🆕 Bricks Without Straw, a prayer-poem by Trisha Arlin

Contributor(s): Trisha Arlin and Bayit: Building Jewish

Shared on: 17 March 2025 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license

Categories: Magid

Tags: 21st century C.E., 47th President of the United States, 58th century A.M., Donald Trump, English vernacular prayer, Prayers as poems, פרשת וארא parashat Va'era

Bricks Without Straw

This year
Pharaoh has declared
That we must make our bricks
Without straw!

That we must be happy
Without truth

That we must be poor
Without healthcare

That we must be gendered
Without a say

That we must be Black
Without equity

That we must be women
Without choices

That we must be old
Without help

That we must live
Without housing

That we must be prepared
Without science

That we must make war
Without conscience

That we must breathe
Without air

That we must be refugees
Without asylum

That we must be content
Without democracy

That we must obey
Without question.

Moses said to Pharaoh,
Let my people go.^[1] A phrase repeated six times in Exodus, Parashat Va’era. Find, Exodus 7:16, Exodus 7:26, Exodus 8:16, Exodus 9:1, Exodus 9:13, Exodus 10:3
And this year, what do you say?
Say it now!

“Bricks Without Straw” is a prayer-poem written by Trisha Arlin, first shared in the From the Depths: Pesach 5785/2025 (Bayit) via their website, on 17 March 2025.

Notes

Notes
1	A phrase repeated six times in Exodus, Parashat Va’era. Find, Exodus 7:16, Exodus 7:26, Exodus 8:16, Exodus 9:1, Exodus 9:13, Exodus 10:3

. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike . 4.0 . International .

“Bricks Without Straw, a prayer-poem by Trisha Arlin” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Trisha Arlin

Trisha Arlin is a liturgist, teacher, performer and student of prayer in Brooklyn, NY and was a part-time rabbinic student at the Academy of Jewish Religion (AJR), 2012-18. Trisha was the Liturgist-In-Residence during the National Havurah Committee’s 2014 Summer Institute, has served as Scholar or Artist In Residence at many synagogues where she has read, led services and taught her class, Writing Prayer. since the pandemic began, Trisha has been on Zoom teaching prayer writing, sharing her liturgy and doing readings with Ritualwell, Haggadot.com, for synagogues around the country as well as small freelance groups. She is a founding builder of Bayit’s Liturgical Arts project. Trisha received a BA in Theater from Antioch College in 1975 and MFA in Film (Screenwriting) in 1997 from Columbia University. In 2009/2010, Trisha was an Arts Fellow at the Drisha Institute. In 2011, she graduated from the sixth cohort of the Davennen Leadership Training Institute (DLTI). A longtime member of Kolot Chayeinu/Voices of our Lives, a progressive unaffiliated congregation in Brooklyn NY, Trisha’s liturgy has been used at services and ritual occasions and in newsletter there and at venues of many denominations around the world. Her work has been published in her book, Place Yourself: Words of Poetry and Intention (a collection of liturgy and kavannot. Foreword by Rabbi Jill Hammer, Artwork by Mike Cockrill. 2019 Dimus Parrhesia Press); the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion; Seder Tefillot, Forms of Prayer: Prayers for the High Holydays (Movement for Reform Judaism); B’chol Levavecha (CCAR Press); Beside Still Waters: A Journey of Comfort and Renewal (Bayit & Ben Yehuda Press); A Poet’s Siddur (Ain’t Got No Press); Studies in Judaism and Pluralism (Ben Yehuda Press) and can be found online at TrishaArlin.com, at RitualWell, and of course, the Open Siddur Project. You can support her work by buying her book, making a one time donation through PayPal @trishaarlin or monthly support via Patreon.

Bayit: Building Jewish

Bayit: Building Jewish (formerly, Bayit: Your Jewish Home) was founded in December 2017 by a group of rabbis and lay leaders seeking to become a collaboration engine for building "a radically inclusive and enlivening Judaism for all ages and stages. We aim to give you tools for building the Judaism that you yearn for, renewing Judaism so that your Judaism can renew you."

Stable Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=60366

Associated Image:

Ancient Mud-Brick Wall [citadel of Rayen, Iran] (credit: A. Davey, license: CC BY)

(This image is set to automatically show as the "featured image" in shared links on social media.)

Source Data: XML | JSON

Re-formatted: HTML | ODT

Terms of Use: Be a mentsch (a conscientious, considerate person) and adhere to the following guidelines:

Properly attribute the work to Trisha Arlin and Bayit: Building Jewish.
Clearly indicate the date you accessed the work and in what ways, if any, you modified it. (If you have adapted the work, let us know so that the contributor might consider endorsing your revision.)
Provide the stable link to this resource: <https://opensiddur.org/?p=60366>.
Indicate that the original work was shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license. (To redistribute or remix this work in any format, modified or unmodified, you must refer to the terms of the license under which the work is shared.)

Additional Notes:

The views expressed in this work represent the views of their creator(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the Open Siddur Project's developers, its diverse community of volunteer contributors, or its institutional partners.
We strongly advise against printing sacred texts and art containing divine names as these copies must be regarded with reverence, complicating their casual treatment and disposal.
If you must dispose of a printed sacred text (one containing Divine Names), please locate the closest genizah (often established by a synagogue) and contact its custodians for further instructions. We also recommend using Morah Yehudis Fishman's Prayer for Adding a Work to the Genizah.

Support this work: The Open Siddur Project is a volunteer-driven, non-profit, non-commercial, non-denominational, non-prescriptive, gratis & libre Open Access archive of contemplative praxes, liturgical readings, and Jewish prayer literature (historic and contemporary, familiar and obscure) composed in every era, region, and language Jews have ever prayed. Our goal is to provide a platform for sharing open-source resources, tools, and content for individuals and communities crafting their own prayerbook (siddur). Through this we hope to empower personal autonomy, preserve customs, and foster creativity in religious culture.

ויהי נעם אדני אלהינו עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננה עלינו ומעשה ידינו כוננהו "May the pleasantness of אדֹני our elo’ah be upon us; may our handiwork be established for us — our handiwork, may it be established." –Psalms 90:17

Pocket Reddit Facebook Bluesky Telegram WhatsApp SMS Email