The Meditations of My Heart: Thoughts From Ozzie

In My Autumn Garden

2007-10-14T14:29:00.000-07:00

Where we live, autumn has arrived dressed in cool, damp wind. Perfect weather for my black Russian soul. So I write these words and send them to you . . .

“To everything there is a season,” says Ecclesiastes. “And a time for every purpose under heaven.” The poetry in these familiar words is unmistakable, but so are the generalities. Everything -- season -- time -- purpose.

Now, if we’re free to choose a specific thing for which there is a specific time and season, I nominate White-Shoes-Are-Declasse-After-Labor-Day. But such trivialities (concrete though they may be . . .) are surely not what Kohelet -- the biblical bard -- had in mind. For the text continues, “A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to pluck that which is planted.” Ah, good. Our melancholy poet-teacher has stopped beating around the bush. This is life and mortality we’re talking about. This is the bittersweet process of looking back, looking inward and looking ahead as we age. And on this journey through my autumn garden, Kohelet -- and a seed catalog -- are my chosen guides.

*

When I was young, spring arrived with fists full of lilies of the valley. They grew in clumps near the back door of my parents' house, and even more than robins or the crocus that pushed its way up through the snow, fragrant lilies of the valley meant spring to me.

My mother loved lilies of the valley. She understood their preference for shade, their need to shun bright light. She approved of the modest green capes in which the tiny blossoms wrapped themselves. At the time, our family owned an impressive collection of empty Kraft Cheese Spread glasses (from pimento and olive, mostly), and mother often filled the glasses with lilies of the valley and arranged the bouquets around our duplex -- on the kitchen table, the dining room buffet, the window sill above her sewing machine. The blooms never lasted long. No matter how often we changed the water, the bell-shaped flowers soon drooped on their delicate necks, bowed their heads, and died. But the plants returned, every spring, to our garden. And why not? After all, seed catalogs promise that lilies of the valley -- when well rooted -- will spread indefinitely, need almost no care, and live for many years.

*

When I was young, summer arrived on the ruffled skirts of hollyhocks which grew in sturdy rows beside our wooden backyard fence. Even more than monarch butterflies or morning glories scrambling up the porch rail, hollyhocks meant summertime to me.

The hollyhocks stood taller than I. The flowers -- pink, peach, red, white -- big as saucers, sheer as tissue paper -- hung like Lilliputian dresses at an outdoor bazaar. In my hands the blooms morphed into brides with their attendants, princesses surrounded by ladies-in-waiting, a line of headless ballerinas. In my summer garden, make-believe grew real as hollyhocks, but by September the flowers had gone to seed. Not to worry. Horticulturists say hollyhocks are a robust lot, and once established will last a long time.

*

Soon the short days of autumn will be here, with asters, goldenrod and mums blooming through chilly wind, frost and the first snow. But eventually we must deadhead the plants, rake up twigs and leaves, renew depleted soil. We’ll cast away stones, gather stones together, and put our gardens to bed for the winter -- our hopes for renewal waiting like seeds in the earth.

Today, however, I remember a trip Don and I took to Holland some years ago. In a village near the Zuider Zee we visited a tulip farm where acres of cut tulips were piled in heaps -- luminous purple, blue, orange, crimson, yellow, green -- like splendid dead parrots. While the cut blossoms lay unattended, workers gently placed the tear-shaped bulbs in burlap bags for shipment overseas. The flowers would be burned and plowed back into the earth. “This process may seem heartless,” the tulip farmer said, “but the transient beauty of young flowers is less prized than the enduring wisdom in the bulb.”

*

“One generation goes, another comes,” says Ecclesiastes, and to rail against this certainty is a waste of precious time. Unlike hollyhocks or lilies of the valley, our seasons will not last indefinitely or even (in some cases) many years. This autumn I ask, who will tend my garden when I’m gone? Perhaps the answer -- and some comfort -- lies in these words from a seed catalog:

“Mature tulip bulbs produce offset buds that are clones of the parent bulb, endowed with the same characteristics and genetic code. Nourished by the mother bulb, offsets grow into daughter bulbs, and the original mother shrivels and slowly disappears. When separated from the mother bulb, the young bulbs start flowering themselves, and even if planted upside down, they instinctively turn, turn, turn and grow towards the sun.”

