Miryam's Space

Elul 1: Happy New Year!

Wait, what?

Let me explain: In the Mishna, which is the book of writings compiled in the year 200 of the common era, after the destruction and expulsion of the Jews in the year 70, in which the Rabbis both remembered, and adapted the traditions (oral law) to the exile, there are FOUR New Years in Jewish tradition: The New Year of Kings: the first of Nissan the first; The First of Tishrei: Rosh Hashanah, when the years were counted; TuB’Sh’vat – the new year of the Trees, and Today, Elul the first – new year of the Animals. The New Year of the trees was reconstituted by the Kabbalists in the 15 and 16th centuries, and again in modern times to become a Jewish “Earth day”. Let’s revive the New Year of the Animals, and celebrated and vow to protect animal life on this planet. If you were a (non-human) animal, what would you be?

Elul 2 – Two. Not only are there two stone tablets that Moshe (Moses) brings down from Mount Sinai, there are two sets of tablets. After seeing the golden calm, Moshe smashes them on the ground and they shatter. I was, for a long time angry at Moshe for doing this: how could you break such a precious gift? I thought, who are you to do that?! But the Israelites had made an idol of Moshe, this covenant needed rewriting. Kudos, says the midrash. G8d forbid our faith should become inflexible as stone. Famously the broken shards of the first set of tablets are placed in the ark.

Elul 3 -Three. On the third of Elul, we recognize the “threes” of the shofar sounds. There are three different kinds of blasts: Tekiyah, one log blast, which is three times the duration of the “sh’varim”/ three short blasts, and each of those are three times as longs at the staccato blasts of the “Teruah”! And there are at least three symbolic interpretations of the sounds of the shofar: 1. they are the sobs of Sarah when she found out that her husband was attempting to sacrifice their only child, or of Sisera’s mother when she found her son was dead. 2. They are an alarm clock waking us up to return to our core values and to G8d. 3. They can be our voices when we exhale, so that we can be a shofar, singing and calling out injustices.

Elul 4- Four: there are four matriarchs, four corners of the earth, Four elements, four worlds. We need to be out in nature and nourishing, like the mothers, grounded in the four directions, among the earth, air, fire and water. It is said that during Elul, the king is in the field, ie closer. Let us go out into nature and commit ourselves to healing our mother earth/Shechinah.

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