This week we celebrate rosh chodesh, the beginning of the Jewish month of Cheshvan. In recent years, I have developed two personal practices for the month of Cheshvan, both related in some way to the sudden absence of Jewish holidays. The “break” in the Jewish calendar opens an opportunity to appreciate an element of secular time. Cheshvan always overlaps to some extent with the run-up to Thanksgiving. (This year, Thanksgiving falls on the last day of Cheshvan.) This presents a perfect opportunity to focus, in my own life, and in my work with students, on gratitude, cultivating an appreciation of everything that may escape my attention when I am busy with other concerns. This week I reintroduced and hung up Hodayah, the gratitude turkey, and invited students to adorn her with feathers representing all that they are grateful for. In just the first few days, she has begun filling out her coat of feathers.
My other Cheshvan practice comes from a pun on an etymological misread of a name of the month. Cheshvan is more formally known as Marcheshvan, which Hebrew speakers feel drawn to break down into two words mar, bitter, Cheshvan. It is said that Cheshvan is called bitter because of its lack of Jewish Holidays. To me, though, the appellation, bitter Cheshvan, combined with the convenient lack of holidays to derail us, has come to signify a perfect opportunity for a family sugar-detox month. It usually feels worthwhile after the indulgence of all of the fall holidays to reset the amount of sugar in our lives. And it has served to demonstrate to my children, if not yet to my husband, that living without sugar is not really a hardship, that other foods are far tastier and more interesting when sugar is proverbially off the table, and that Thanksgiving treats are doubly good after a month away from sweets.
This week, we read Parshat Noah, the well known story of Noah and the flood, its own, more dramatic reset of human behavior and gratitude. As the parsha begins, God realizes that humanity has become corrupt, and decides to wipe things clean and start over. God chooses Noah and his family to save, along with representatives of all the species of animals, instructs Noah to fill the ark with every kind of food that they might need to eat, and floods the world, leaving the refugees in their cramped conditions, not only for the forty days of the flood, but for the far longer time that it takes the water to subside and for earth to be inhabitable again.
Disembarking from the ark, Noah’s first act is to build an altar to God and make offerings of thanksgiving. Noah’s gratitude is understandable. He has survived the deadly deluge, and is finally on dry land, his responsibilities to keep everyone and everything alive fulfilled. But couldn’t we also imagine Noah seeing things more negatively. He is, after all, one of only eight people left alive. And though the land is dry, all of civilization has been wiped out, leaving it to Noah and his family to rebuild and repopulate. Even in this bittersweet moment of uncertainty, his first response is gratitude.
God recognizes that the reset of the flood cannot stand alone as a tactic for creating a better, kinder, more responsible society. And so God offers some new terms and conditions for the human-Divine relationship. God resolves not to send a flood to wipe out humanity again, that the rhythms of time and nature will go on undisturbed. And God gives humanity permission to eat meat, with two conditions. First they must not consume the blood of living beings, which is the essence of life. And, God will demand a reckoning for spilling of human blood. Because, God reminds us, humanity is created in God’s image, human life is sacred.
These new rules are, on the one hand, a concession to humanity’s more violent tendencies, and on the other hand a reminder of what is sacred and inviolable in the world. They are an acknowledgement that we will often not live up to our own, or God’s, highest ideals, but that we are capable of self restraint and of finding holiness and meaning in choosing not to do all that we could. And so as the episode ends, both humans and God choose self restraint over passionate impulsivity and gratitude for both the blessings, and the bitter-sweet.
As I sit with these two practices, gratitude and embrace of the “bitter”, the song Al Kol Eileh by Naomi Shemer, known as the “first lady of Israeli song,” plays through my mind. The song enumerates a list of the simple pleasures in the life of the narrator, from natural phenomena to a safe, healthy home and family, to moments of quiet, tears and song. The refrain decares:
All of these, please guard, my good God,
The honey and the thorn, The bitter and the sweet
Do not uproot what is planted, do not forget the hope
Bring me back and I will return to the good land.
Rereading this classic of the Israeli song cannon along with parshat Noah, as we bring in the month of mar-Cheshvan, brings the sweetness of a gratitude practice and the power of a little reveling in the bitter into sharp focus. I’ll leave you with two links to this song, Naomi Shemer’s original version from 1981, and the version created by koolulam in honor of Israel’s 70th birthday. If the words, music and camaraderie inspire you, I invite you to join me in one or both of my Cheshvan practices, in gratitude, sought out, noticed and expressed, and in simple nourishing food that makes the sweet extra special.