To mend relationships, having people who know you wishing to know you better, establishing bonds, uniting small business owners with potential customers, talented workmen, blue and white collar workers, people with good work ethics, to be on time, timely, to help you out, deserving of rewards, to be paid and paid on time, people who survive from day to day, dollar to dollar, struggling to get work, jobs in their dreams, awaking early, an early bird gets the worm.
Working day hours, a hot sun as solar energy, energy alive as energy of love, to love and to work, to love your customers, to love your employers. What kind of love? Real love, love for humans who need love and reciprocate their love for yours. A helping hand, to hold her/his hand, to support him with your hands, working hands, honest hands, hands of creativity, hands of skill.
My hands to massage you as your hands rest and continue to love my hands, to hold up the world with our loving skillful honest imaginative hands.
Do we like "new" things? We eat new food everyday for breakfast lunch and dinner, some days we eat rye bread some days we eat Challah. Challah is a holy bread, rye is not. We can certainly enjoy rye bread at Jewish restaurants filled with Kosher corned beef and mustard. We can bless the bread ourselves as we sing the Motzi to thank God for the Kosherness in the meat and thereby also blessing the rye bread in addition to the meat.
So we want new foods? Can we go out and eat shrimp and lobster and complain our Kosher diet is too regular, not "new" and therefore boring?
No, we cannot hurt ourselves when we are angry at others. Ingesting non-Kosher foods is an act of hurting oneself, if you are Jewish. We must stick with the security of Kosher foods so not to hurt oneself, even if there are people who disapprove, but this disapproval is just based on ignorance.
As Jews we can eat new Kosher foods in our diet that we have not eaten all year, such as blueberries and raspberries because they come into season regularly grown during the summer months only. Or watermelon. We can then eat the fruits and thankfully to God to sing the new foods Blessing: "The Shehekeyanu". Or sing this beautiful Blessing when buying new clothes or the purchasing of a new electronic item or new appliance.
To watch the moon change every night: a new moon, a quarter moon, a half moon, a three quarter moon, a full moon. The moon changes every night predictably and we as Jews can count on a Rosh Chodesh once a month to celebrate the newness of this astronomical fact and turn it into a wonderful religious experience, to love the moon.
To yet find out this past week that Saudi Arabia did not even legally allow its women to drive motorized vehicles, it was against their law. Who is hurtful and who is not? The people who oppress women are the hurtful ones and the people who love and care for women giving us our equal rights to men are the people who are merciful and good, righteous people to be honored and respected.
So this change and newness has been expressed and honored by the Jews in Israel as we now allow women to pray at the Kotel, to read Torah at the Western Wall. Finally also to have the newness of being a Muslim woman and being behind the wheel of a car.
So, what you like is change? Newness? I do too. But not as in a "New Testament" as one's Bible. Instead to stick with the true and tried and turn the original old wheels (i.e. Honor One's Father and Mother, Do Not Murder...) Commandments that we already know work, instead of turning back-breaking new wheels that will end up in flat tires because they are not the truth, they are not The Jewish Faith.
What can we do to heal the world and try something new? Help a woman find new employment or start a new small business.
Find a way you can honor the women in your lives, be for us a way to newness as each day everyday you bring to us your delight in different ways, not the same: a box of chocolates or/and a bouquet of flowers, a new and different flower each time, Roses and Geraniums of redness or Lilies that are the pureness of whiteness.
Sukkot next on the lunar calendar, a holy day of living in a tent, a hut, a Festival of Booths, like the booths the Jews lived in as we were traveling 40 years in the desert to the Promised Land of Israel. A tent with a roof of willow and palm branches but to let the rain come in, to know what it is like to live in exposure to the rain and lightening and thunder, like the homeless, to have only the sparsest of material goods, to live frugally, to sleep on a pad on the ground, the ground being stiff and not soft, a place for one's head without a pillow. To eat in this Sukkah, a meal of salads, green items, orange veggies, yellow, and even Kosher Sushi for a meal.
To again sing the Shehekeyanu, the prayer for the newest of our experiences. A new etrog, being a fruit of the most delightful of smells, giving the etrog to a friend, stem downwards for him to turn right-side up. A lulav of tree branches, (Hebrew: לולב) is a closed frond of the date palm tree. It is one of the Four Species used during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. The other Species are the hadass (myrtle), aravah (willow), and etrog (citron).
Shaking the branches back and forth, shaking away evil out of our existence, a shake in front a shake in back a shake to the side to the other side, a shake to fight and kill wickedness on the sharp sides of the leaves like swords made of plant branches that we dash back and forth.
To afterwards hover together, to try to physically avoid the rain not to get our bodies wet, but to pray for rain for our harvests, to beckon The Lord to water our gardens, enough produce of fruits to last all winter long, deep into the coldest of the winter months, food in jars, to open and digest food everywhere in the world.
Fun and music in a Sukkah as we decorate it with gourds and artistic creations, as God created the world in 6 days with one day of rest, our Shabbat, we too create this Sukkah.
May the spirits of the souls of our Prophets and Prophetesses come inside our Sukkahs as we invite them to dine with us, to party with us, to protect us, to love us as we feed them and love them and they return the favor to us all year round.
