Posts
In keeping with what I have decided must surely be worthy of
being a tradition, I had a hike today to mark Rosh Chodesh – the beginning of
the new Jewish month. It was pretty warm
out, but I must say, it was more the warm of Autumn than of summer. I’ve decided not to be sad that Summer is
racing so quickly to Autumn, though, because there are still several more
months of hiking in good weather ahead of me.
Elul is the month of preparation and shofar blowing (at
least, if you can blow a
shofar. I have a beautiful one from
Israel, but I’ve never been able to make a sound out of it, not even a sad
little bleat, much less the triumphant LISTEN
TO ME of a properly sounded ram’s horn!).
Jews are meant to be more thoughtful, more mindful, in this month
leading to Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, and to Yom Kippur, the Day of
Atonement. Elul is about teshuvah, or return. To where are we
returning? To ourselves – to our best,
sweetest selves. And to those with whom
we have relationships – especially if they have become fractious, because now
is the time to work at making them better, and return. And repentance. The name of the month has been understood to
be an acronym for the Hebrew verse “I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine;”
or straight from the text:
אלול: אני לדודי ודודי
לי — ani l’dodi v’dodi li
“I am to my beloved as my beloved is to me.”
These lines are from the Song of Solomon, and they’re often
used at weddings, but it’s at least as likely that its unknown author created a
beautiful allegory about our relationship with God. And that’s the other point of return for this
month: we often don’t think too deeply about our relationship with God – it’s
just something that is, unless, of
course, something happens that causes us to look closely at it (honestly the ‘something’
is often a tragedy; we don’t always spend as much time acknowledging God in the
good that still surrounds us).
Today, I went to Crystal Crescent Trail, a place I visit
often – there are three beautiful white-sand beaches there, and a boardwalk
past them that leads to a trail up into the woods. The trail meanders in and out of the woods,
and when it is out, you are walking on huge rocks, older than any of us,
looking at the Atlantic Ocean in all her glory.
What a place this is to sanctify the new month. I stopped at the first rocky outcrop, past
all the beaches, past the sounds of people – just me and the sound of the
ocean. Even the seagulls were happy to
just sit and enjoy the sun – it’s as if they, too, know that weekends of summer
are dwindling, and so these days are to enjoy.
From my perch overlooking the ocean, I see the Sambro
light. And there was something big
swimming out there, but I cannot tell what it was. Enough to know that it was there. Here, it still smells of the sweetness of
summer – the trail is perfumed with flowers whose names I don’t know, but whose
scent feels like a blessing. It’s so
good to be here, to be alive.
When I’m by the ocean, a refrain of “Mayyim Hayyim” is the
accompaniment to my thoughts. Water and
life. One cannot exist without the
other. Indigenous people the world over
know this, and so do Jews. Throughout
the diaspora, we spend months praying for tal
(dew, or rain) for Israel. What Israelis
have accomplished in a country built on a desert is remarkable. They knew – as far back as Miriam the
Prophetess and even before – that water is life. And so they found water, deep underground,
and freed it. And they turned a sunbaked
country green.
Here in Canada, we tend to take water for granted – we just
turn on the tap, and there it is. We’re
surrounded by it, and we have more fresh water than anywhere else on
earth. This is the month of Elul, a
month of teshuvah. And I think that perhaps my first act of teshuvah should be to raise my voice
again and question how it is that with this huge abundance of water, there can
still be communities in Canada whose water is unfit, unsafe for drinking, and
in some cases, unfit for bathing. Water
is life – and how do we value some lives if we don’t care whether they have access
to fresh water? I have no answers to
this question, but I’m searching for them.
And if you want to search, too, just consult your favourite search
engine and enter “Water Protectors Canada,” or “Water Protectors Nova Scotia,”
or even (sigh) “Alton Gas.” It’ll be
worth your time.
Chodesh tov.
