Mishkan Ha'am The Westchester-Riverdale Reconstructionist Group

As Jews, we are invited to experience the passing of the year through participation in a number of overlapping cycles, all of which progress according to the pulse of the calendar. 


The most basic unit is the day itself, which traditionally is divided into three segments--evening, morning, and afternoon--by the recitation of three orders of prayer, each with its own poetics and concerns.  After that comes the week, with six days of labor (five in the USA, thanks to the labor movement) followed by a Shabbat of rest and reinvigoration.  And each month, as I think I made clear in my anxiety-laden pre-Rosh Hashanah message, is ruled by the waxing and waning of the moon.


The two major yearlong cycles are perhaps the most familiar, and the most remarkable.  One is the holiday cycle, offering us a variety of mythic lenses through which to celebrate and reflect upon the varieties of human experience, but in fact also deeply rooted in the seasonal and agricultural rhythms that determined the pace of our ancestors' experience.  The second is the cycle of Torah reading, which takes us from the creation of the world, through the development of languages and cultures, to the Jewish story of slavery, liberation and wandering, and then back to creation again just before the grand culmination of the story is to occur--like waking too quickly from a dream, or maybe just in time!


These two cycles, the seasonal holidays and the mythic narrative, are not actually calibrated to each other, but sometimes they are subject to serendipity.  We're in such a fortunate conjunction now: with Hanukkah behind us, we have entered a kind of quiet period in the holiday cycle, which will last until we are awoken by a series of three festivals--Tu b'Shvat, Purim, and Passover--coming at one month intervals, into springtime.  And in our Torah reading this week, we will read about how the fortunes of the Children of Israel turned--how they went through a period of slavery, before they could burst forth in freedom and clarified identity.


In other words, both cycles are telling us to think of our time right now, the short days and cold winds of winter, as a moment of quiet and subjugation, as a kind of seedtime, a time to give thought to how we will grow when the ground loosens and the rain falls, when the sea parts and the wilderness looms.  And in this contemplation, may we find warmth and inspiration.


b'shalom.

Rabbi Ben

Please also feel free to contact me personally, if I can be of any assistance: ravbenweiner@gmail.com