(responders) I promise to view each new day as another opportunity to learn how to be kinder, more loving, more hopeful, and to better enact justice.
