Friday January 31, 2025/2 Sh'vat 5785
Parashat Bo
Friends/Hevre,
Yesterday we welcomed the new month of Sh'vat during which we'll mark the holiday of Tu B'Sh'vat (on the 15th of the month) which the Sages designated as the New Year of the trees dictating the schedule of tithing their produce. By then the winter rains in Israel are over and new buds are emerging. Fruit harvested before Tu B'Sh'vat belongs to the year that passed. Fruit that grows after this date belong to the following year. The holiday itself celebrates the strength and vitality of the land of Israel; its capacity to renew itself and to continue to produce nourishing and fine fruit.
The analogies to the times we're living through are poignant, yet complicated. In some ways we're entering a phase of renewal with hostages coming home and ceasefires implemented. But in others this time is still agonizing. Those whose child or parent or partner remains in Gaza and whose fate is unknown remain traumatized. Others whose loved ones were murdered in Gaza and who will never comes home remain heartbroken. Anxiety about releasing violent terrorists abounds. Fighting continues. Soldiers are wounded. Many are killed.
The alchemy of emotions is hard to navigate. Fifteen months and counting of horror, terror, loss, pain, outrage, grief and worry are now mingling with relief and joy. Neither side of our feelings can overwhelm the other. There is too much - and too many - still at stake.
With the start of the month of Sh'vat, once again the cycles of nature as well as the environmental crises and opportunities we face on earth provide powerful metaphors for the cycles of our souls. The intertwining of death with rebirth; the mixing of vulnerability with strength; the blending of desperation with promise.
The 11th century poet and philosopher Rabbi Solomon Ibn Gabirol once said, “The world is a tree and human beings are its fruit.” Just as this new month summons us to account for the land's harvest with attention and intention, so does it impel us to stay attentive and mindful of the many, diverse, and often conflicting narratives of the human abundance life has granted us.
Later tonight we'll welcome the start of Shabbat with the daily blessing recited over the arrival of nighttime, "Hama'ariv Aravim". As Rabbi Rachel Barenblat reminds us, daylight doesn’t abruptly end and night suddenly start. They’re gently blended into one another. The sun sets, and the bright yellow and blue of the sky become streaked with the navy and ebony of nighttime. Evening is the synthesis of light and dark, of day and night. A beautiful metaphor for life itself.
As darkness descends on this eve of Shabbat, especially during this emotionally complex time, this blessing, chanted against the backdrop of a mystifyingly beautiful, multicolored sky - our beautiful, yet fragmented and broken world - reminds the mourner that loss is tinged with love; the sick, that illness mingles with health; the atheist, that secularity encounters moments of wonder; and all of us, that terror melds with courage; despair with hope.
With continued prayers for the hostages and their families, the soldiers, the injured, and the bereaved, for a lasting peace in Israel and around the world, for the families and loved ones of the victims of the American Airlines and Army helicopter crash, and, finally, with blessings for a Shabbat Shalom,
Dini

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