As I gaze out the window of my home study on a sunny San Francisco Spring morning, I am delighted by the scene—lush green overgrown grass, pale pinks and yellow blossoms on my apple tree, ripe Meyer lemons hanging low on the branches of a neighbors tree and bright purple flowers growing wildly in my own garden. Spring has arrived with a feverish pitch and the natural world is reawakening. Some say that Northern Californians don’t enjoy the change in seasons like our friends and relatives back east. But our cycles are as lush and beautiful here as they are anywhere! How lucky we are to have a home in our own “Promised Land.”
With the spring festival of Pesach rapidly approaching, I am remembering the wonderful gatherings in our big Sukkah last autumn and I’m anticipating our exciting Shavuot program and celebration in the early summer. The Jewish festivals flow with the seasons, helping us to reflect upon important life passages and to appreciate all that we have accomplished. Were we not to pause and reflect we would surely lose all sense of meaning and purpose in our lives.
In mid-May we will gather as we do at Beth Israel Judea each year to look back at the planned and unexpected changes, to celebrate our shared success and to get a glimpse at the joys and challenges ahead. And when we do, I hope you will feel as I do now—a deep sense of gratitude to God for this holy congregation and great admiration for the strength and commitment of our community’s leaders.
Lest we should think that it is merely the need to pass a new budget that compels us meet—we must remember that for Jews, Shavuot is precisely the time to take stock of where we have been, to engage a process of reflection and thanksgiving and to mark it with a celebration. In Deuteronomy 26, our wandering ancestors were instructed to observe the festival upon arrival in Eretz Ysrael:
When you come in to the good land which God has given you – you shall take of the first fruits of the earth and put it in a basket and set it down before God and say, “Behold, I have brought You the first fruits of this land. Now bless your people Israel and the land which you have given us, a land that flows with milk and honey.” And you shall rejoice in every good thing which God has given you, your family, the Levite and the stranger who is among you.
Still today on Shavuot, our Israeli friends and cousins, particularly those on kibbutzim, celebrate bikkurim, the first fruits of the harvest. For Jews the world over it is time to celebrate the completion of a course of study (i.e. Confirmation), dedicating or installing new creative works, feasting on delicious diary foods (based on the ‘milk & honey’ theme), collecting gleanings of fruit and other foods for the hungry and studying enlightening bits of Torah and Jewish wisdom in a tikkun leyl Shavuot.
With no 10th grade confirmation class this year, we invited the Or Shalom Jewish Community to join us in a Shavuot celebration which will include many of the above elements. Rabbi Katie Mizrahi will teach on Revelation (the 10 Commandments and beyond) and I will lead a study of the Book of Ruth (Megilat Ruth)—both of which are traditional to Shavuot. In the afternoon there will be a blintze cooking frenzy in our kitchen followed by a dairy meal in the early evening. The study sessions will follow and we will top of the evening with a blow-out musical midnight service under the stars. The following morning we will hold our traditional Shavuot service with Yizkor and a special Shavuot Kiddush. Come join us for this very special celebration!
L’Shalom,
Rabbi Rosalind Glazer