PREPENT DAY 29
Elul 29 5775 – September 13 2015
NYC
There is an Arabic saying: Some days are onions, other days are honey.
Honey is the flavor of this night.
Not sure who came up with the Gastro-Judaic recipe for starting the new year with apples dipped in sweetness but like all great symbols this one stuck, like honey on our fingertips and tablecloth, for generations of wishful thinkers seeking sweet where so much bitter claims our lives, sometimes in doses larger than others.
Honey helps.
This past weekend I’ve already tasted the holy honey of the new year: At a gorgeous baby naming and at a shiva, at a Shabbat meal and a quiet funeral – within 48 Hours, birth and death, endings and beginnings were spiced with a seasonal moment of dipping apples and home made challah in the stuff of bees and being.
That moment when the honey hits your mouth is ripe for magic: wishful thinking.
So much goes through our mouths each day- deliberate or thoughtless, kind or cruel, healthy or not: breathing, eating, speaking, kissing.
When we lick our lips tonight let it be a conscious act of kindness to our body and soul. An act of return to our senses with gratitude, appreciation, commitment to be more present to each breath and word and bite.
Let it be an opportunity for making a wish, just like in fairy tales, and prayer books, for one sweet thing we hope for in the world, our world, this coming year. Wishful thinking is pragmatic – but think big.
You may even expand to three wishes. Repair the despair. Let the honey make this holy day a sweet reminder of the joys to come.
Prepent 29. May this day and this year bless us with juicy onions, heaps of honey, the ability to digest, balance, help ourselves and others rise up to this sacred life.
Shana Tova!
~ Amichai
