Today is the official start of my season to encourage the abolition of Xtian supremacist holidays.

Let’s reclaim our sacred, heretical, liberatory spiritual practices, stolen for over 500 years by colonialism, capitalism, states, and yes, Christianity.

#NoSpiritualSurrender
#InDefenseOfTheSacred
#PomegranatesOfPossibility
#RitualAsResistance

For freely gifted versions of readable and print-ready PDFs of a recent zine titled “Ritual as Resistance” to add some inspiration to my encouragement here, see @sheerspite or search for it on the now-dormant It’s Going Down website at:

https://itsgoingdown.org/ritual-as-resistance-18-stories-of-defending-the-sacred/

(photo: the utopia of pomegranates falling from the skies—well, trees—in Athens, Greece, October 2025)

It never ceases to amaze me how even if one is wholly unprepared for ritual, ritual is prepared for you.

Try as I might in the lengthy lead-up to the “days of awe” that begin with our new year, Rosh Hashanah, I couldn’t muster feelings for the shift from 5785 to 5786, much less planning, during these christofascist times marked by the worst kind of awe: “fear mixed with dread”; fear inspired by authority.” Yet I went through the motions, with a friend, of setting up a time and date (today) and location (by a lake) for tashlich, which we titled “casting off fascism, ushering in sweet transformation.” Then, beyond sharing the invite, we did nothing.

This morning, on what still felt like more of the same bad news of 5785, even if it was already 5786, I woke with the dread of having to actually host tashlich. My friend had had an awful week, and had no capacity to pull anything together. Mostly I just wanted to see them and schmooze+kvetch, and not have the responsibility of holding ritual space, and not reflect on the year past and the year ahead, and not have the constant buzzing of anxiety get that much louder when thinking about what the world will/might look like in 5787. Instead, I borrowed a bright-orange scarf, keffiyeh, and the one queerly Jewish thing I could scavenge from my sister’s apartment where I’m currently cat sitting, and then schlepped to a co-op to get just enough ritual foods to make a picnic table look even remotely like it was ready for this new year—even if I wasn’t.

When I met my friend for setup, the first thing we saw were giant, brilliant-yellow mushrooms (last photo). The four folks who showed up to our anarchistic gathering brought still-warm homemade challah—round, as we’ve circled a year; a shofar—which when blown, was answered by the honks of geese; more apples and honey—for sweetness to be abundant; a DIY new year guide we read from; and the fullness of themselves, as we shared what we wanted to cast off and invite in, tossing sticks and flowers into the water. As if joining us, sandhill cranes, ducks, and a non-rain-rainbow appeared. And as if by sacred magic, ritual brought forth life, preparing me a bit more for 5786.

#RitualAsResistance
#RitualAsResilience
#DefendingTheSacred

Thanks to the awesome and rad folks at @igd_news, my latest curated zine, “Ritual as Resistance: 18 Stories of Defending the Sacred,” is now available on its website to read, and as PDFs to download, print, and distro freely. See link below.

And support your indie anarchist media—with your dollars and readership!!

Excerpt from my intro to the zine:

“We make our own sacred spaces — spaces on no maps — through repeated rituals of resistance whose meanings stretch beyond borders. Because our ‘grief knows no borders.’

“This zine is a sampler of some of the modest ways that anarchistic people from varied traditions are doing just that, and gestures toward ‘bigger’ ones. It’s impossible to understand Standing Rock, Stop Cop City, or Palestinian solidarity encampments, say, without acknowledging the key role of rebellious spiritualities. For one example, see the film ‘Yintah.’

“My hope is that this humble zine inspires you to imaginatively blur the line between ritual and resistance, until the death machine sputters and stalls, and all that then moves freely is life. For it is us, side by side, that can make all sacred against the profane of this world. Because our love knows no borders.”

#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife

https://itsgoingdown.org/ritual-as-resistance-18-stories-of-defending-the-sacred/

Friendly reminder: I’m still seeking submissions for the next zine I’m curating, titled “Ritual as Resistance: Defending the Sacred.”

Length: 125 words, give or take
Deadline: May 11
Email to: cbmilstein {at} yahoo [dot] com

Please share this “call” far and wide!

