( - promoted by Sheila Webb-Halpern)
Rachel Cohen is a Legislative Assistant at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. This piece originally appeared in Ten Minutes of Torah. It is only a few days after Yom Kippur, and already another season is about to end. Not for us as Jews or North Americans, but for the earth. Today begins one of the most joyous weeks of the Jewish year as we celebrate the harvest, and mark the end of the agricultural season, with the festival of Sukkot. And just as Sukkot ends, on Shemini Atzeret, we pray for an abundant rainy season following the dry summer months and enjoy the gifts of the earth - fruit, grains, and water - with which we are blessed once again. We call ourselves the "People of the Book," yet our calendar and our celebrations remind us that we have always been a people of the land. Greeting cards and gifts aside, the most important holidays in traditional Judaism have always been the three harvest festivals: Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot. These holidays each mark not only an historical event (the Exodus, the giving of the Ten Commandments, and the wandering of the Israelites through the desert) but also a pivotal point in the agricultural calendar (the beginning of spring, the new planting season, and the last harvest before the winter rains). Every year at these critical moments we stop to take stock of where we are - in relation to our earth above all else - give thanks for what we have, and carefully consider our next steps.
|
