Rimonim: Ritual Poetry of Jewish Liberation

"Aurora Levins Morales's poetry radiates wisdom, warmth, and fortitude. A prophetic, life-centered guide for times of tumult and struggle."
--Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents

Rimonim is a richly woven tapestry of poetry meant for use. From a time of rupture and uncertainty, beloved movement poet Aurora Levins Morales brings us a prayer book for the street, for reconstituting the future through our gestures in the present. In these poems of devotion and protest, Levins Morales speaks across and through time with an undeniably prophetic voice. Written in collaboration with various communities looking to honor, unravel, and rebuild Jewish liturgies, Rimonim is a book of lyric in the most immediate sense--of poems that are meant to be read and sung. Rooted in tradition and flowering in the tumultuous present, these poems will both accompany specific Jewish practices and offer inspiration for the sacred work of human liberation, where joy meets justice.

Ultimately, these forty-nine poems honor the forty-ninth year, when it was taught that everything in the land would begin anew, everything redistributed and freed, when the people would see that everything on this earth was "ready to wake and bloom / just under the skin of what is."

Author: Aurora Levins Morales
Publisher: Ayin Press
Published: 11/26/2024
Pages: 122
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.05lbs
Size: 10.90h x 8.00w x 0.40d
ISBN: 9781961814172

About the Author
Alicia, Juana: - Born in 1953, Juana Alicia had many rich cultural influences growing up in Detroit, near Diego Rivera's Industry murals, in a Spanish and Yiddish-speaking household within a majority Black neighborhood. In her teens and early 20's, she was swept up by the Chicanx Movement, particularly the United Farm Workers struggle. She was recruited by Cesar Chavez to work with the union in Salinas, which she did from 1971-76. This was key to her education as an artist and activist. She has worked as a muralist, printmaker, sculptor, illustrator, and studio painter since then. She worked for forty years as an educator: elementary, migrant, and bilingual education, in arts academies and universities, before retiring seven years ago to dedicate herself full-time to her artwork. Her experience as a mother and a grandmother has also informed and given greater meaning to her artistic production.

Her style, akin to genres of contemporary Latin American literary movements, can be characterized as magical and social realism, and her work is frequently inspired by literature.

She has moved back and forth across the U.S.-Mexico border for many years, and since 2006, has resided part-time in Mérida, Yucatán, and in Berkeley, California. She has created murals in both places, and her binational experience has inspired the project which she is currently completing with her author husband, Tirso González Araiza: to illustrate the Yucatec Mayanfolktale, LA X'TABAY, which will be exhibited this summer at the SanFrancisco Arts Commission Gallery and in the fall at the Museum of Anthropology in Mérida. Working in both countries has enabled her to form connections and create projects with artists, environmental activists, feminists and indigenous communities in Mexico and the United States.Berger-Chun, Lauryl: - To learn more about Lauryl's art you can write to Laurylbc@gmail.comHolden, Olivia Levins: - Olivia Levins Holden (She/They) is a queer, mixed Boricuamuralist, organizer, artist, and educator living on Dakota homeland, Mni Sota Makoce, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Olivia's work explores many ways that the arts can transform and support movements, tell stories, plant seeds, and combat toxic narratives. They center processes of community involvement and collective design, drawing from conversations and people's history to create collaborative murals and public art, believing that the process is as essential as the final artwork. Since 2009, they have created and led the creation of murals Waves of Change/Oleadas de Cambio (2015), Defend, Nurture, Grown Phillips (2019), Wiidookodaadiwag/ They Help Each Other (2019), and Ritmos y Raices de Resistencia (2021). With her artist collective, Studio Thalo, Olivia created live painted mobile murals to reflect conversations and events.

Olivia is a 2022 McKnight Fellow for Community Engaged Artists, was a 2015 recipient of the Forecast Public Art project grant and has served as facilitator and mentor for project-based learning through programs such as Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio (CLUES), Latinx Muralism Apprenticeship, Studio 400, and is a founding member of the Creatives After Curfew collective. She serves as the Art of Radical Collaboration (ARC) Manager at Hope Community, Inc where she has trained artists and led community murals with youth and adults through the Power of Vision (POV) Mural project since 2017 and facilitates the Transformational Creative Strategies Training (TRCSTR). She has a BA in History from Smith College.
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