About Me

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Joy Serves G*d in Joy as a passionate performing percussionist, poet, publisher, photographer, publicist, sound healer, spiritual guide, artist, gardener and Gemini. "Ivdu Et Hashem B'Simcha" -Psalm 100:2 ....... Joy Krauthammer, active in the Jewish Renewal, Feminist, and neo-Chasidic worlds for over three decades, kabbalistically leads Jewish women's life-cycle rituals. ... Workshops, and Bands are available for all Shuls, Sisterhoods, Rosh Chodeshes, Retreats, Concerts, Conferences & Festivals. ... My kavanah/intention is that my creative expressive gifts are inspirational, uplifting and joyous. In gratitude, I love doing mitzvot/good deeds, and connecting people in joy. In the zechut/merit of Reb Shlomo Carlebach, zt'l, I mamash love to help make our universe a smaller world, one REVEALING more spiritual consciousness, connection, compassion, and chesed/lovingkindness; to make visible the Face of the Divine... VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE and enjoy all offerings.... For BOOKINGS write: joyofwisdom1 at gmail.com, leave a COMMENT below, or call me. ... "Don't Postpone Joy" bear photo montage by Joy. Click to enlarge. BlesSings, Joy
JOY's POEMS

JOY'S POEMS ... "You G*d are the Compassion, the Strength, the Beauty, the Victory, the Splendor, and the Foundation of everything in Heaven and on Earth." (1 Chronicles 1:29) ... I see Your Face in All Nature that I photograph. ... ... http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/ . . . Click "Older Posts" on lower right of each post page for MORE earlier posted stories and art.

Sunrise After Light Rain



Sunrise After Light Rain
© Joy Krauthammer   1.31.2014 

Baruch Hashem, we had sprinkles last night.

Bright red sunrise light
long narrow stretch
appears on the eastern horizon 
above the San Gabriel and Verdugo Mountains. 

Red flash quickly lightens in east
and bright red travels 
 all the way along horizon
to the Santa Monica Mountains
in the south.
~

“O G*d, You are my G*d; at early dawn will I seek You. My soul thirsts for You; 
my flesh longs for You, in a dry and weary land without water."  (Psalm 63:2)

Hummingbird on Fig Tree



© Joy Krauthammer

Hummingbird on Fig Tree

- Joy Krauthammer

This morning of Jan. 17th, it is the 20th anniversary
 of the deadly Northridge Earthquake.
That morning I was in my Northridge home.
Today a terrible wild fire takes 22 homes,
and 1,700 Angeles National Forest community acres,
and the sunrise color is strangely red.
Today is my husband's, z'l, yahrzeit, Jan. 17,  17 Tevet,
but today is 16 Shvat.
  He died 8 years ago.
It is a morning filled with darkness.
I don't want to photograph the morning.
~


I hear a Hummingbird 
and look up to the top of the Mama Fig tree, 
this week of Tu B'Shvat, Birthday of the Trees,
and see the tiny iridescent-colored bird
sitting on a freshly pruned barren branch,
and I smile.

For a fleeting dawn moment 
a second Hummer joins the first.
There is light.
I photograph.

~ ~ ~

© Joy Krauthammer 



© Joy Krauthammer 




Utopia


UTOPIA

- Joy Krauthammer


In the Sixties 
it was a Happening
when I was arrested –
along with my peace-loving friends
Suzanne Slut, Marvelous Mike, Sweet Sue,
Terrific Tobin, Larry and Ron
– for trespassing
from our row boats
onto little Peter's Island 
in the middle
 of the Schuylkill River, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.

I told the cops that I had NO ID on me
and that my name was
Gentle Joy from Utopia.

A bit beligerant
being booked at police station
charged with trespassing 
because "ducks were mating in breeding season"
and visitors 
(from New York and California
on a very rainy late winter's day)
were not allowed on the little island
in the middle of the River
by Strawberry Mansion Bridge.

We friends ignored the bullhorn warnings 
the river police on their boats used 
chasing us
as they blasted us 
and dragged us away from our boats
and the little island
in the middle of the River
in the Sixties.
I was from Utopia.

~

PS
The scary stormy car trip with flat tire from Queens College (QC), NY to Philadelphia was one filled with compassion as my mother, z"l, had just died, and dear NY friends and one from California, spent the cold rainy winter's day with me. Tobin drove us in his '56 Chevy to our friends Sue and Ron, both in Phily graduate schools.

My gentle Sixties friends of ill repute all went onto graduate schools and fine helping professions and were probably never again arrested for trespassing on islands with mating ducks.

If this River scene had been a Love-in at NY's Central Park Lake, I would have showered the batoned cops with some flowers in my hair, as I danced with the Hari Krishnas. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
It was the Sixties and I braved the Sit-ins, blocking the QC President's office. I was from Utopia.
I counseled Draft Dodgers.  It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
I performed Guerilla Street Theatre, and I studied with La Mama Troupe.  I was from Utopia.
I marched!  It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
I hung out with SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
Peacefully at night I hung out alone in the Queens College ceramics basement studio on campus in deep Oneness meditation with my clay, that led to my full scholarship to graduate school and my teaching adults at a Manhattan art school, Cooper Square.  It was the Sixties and I was from Utopia.
Beyond the Sixties and still from Utopia, I opened an art school for the City of Los Angeles and also taught children how to express themselves and create in clay.