I’m looking for concrete examples of rituals you’ve held space for and/or participated in; that draw on your own cultural practices and/or ancestral traditions; that blur the lines between sacred and rebellious, or shake up what the spiritual+political feels like; and especially, that are collectively and/or publicly done. (See fuller description in my previous post.)

Here’s a sample of one that I’ll be using in the zine, as inspiration and to offer a sense of what I want (though please note, I am NOT only looking for Jewish rituals—though we anarchist Jews love our rad rituals!):

“Fascists sticker-bomb your neighborhood. This hurts. Not merely because the memory of eleven people killed at the Tree of Life building—your childhood shul—still lingers, but they’re crafty bigots. They deliberately drop provocative flyers on people’s doorsteps to try to break solidarity between Palestinians and Jews. This inspires you to counter with agitprop. The ritual technology of prayer, in Judaism, allows us to make the most mundane moments holy. The eating of bread and sipping wine. Through the language of our ancestors, we make these acts sacred, connecting us with all who’ve performed them across the axis of time. You arm yourself with new ritual implements: a paint scraper, sharpies, and wheat paste, along with an extending pole for higher spots. Kadosh, kadosh, kadosh, even these moments where we cover up white supremacist drek can be holy!”
—Anastasia bat Lilith (@stormbringer_press)

(photo: glimpse of an elaborate, bilingual grief and ritual space that I and three beautifully caring anarchists set up for the whole weekend during the May 2023 @montrealanarchist)

#RitualAsResistance
#DefendingTheSacred
#TryAnarchismForLife
#NoSpiritualSurrender (with love and blessed remembrance to Klee Benally)

I’m not a god person, nor religious in any traditional or institutional sense. Yet I hold to what might be called #SpiritualityAsSolidarity and #RitualAsResistance, and increasingly recognize the mysterious, wondrous, unnameable or undefinable power of returning to, yet queering, all the blessed “technologies” we diasporic peoples have relied on for millennia to get us through the worst of tragedies, communally and with abundant care. And while prayers won’t stop bombs or nation-states or militarism or genocide, I keep seeing the ask to “pray for us” on intermittent social media posts by remarkable journalists, doctors and nurses, ambulance drivers and rescue teams, and the many other people in Gaza engaging in mutual aid of the highest sort.

Prayer, similar to demonstrations, wheat-pastes and graffiti, banner drops, and so much more, seems a way to carry our solidarity from innumerable places to Palestine. It also implores us to gather together, to grieve and rage, cry and love, as we say prayers to the dead, prayers to life, prayers to resistance and freedom. And prayers can be blessedly rebellious, reminding us—as we Jews know (or should)—that it’s what we do in the here and now to mend this world that counts.

Once again, my friend @chava_goodtime along with their sibling used the prayer form—in this case, a tkhine—as the basis of a zine, intended as “blessings as calls to action.”

What is a tkhine?

“Tkhines are collections of prayers which were historically written in Yiddish [a language the state of Israel has tried to kill] by Jewish women and gender-nonconforming people (who weren’t taught hebrew or Aramaic) as an act of engaging in spirituality and making Judaism more relevant and accessible to their lives. They often focused on home, family, and other elements of care work neglected by institutional Judaism. Making little books outside of the mainstream media as a radical act of sharing wisdom and information? Sounds like a zine to us!!”

For the downloadable PDF, which you can freely print and share far and wide, see @chava_goodtime’s bio, or

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10gkpVfYQd7MD6qPw1G398sMn7XYusyPT/view?fbclid=PAAaazpP2gdo1OOAW-LmLsf9lCpsAWgVleXsjACKW9Vy0fn8OE7kbKjIUCMPQ_aem_AYY8BvkHNY1nb5HxK4-MFk6I7eZ9hJDzMf6lBFgKMEdrK4K8agu0FRpEK6vX56kRROM

(video by me while tabling zines outside @firestorm)

I’m thrilled to be visiting Pittsburgh this coming week—albeit way too briefly—after way too long. Besides hopefully seeing lots of good folks and sweet friends (and somehow catching up on my paid copyediting work), you can find me chatting about #RitualAsResistance on Wednesday, August 23 in PGH, thanks to the hospitality and good organizing of @ratzonpgh and @bagelfemme (who also homemade the graphic). So without further ado, here’s the info:

Ritual as Resistance
with Cindy Barukh Milstein

Wednesday, August 23 | 6 PM ET
@ Friendship Park (Friendship & Millvale) // Rain location TBD

Masks welcome but optional outside.
If we move indoors because of rain, masks will be required.

