Rimon­im: Rit­u­al Poet­ry of Jew­ish Lib­er­a­tion is a col­lec­tion of poet­ry and prayers by activist writer and poet Auro­ra Levins Morales that can be used by syn­a­gogues and minyan­im look­ing for rein­ter­pret­ed and rewrit­ten prayers. The col­lec­tion can also be read inde­pen­dent­ly for the enjoy­ment of Morales’s beau­ti­ful lyri­cal poet­ry and the accom­pa­ny­ing art­work. Morales’s poems, which are a com­bi­na­tion of prose poems, lita­nies, and lyri­cal verse, are ground­ed in appre­ci­a­tion of nature and the con­nect­ed­ness between the ele­ments and all of human­i­ty. Many poems include recog­ni­tion of past suf­fer­ing and pain and how spir­i­tu­al­i­ty can cre­ate peace among peoples. 

The book is divid­ed into five sec­tions: Night & Day, Sev­en Sacreds, A Sweet Year of Strug­gle, Infi­nite Tribe, and Prophe­cy. Some poems offer a response or replace­ment to a tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish prayer, such as ​“Sh’ma,” ​“Ash­er Yatzar,” and ​“V’ahavta.” Morales’s ver­sion of ​“Ash­er Yatzar,” which is a tra­di­tion­al prayer recit­ed after using the bath­room, begins, ​“Blessed is the evo­lu­tion­ary dance of life…”, and her ​“Sh’ma” prayer begins, ​“Hear all you who wres­tle with life’s mean­ing…” Morales wel­comes a wider audi­ence more inter­est­ed in spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in nature and the aston­ish­ment of evo­lu­tion and our bod­ies than in a tra­di­tion­al divine ruler or creator. 

Oth­er poems would fit well into a con­tem­po­rary sid­dur, or prayer­book, whether for every­day use or litur­gies relat­ing to spe­cif­ic hol­i­days, such as Passover and Sukkot. Many poems use a col­lec­tive ​“we” in order to cre­ate a sense of com­mu­ni­ty. In the poem ​“A Sweet Year of Strug­gle,” Morales writes, ​“May we find the deep roots of courage in love / and feel it rise in us like sweet maple sap / sim­mered in the heat of this hard work, / the remak­ing of the world, until joy sug­ars our days.” In her poem ​“Slichah for the Shmi­ta Year,” Morales’s prayer-like poem focus­es on reflect­ing on our inter­ac­tions with the earth and how we can treat the earth and our­selves with more kindness: 

Let each harsh word we hurl at ourselves

be turned into petals scat­ter­ing before they land. 

Let every­thing, all of it, be recycled.

Let the trash become jew­els we string into necklaces

and drape around each other’s necks. 

Morales also writes about her own iden­ti­ty as a ​“Caribbean Jew” who grew up in Puer­to Rico; her father’s fam­i­ly is from Ukraine and her moth­er grew up in New York. Due to being ​“black­list­ed com­mu­nists,” her par­ents moved to Puer­to Rico in 1951 and became farm­ers. In a part of the book called ​“Pesach,” Morales writes a brief mem­oir about her fam­i­ly and explains how the mix­ing of cul­tures and his­to­ries that make up her iden­ti­ty has caused her to take part in social jus­tice move­ments that focus on peace and ​“rad­i­cal revi­sions to tra­di­tion­al Jew­ish cel­e­bra­tions” with­in com­mu­ni­ties that she has been a part of through­out the Unit­ed States. This essay helps shed light on the ideas in her poems through­out Rimon­im. 

Along­side some of the poems are beau­ti­ful works of art by var­i­ous artists, many of whom, accord­ing to their bios in the back of the book, are queer, Jew­ish, and/​or iden­ti­fy as social jus­tice heal­ers. Their stun­ning, elab­o­rate art­work pro­vides sur­re­al­ist and bib­li­cal imagery through a con­tem­po­rary lens focus­ing on nature, peace, and jus­tice, sim­i­lar to the con­tent of many of the poems. Ulti­mate­ly, this is a col­lec­tion of heal­ing, bless­ing, and community.