davka | דוקא | despite everything

As the urgency of this New Year breathes its birthing,
life’s blood and the waters of the seas flow,
may Lilith, Eve, and Adam join togeth­er in The Gar­den,
cre­at­ing one lov­ing fam­i­ly.

Antic­i­pat­ing Avigail’s due date, I designed and drew (using col­ored pen­cils) a man­dala shaped birthing amulet using a text based on ear­li­er Jew­ish traditions.

Those often includ­ed the phrase: “Adam and Eve… exclude Lilith” accom­pa­nied by the names of three ‘angels’ thought to pro­tect against Lilith: Sanoi, Sansenoi, and Sman­gelof (vari­ant spellings abound).” I built on the 1972 fem­i­nist reimag­in­ing of the orig­i­nal Lilith nar­ra­tive in the Alpha­bet of Ben Sir­ah) by Judith Plaskow titled “The Com­ing of Lilith.”

Also, think­ing about the birth process, I recalled the verse from Ezekiel (16:6):

.וָאֹמַר לָךְ בְּדָמַיִךְ חֲיִי

And when I passed by you, and saw you wal­low­ing in your blood, I said to you:
In your blood, live; yea, I said to you: In your blood, live.

Gush­ing blood brings life, so “blood” and “live” need­ed a place in the amulet.

The Hebrew aleph (א), the first let­ter of Avigail’s name, formed the cen­ter of the amulet. Often con­sid­ered a silent let­ter, it is more accu­rate­ly the begin­ning of an exha­la­tion. Because steady focus and breath­ing are impor­tant in the birthing process, that place­ment made sense. As I con­tin­ued to exper­i­ment with the lay­out of the var­i­ous pri­ma­ry words in the amulet (Eve, Lilith, blood, live), oth­er words emerged. Adam appeared in one of the spokes. All of the words in the table below appear either in the spokes from the cen­ter out­ward or around the con­cen­tric circles.

א	breath
אדם	Adam
דם	blood
אחי	my family
חד	urgent
חי	life/live
ים/ימי	sea/seas
מים	water
חוה	Eve
לילית	Lilith

the three blocks

Update

I don’t recall this ever hap­pen­ing in pre­vi­ous years. Two peo­ple to whom I mailed hard copies of the card sent me pho­tos of how they dis­play it in their homes. Thank you.

Unother update

Some­one in Israel to whom I mailed hard copies of the card sent me a pho­to of a dis­play of the many cards they’ve received. I like see­ing them all togeth­er this way.

Linoleum cut pro­duced by Mark, Sum­mer 2020
©Mark Hurvitz 2020

list of cards

last year’s card