Jewish anarchism is being remade in feminist/queer/trans practices, building bridges from grief to rebellion and joy, and drawing from millennia of diasporic rituals and communities (without states). Cindy Barukh Milstein will look at Jewish anarchism as a weapon against colonialism, capitalism, fascism, and ecocide, and how to use it to form communal solidarities that sustain and mend us in cultivating forms of liberation that help us live “the world to come” here and now. Specifically, the heart of this talk and conversation will revolve around rituals, from why they matter to present-day examples of how people are embodying them for resistance and transformation.

Accessibility Info: Friendship Park is mostly grassy with some uneven ground. There is a paved area in the center that’s wheelchair accessible and has benches. We’ll have blankets on the ground for sitting, but feel free to bring a folding chair if that’s better for you. We’ll position ourselves based on the needs of the group.

Rain: If the forecast calls for rain, we'll move to a TBD indoor rain location. Keep an eye on our Instagram (@ratzonpgh) or e-mail us for updates.

If you have any questions or access needs, feel free to e-mail [email protected].

On this sixth yahrzeit of Charlottesville, I’m borrowing this photo posted by my dear, tender-hearted, brave, and loving friend @scottdanielwilliams as my small #RitualAsResistance.

May Heather’s memory be a blessing and continue to spark blessed transformations that mend this world.

May friends and any of accomplices who were in Charlottesville that day, whether forever scarred physically and/or emotionally by the fascists, or in any way forever changed, find blessing and comfort and communities of grieving.

May all of us who felt the impact from afar also find blessing and comfort and communities of grieving.

May we all continue to spark blessed transformations to mend this world, as direct actions of the grieving rebelliously and deeply, and caring and loving rebelliously and deeply.

#MourningOurLosses
#FightingForTheDead
#FightingForTheLiving
#MendingTheWorld
#ArtOfRembrance
#WeMustOutliveFascism

Give the gift of solidarity to forest defenders on the upcoming birthday, or new year, of the trees, Tu Bishvat!

Twenty people are now facing charges of “domestic terrorism” for the “crime” of loving trees—a result of state repression against beautifully powerful and ecological efforts by many thousands of people for well over a year now to #DefendTheAtlantaForest and #StopCopCity from being built in Weelaunee forest in so-called Atlanta. As part of the state’s attempts to crush this movement and set a chilling example for similar struggles, the injustice system set exorbitantly high bonds, including $350,000 each for two of the defendants.

The do-it-ourselves jail, court, and legal support via Atlanta Solidarity Fund—much of it voluntary—is powerfully beautiful too, yet hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars will be needed to resist this wave of statist brutality, get all the charges dropped, and set defendants fully free.

On Tu Bishvat, we Jews (often with our non-Jewish friends) commune with trees as we move ritualistically through four worlds (or seasons or directions), which can be seen as moving through our relationships with land and place, community, the world, and spirituality. We remember on Tu Bishvat that though this world can seem cold and deadening, the sap of warmth, resilience, and life is still moving within us.

What better time to raise much-needed funds for forest defenders?!

You can do a Tu Bishvat solidarity seder and collect donations, or an intimate Tu Bishvat gathering in your home with friends and pitch in some dollars. Or hold self-generated rituals in a forest and pass the hat. Or set up a small or large separate fundraising event during Tu Bishvat, such as tabling with zines and a putting out a donation jar, or doing an art raffle or dance party, including tree themed ones, and raise money. It doesn’t even need to be the main focus of your Tu Bishvat, but you can still donate.

Please direct all donations to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, atlsolidarity.org, for a big Tu Bishvat gift and show of solidarity!

And to that end, i’m hoping to shoutout your Tu Bishvats in a public post! So DM or email me your fundraiser by Feb. 3! 🖤💖🌿

#ForestNotFascism
#RitualAsResistance
#TryJewishAnarchismForLife

(Photo: green-colored infographic with a drawing of a tree in black, with the words “Forest Defender Tu Bishvat. Call for New Year of the Trees’ Fundraisers for Atlanta Solidarity Fund. This is a call to celebrate Tu Bishvat 5783/2023 as a ritual of resistance, honoring the trees and those fighting to #StopCopCity in Weelaunee Forest in Atlanta, and to raise money for the Atlanta Solidarity Fund to aid the 20 forest defendants,” and encouraging folks to send their events to cbmilstein [at] yahoo [dot] com to include in a public “solidarity shoutout” post)

Grief rituals, one could argue, are part of the essential grounding for millennia-old cultures that orient toward far more ecological relations with the whole of this earth, including each other. For loss is part of the seasons of life, which ancient—and yet still here—cultures recognize needs to be honored through ceremony so as to remember what is loved and cherished, and continually reaffirm a duty to love and defend life.

