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The Tishrei Holiday Cycle: All Our Limbs
You've heard of the whole body workout... How about the whole spiritual body workout! There is a place in our prayer book each Shabbat when we pray that God help us maintain and thrive in the past and in the present, sustaining us in body from all manner of plague and threat, and therefore, Kol Atzmatai, all of my limbs and every fiber shall give blessing to God and say 'who is like unto you.' The Tishrei cycle of holidays seems to be focused on this whole spiritual body workout!
Rosh Hashanah is not so much the birth of the world. Our rabbis teach that it's the anniversary of the birth of creation. It celebrates, not the birth of the world per se, but the birth of humanity and of human consciousness. On the one hand it requires physical actions–cleaning and cooking for the holiday; eating a festive meal and tasting the sweetness of the apple and honey; gathering our families, sometimes from far away, to celebrate with us; and the mitzvah of actually listening to the shofar with a focus on its historical Biblical associations– but also, listening with a feeling of our own regrets, resolve and sense of potential for the coming year. This is the quintessential celebration of mind and heart.
If Rosh Hashanah focuses on spiritual mindfulness, Yom Kippur carries this forward in a physical way, but by suppression of the physical. We are not intimate in marriage, we do not eat or drink, wash or apply lotions (unless these things a medically called for) for the entire day. Temporarily, we are all mind/all spirit. Our sages liken it to, in a sense, mimicking an angelic existence... until Yom Kippur ends at the moment we eat and drink, and of course, first begin to build the sukkah.
So far, we have engaged primarily the mind, the heart and the hand. But soon the sukkah and the lulav and etrog will engage other limbs. We must inspect and eye the best etrog to buy, we bask in the colors of autumn by eating and being outdoors more. The lulav represents the eyes, lips, backbone nad heart. We make a blessing specifically for the act of sitting in the sukkah, highlighting, therein, the use of yet another important limb. Besides eating in the sukkah, the hearty practice yet another mitzvah–of sleeping in the sukkah. This is the only mitzvah, I think, that we do in a completely unconscious state of mind. Finally, at Simchat Torah, we celebrate the completion and beginning of Torah by dancing with our star–singing and dancing with our beloved Torah. So I ask you, what limb is not engaged as we bring in the first month of the New Year?
There are those who only practice the mindfulness of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I encourage you not to forget the emphasis on other limbs. God and Torah, in their age-old wisdom, know what's good for us and require the full body/mind workout for yearly spiritual reactivation. Please consider yourselves warmly invited for the complete do-over, as we welcome in our new Jewish Year, 5777!
Beth and I wish all our members and their families a Shana Tova! May all be written and sealed for life, health, blessing and vitality this coming year!