Tuesday, May 15, 2018. Today’s New Moon weather was bright and humid. After a long winter and hardly a spring, it is possible that summer is upon us at last! In biblical Israel, sowing was almost complete, just a little sesame and millet still being planted – and the first harvests were coming in, coinciding with the holiday of Shavuot – wheat, oats, peas, lentils. Here in the Great Lakes, it’s all about flowers – the peonies are budding, and some irises are in bloom – along with cherry, crabapple and magnolia, and trillium and solomon’s seal in the woods. Which brings us to the season of leaves, according to our source Jill Hammer: a season of growth and greenery. The quiet underground seasons of seeds and roots and buds have burst forth into leaf. We can relax, take a breath, and begin to enjoy the fruits of earlier planting, whether that is in our gardens or our spiritual lives. The counting of the Omer is almost complete, and the counting of the days of spiritual growth and reflection as well, as the holiday of Shavuot approaches. — Kirby and Linda
Sivan is the month in which we celebrate the giving of the Torah to the Israelites, at Shavuot. At the moment the Israelites assented to the incorporation of the Torah into their lives, they ceased being clans of Israelites and became Jews as we understand the term today. The Torah provided a blueprint, so to speak, that had to be interpreted. And so the great spiritual adventure began with the Talmud and has continued without a break for millennia. We are the inheritors of this grand journey and actively pursue it even in our literature, our music, our drama and especially in our lives. Even without being explicitly aware of it, our daily lives as Jews have some aspects of the Torah and its explication. So our celebration of Shavuot can be understood as a celebration of this grand tradition of arguing, studying and, hopefully, understanding the meaning of this great gift. — Stephen
(I should also mention that we had company today, in the form of a Double-Breasted Cormorant, settled and watching in a tree along the lake.)–KMD
Rosh Chodesh Cleveland 