It is little wonder that as colonialism and capitalism, heteropatriarchy and white Christian supremacy, grew into hegemonic death machines over the centuries, they tried to kill off innumerable life-giving rituals and ceremonies that humans passed along over generations to hold each other through transitions. They tried to make people forget that minds and bodies crave—and need—those rituals and ceremonies in order to sustain hearts and spirit. And without heart and spirit, humans become shells of themselves.

It is little wonder, then, that so many humans today, but especially human-made institutions like states and their police, are so hollowed out of heart—of empathy and sociability, solidarity and communal care—they all too easily acquiesce to or participate in killing off life.

It has been a week since Tortuguita was murdered in cold blood by cops within Weelaunee forest, where Tort gave full heart and loving spirit to defending life-giving ecosystems. May their memory be a blessing.

In that week, so many people have, in essence, “sat shiva,” a ritual within Jewishness that is about taking seven days to be with community (whether people or trees) to begin to honor and process loss of a beloved and grief at their death. Shiva doesn’t mean doing nothing. It is a time to sustain our hearts and spirits.

So it’s remarkable—a testament to Tort as well as the big, amorphous, autonomous, yet interwoven circles of rebels—that this past week has witnessed an outpouring of remembrance that we do indeed need and can revive ancient grief rituals, as precisely the ground that allows us to keep fighting, not merely to #StopCopCity, but to stop all systemic theft of lands and life.

#RebelliousMourning
#MourningOurDead
#FightingLikeHellForTheLiving
#RitualAsResistance
#MendingTheWorld

(photo: sign with words “Weelaunee People’s Park” seen among the trees in October 2022 at @defendATLforest)

There are no safe spaces. But there are sacred spaces.

At this moment in history, like other particularly brutal epochs, there is no separating that sacredness from the unsafeness.

That’s what this sacrilegious world order has forged over more than five hundred years of conquest, plunder, displacement, genocide, and ecological destruction. Its theft of land and lives, lifeways and ecosystems, has desecrated every corner of the globe.

Yet time and again, those who would defend land and freedom create brave spaces. Meaning despite the risks, often impossibly heavy ones, they find strength in the sacred, aiding them in fighting the good fight and holding them when they must mourn and honor their dead.

Perhaps that braveness, even when we’re afraid, is part of what compels our sacred duty all that much more.

We know what’s at stake, for one: the further loss of sacred places and sacred life. Yet equally, while we defend sacred spaces such as a forest, we know what it feels like to inhabit dignified lives worth living, in common with all living beings, because there is a magic to the sacred. The sacred animates life against their death machines.

Moreover, we understand that in our brave spaces, it is up to us, and only us, to love, care for, and protect each other, to make our spaces ever safer for us all. We know that any sense of safety comes though our love and solidarity, and when we’re lucky, glimpses of the spirit of far better social relations—in right relation with earth.

Brave spaces are most crucial, though, when bad things happen, including our worst nightmares, and our efforts at those “safer spaces” are momentarily shattered. We feel a sacred obligation to grieve the sacredness of what’s been stolen from us, including by making more brave and sacred spaces, like do-it-ourselves vigils, altars, and other tender spaces of remembrance on the dangerous landscape of this violent social system.

May all that is sacred embrace us now, because the big @defendATLforest community is hurting.

May Tortuguita’s memory be a blessing—and spark the blessedly ecological world they fought for.

#RitualAsResistance
#SacredSpaces #BraveSpaces
#MourningOurDead #MendingTheWorld

https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/2023/01/19/solidarity/?amp=1

(photo: resanctified entry—after a cop incursion—into the Weelaunee forest, featuring red-and-black anarchist hearts painted on a pink-painted concrete slab and a #StopCopCity yard sign, as seen in October 2022)