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Easter Vigil starts in darkness, silence, warm presence of bodies in still-cool air. You hold a wax candle in hope, fidgeting the paper disc. Then an anticipated-but-still-sudden flame, a tiny light in the darkness, quickly spreads into dozens of points of light, as one person reaches to another.

5/4/26, 1:35 am5 reposts80 likes

Dr. Emily Friedman

@ecfriedman.com

5 Apr

It is still human, still slick with spilt wax the paper disc doesn’t corral. But faces are beautiful in candlelight, warmed. For a moment, you can imagine Transfiguration, the glow of divine love, what persists when all else is dust.

Dr. Emily Friedman

@ecfriedman.com

5 Apr

Spread out across pews, for a moment the stars come to earth. For a while all AL license plates read “when the stars fell on Alabama” — reminders of an 1833 meteor shower so bright folks thought it was the end of the world. Tonight it is raining — only water. Tonight I keep no Vigil.

❤️

Wait, Emily, are you a non-Jewish Friedman? This makes me miss my friend the non-Jewish Sarah Cohen

Dr. Emily Friedman

@ecfriedman.com

5 Apr

But I find comfort thinking of even grey dawn, of Hell broken open to free those left there too goddamn long, of new laws, led first by a commandment to love one another. I tell my students after they play to take with them what serves them, leave the rest behind. Somehow this too is my theology.