Welcome to Rosh Chodesh Cleveland

At the full moon of Tevet, in our tenth year of Rosh Chodesh meetings at Horseshoe Lake, it seems like a good time to move our monthly Facebook posts to a new format.  I am new to blogging but hoping this format will allow us to reach more readers.  I hope you will bear with me as I try to take the usual somewhat disorganized set of thoughts each month, and make some coherent sense of them here.

Rosh Chodesh (literally “head of the month”) is the Jewish acknowledgement of the arrival of the new moon, marked on the first day of each Hebrew lunar month.  While traditional prayers are said in the synagogue, in Cleveland we also meet to recognize the natural and agricultural world, the cycle of the Jewish year, and its place in our lives.  A small group of us meet at the dam at Horseshoe Lake in Shaker Heights, 7:30 am, rain or snow or shine, on the first day of each Hebrew month.  In ten years we have not missed a month – even in 10 degree weather, the middle of a blizzard, and in pouring rain. We advertise ourselves as a walking meditation group.  We try to bring some thoughts from our tradition to our meditation, before walking in silence around the lake – and close with the traditional blessings for the New Moon and a good month ahead. We try to finish within 45 minutes to an hour, shorter if the weather is not agreeable.  You are most welcome to join us – contact me here if you would like more information.   However we also recognize that 7:30 am, year-round, is not always a convenient time to head outdoors for everyone.  Hence this attempt to share photos and thoughts to help all of us feel a little more grounded in the cycles of the Jewish year, and the natural and agricultural cycles of the Great Lakes and Israel.

The next Rosh Chodesh meeting is the first day of the month of Shevat, Wednesday, January 17, 7:30 am, the dam at Horseshoe Lake.  Join us! — Kirby