Utopia Parkway was a short hitchhike ride away from QC; Utopia for them.

Herstory remembered for "Utopia" theme.


JOY note sent back, shared from Tobin to illustrate Utopia poem

"Phily  3/69
It was fun mating together on Peter's Island, playing under Strawberry Mansion Bridge. 
You, me, Mike, Larry, Ron, Sue and Suzanne.
Flat tires y all,
Gentle Joy from Utopia

Tobin Unger, Larry Skolnick, Sue Maturlo
Peter's Island, Schuylkill River, Philadelphia, PA
near Strawberry Mansion Bridge
© Gentle Joy from Utopia
3.1969

MIA (missing in action) in another boat
Joy, Ronnie Strauss, Mike Saks, Suzanne Roth

Photo awesomely sent to me by awesome college friend Tobin 11.1.2018 who has kept river photo that I gave to him in 1969, over 49 1/2 years.
(Yes, even in the sixties I was sharing my photos.)





Flight



Happy that "Flight" is accepted and published into Israel's The Deronda Review,
 a magazine of poetry and thought Vol. 7 No. 2 2018  page 27 of 44
The Deronda Review, vol. VII no. 2 (2018) may be read or downloaded in .pdf format here or in .html format here!
page  27 of 44
seen here:


"...If a poem
these days is anything, it constitutes
an overture of friendship to whoever
can read it and receive the poet’s meaning –
that is, to fellow-poets, since there is
practically no lay audience at present." 
- The Deronda Review
...


My feathered friends gone now, yet still heard on my YouTube “Ripple Reflections #2” 


I think my photos are quiet poems and my friends read them. - Joy


"Happy are they that dwell in Your house,  they are ever praising Thee."
-  Psalm 84:5
אַשְׁרֵי יוֹשְׁבֵי בֵיתֶךָ, עוֹד יְהַלְלוּךָ סֶּלָה
Ashrei yoshvei veitecha, od y’hallelucha, selah!

Joy Krauthammer  12.17.2017
very windy and dry
on a day that by mandatory fire orders, 104,607 residents evacuated, have taken flight
from the ferocious disastrous Thomas fires near Santa Barbara
began 12.4.2017 lasting for weeks
third worst in nation
then later first worst fire in nation
281,893 acres

1,063 Structures Destroyed,
   280 Structures Damaged
only an hour from the Gas Leak Blowout -worst in America’s history- that lasted many months.
     


When I accepted the position of ARTS editor of the Jewish Calendar Magazine in 1982, I told the publisher that I would ONLY take the job if I could publish poetry. I named my column Chai Lights for the next dozen years in Magazine and couple dozen more years on-line. 
I had met a child survivor of the Holocaust, Suzanne Szekely, and as an adult to survive her earlier traumatic memories, she was writing poetry. To be supportive, I wanted her poems published and that is what I did. 
At times I still see poets whose poems I had published—Florence Weinberger and Chana Bell.  
Now my poems are in print. 
Thank you to Israel's Esther Cameron and Mindy Aber for publishing me in The Deronda Review.
Personal poet friends Ruth Fogelman, Jean Katz and Marty Cohn Spiegel have guided me. 
I am grateful. - Joy Krauthammer

   below-- 6 photos from Garden of Joy        © Joy Krauthammer 

© Joy Krauthammer 

© Joy Krauthammer 

© Joy Krauthammer 

© Joy Krauthammer 

© Joy Krauthammer 

© Joy Krauthammer 


“Flight”  
by Joy Krauthammer           

Birds 
during Porter Ranch Aliso Canyon Gas Leak Blowout
took flight two years ago   or  they died.

Precious singing Mockingbirds 
never returned.
Magnificent symphonies stilled.
My heart broken.

Greeting each day,
facing East on high hillside
they perched on fence or
atop twigs of prickly pyracantha.

Hummingbirds nearby 
sat quietly alert on tallest thin branch of my big mama fig tree.
Easy to view when winter’s winds tear away fig leaves.
On guard duty, turning their heads
Hummer's bodies glistened in the sun
as they listened to sweet songs from their friends.

Every early morning from sunrise with camera in hand
I captured their golden and awesome shimmering iridescent breasts
and recorded their song.

I miss them; I look up and they are not there.
My beloved companions remain deep in my heart,
my Hummers and Mockingbirds.
                  ~
Reprinted above in case photo is ill. 
           ~ ~ ~

Another 'Flight' poem:  
http://joys-poems.blogspot.com/2014/01/flight-to-heaven.html


Flight to Heaven


FLIGHT

On a flight in 1994 
high in the sky
At first
I had my usual anxious reaction. 
I can die.

This flight, different
I then said to myself
It’s OK if I die.
I’ll join my Rebbe, z”l in Heaven. 
I didn’t.

Joy Krauthammer
1.16.2018


© Joy Krauthammer