Copyright © 2007 Ozzie Nogg. All rights reserved.

2007-10-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

The Circle That Is Simchat Torah

Every year on Simchat Torah, we march with scrolls and flags around the synagogue, read of Moses’ death, finish the Book of Deuteronomy, and then -- without pause -- start the Torah cycle over again with Bereshit and the Creation story.

This seamless segue can affect me in various ways, depending on my mood.

If my world is in balance, then the rhythmic progression from ending to beginning feels logical -- even comforting. If I’m hurting, this life-goes-on-in-spite-of-everything stuff strikes me as the Ultimate Cosmic Cliché. And if I’m bone weary, the unbroken circularity makes me ache for a time out.

But the world (thank you, Broadway) will not stop and let me get off. Still, when I look closely at the text we read on Simchat Torah, I realize there is a way to at least put things on hold.

Come with me.

* * * *

It is said that God created man in His image, yet none of us resemble any other. Furthermore, in one of the many midrashim based on the Creation story, we are told that while God was creating this world, He simultaneously created countless smaller worlds -- a metaphor (perhaps) for Mankind.

Imagine it! Zillions of people -- zillions of small worlds -- each spinning in separate orbits. Sometimes we spin out of control and collide. Sometimes we spin so far away we lose sight of one another, of God and the wonders He created for us.

Nachman of Bratslav commented on this. “Just as your hand, held before your eyes, can hide the tallest mountains -- so this earthly life can keep you from seeing the vast radiance that fills the universe.”

But even as our individual worlds keep spinning, we can find a way -- and the time -- to see the radiance of the universe. All we need do is take our hands from our eyes and read the opening verses of Bereshit.

From the text we learn -- as we learn every Simchat Torah -- that after God spent six days creating the heavens and earth and all they contained, He brought into being His crowning achievement -- the Shabbat. The day that He blessed and called holy, and on which He rested from all the work He had made.

Shabbat, says our tradition, is a gift from God. It is a day of sweetness, peace and delight -- when the cares and troubles of the past week are forgotten and we can rest, rejoice and be happy.

The prophet Jeremiah said, “Take heed of the Sabbath, for the sake of your souls.” If, during the year, we forget this teaching, we can thank Simchat Torah for reminding us that Shabbat is a taste of the world to come -- a quiet haven when this world is too much with us.

* * * *

Another Simchat Torah lesson.

According to the Psalms, in the Beginning, before He created any thing or any body, God created Wisdom. And this Wisdom, said the rabbis, was Torah. And, reasoned the rabbis, if God created the Torah before all else, He must have done so for a purpose. That purpose, they said, was so God could have a blueprint upon which to build the world.

A midrash teaches that the Torah itself declared, “A human king builds a palace not according to his own ideas but according to the ideas of an architect. And the architect needs parchment on which to draw the plans for the rooms and entrances. I am God’s architect,” said the Torah, “and so did God look into me and, accordingly, create the world.”

Now, if God looked into the Torah and followed its wisdom in the act of Creation, it seems logical that we -- cast in His image -- should do the same.

But how?

If the idea suits you, go march and dance and follow the scrolls around the synagogue in the Simchat Torah hakafot. Then, when the festival is over, continue to follow the wisdom of Torah. Make it the blueprint for building your personal world.

Sound too ambitious? Then let’s reframe the suggestion. During the coming year, treat your family, your friends, employees and pets with kindness. Be kind to the earth. (Be kind to yourself, too.) Visit the sick. Offer hospitality. During the coming year, stay close to your dear ones. Do no harm.

And when you can, stop (hello, Shabbat) to marvel, rejoice and be grateful for the radiant universe that God began for us -- Bereshit!

Copyright © 2007 Ozzie Nogg. All rights reserved.

2007-09-24T21:16:00.000-07:00

SUKKOT: Z’Man Simchateynu -- Our Festival of Rejoicing
Some backstory and Talmudic trivia

Hot on the heels of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur comes Sukkot – one of Judaism’s three Pilgrimage Festivals -- those times when the Israelites traveled to the Temple in Jerusalem bringing harvest gifts in gratitude to God. Of the three Festivals (Pesach and Shavuot being the other two), Sukkot was, by all accounts, the most popular.

