Asher Yatzar

All proceeds support Aurora’s art and cultural work.

11 x 14.25” full color glossy poster on cardstock.

Illustration by Roan Boucher, blessing/poem by Aurora Levins Morales, from Rimonim.

Image description: Linocut of ribcage and intestines, intertwined with colorful flowers, on a parchment-style background. Aurora's poem is written in calligraphy pen on either side. The Hebrew words on the top corner right say "Asher Yatzar" (“who formed”) and on the bottom "nekavim, nekavim; chalulim, chalulim" (“openings, cavities”), words from the traditional blessing.

Asher Yatzar is a blessing about bodies and sphincters, traditionally said after going to the bathroom. I love the traditional blessing for many reasons - and I also feel the absence within it of so many bodies, those whose holes and openings and cavities may be blocked or ruptured, might not open and close without assistance, and are still wonders in the presence of God. Illustrating Aurora's beautiful interpretation of this blessing was a balm. Posters available until June 1! And will ship in early June. All proceeds support Aurora's writing and cultural work.

Asher Yatzar, by Aurora Levins Morales
Blessed is the evolutionary dance of life, which formed the human body in perfect wisdom, made cerebellum and cortex, made the many branching nerves, the bones and their marrows, the muscles and ligaments, the red cells and the white, the myriad hormones singing their biochemical song of praise, made eyes and ears, capillaries and fingernails, the magnificent heart with its chambers, all the organs and passages, cavities and openings.  Blessed is natural selection and the infinite diversity of our shapes and colors, our forms and functions, and blessed is the ability to adapt, for it is well known and obvious that each one of us is made as we should be, that even though openings close, and closures open, even though limbs grow wildly and genes mutate, even though hearts dance to different drummers, lungs labor, bones bend and break, and biochemical signals go awry, even though we age and will someday die, we are infinitely splendid as we are. Blessed are you, life force of the universe, that has made us so varied and resilient.