For the how and whys of Sukkot celebration, look to Leviticus. “After the fall harvest, take fruits of goodly trees (etrog), branches of palm (lulav), boughs of thick trees (myrtle) and willows from the brook, and rejoice before the Lord seven days.” We are also told to dwell in booths -- as did the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt -- and to celebrate Sukkot by observing three mitzvot: rejoice during the holiday, gather the four species and live in the sukkah.

Our early ancestors rejoiced to a fault. They gathered in the Sanctuary at Shiloh on Mt. Ephraim, danced in the vineyards and drank copiously of their harvested grape. (Now we understand why those provincial sanctuaries were called the high places . . .)

Eventually, these unbridled revels were replaced by slightly more sober celebrations in the Temple in Jerusalem -- to which pilgrims came in camel caravans from Egypt, by boat from distant cities in the Mediterranean. They arrived on donkeys and in chariots. But those who traveled on foot won the most points, and it is said that Rabbi Hillel, himself, hoofed it all the way from Babylon.

The trip was clearly worth it. Once in Jerusalem, the dazzled pilgrims saw wooden booths on every roof. Thousands of men paraded through the streets, each carrying his own lulav. Silver trumpets blew. Priests with golden pitchers poured water on the altar. Flames from golden menorahs – 150 feet tall -- lit up the Temple area until Jerusalem glowed. Learned men juggled flaming torches, somersaulted, sang with harps and cymbals and (understandably . . .) nobody could sleep in all of Jerusalem the entire week of Sukkot. No wonder the rabbis said, “Whoever has not witnessed this celebration has not seen true rejoicing.”

FYI, to receive a five-star rating, a lulav must meet excruciatingly high standards for size, freshness, the way the willow and myrtle are wrapped to the palm frond, etc., and a lulav of dubious character needs rabbinic approval before it can be used. The etrog must be equally gorgeous. Free from blemish with an impeccable stem. An etrog with a ding in it is pasul -- invalid -- and condolences to the man whose etrog’s stem falls off before Sukkot is over.

Once you get your hands on the perfect etrog and lulav, they must be used (not just admired), held in specific ways, shook and pointed in all directions according to a strict pattern. This practice, some say, is left over from a pagan attempt to summon the four winds or bring rain. Pagan or not, the lulav and etrog are essential to the celebration of Sukkot.

Want to build a sukkah? The rabbis (bless their hearts) drew specific blueprints.

According to the Talmud, a sukkah must be X number of cubits tall by Y number of handbreadths wide with Z number of planks and beams. It can be no higher than 30 feet (we shouldn’t become haughty). It must be portable (we shouldn’t become set in our ways and inflexible). It must have at least three walls, plus a roof of leaves or branches that allows more shade than sun and through which the stars can be seen (since all blessings come from heaven). The Talmud offers options for building a sukkah on top of a wagon, on the deck of a ship or on a camel’s back. It also gives decorating tips, advice on how to sleep and eat in the (including ways to entertain the Ushpizin -- Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph and David -- the seven guests who see but are never seen) plus procedures to follow in rotten weather. A sukkah, remember, is to rejoice in -- not to suffer in -- therefore tradition decrees, “He who eats in the sukkah when it is raining is nothing but an ignoramus.” Or words to that effect.

Traditional wisdom says we live in booths during Sukkot because the Israelites lived in booths during their Exodus wanderings. “But,” argue pragmatic scholars, “desert nomads live in goatskin tents, not in wooden lean-tos with leafy roofs. Therefore, the sukkah is not connected to our wanderings in the desert. It’s merely an echo of our agricultural past, when harvesters lived in temporary huts in the fields.”

Well, pooh on scholars with no souls. To paraphrase Theodore Gaster, the myths woven around traditions -- even when historically inaccurate -- still have validity if people choose to believe them. So if we choose to believe that the sukkah symbolizes God’s protection of our people in the wilderness, or that it symbolizes the protection God continues to give us, what could it hurt.

So during this week of rejoicing, observe the traditions as best you can.
And during this week (and every week . . . ) pray that God may spread His sukkat shalom over us, over all of Israel, and over Jerusalem.

Amen.