If you know anyone who is Jewish, you may be aware that the Jewish people have celebrated four major holidays over the last month.
To start the Jewish month of Tishrei, which this year began on Oct. 2, we celebrated Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, for one night and then two days. Nine days later we observed Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, which is the most sacred day on the Jewish calendar. Five days after that, we spent a week celebrating the festival of Sukkot — literally “booths” in English — which is the fall harvest holiday during which we erect a temporary outdoor structure that we’re encouraged to spend as much time in as possible during that week.
At the end of the week of Sukkot, we celebrated a holiday called Simchat Torah, which literally means “the joy of Torah” (the Hebrew name for the first five books of the Bible). During this synagogue-based holiday, we read aloud the very end and the very beginning of the Torah, and we danced around in our sanctuaries with the Torah scrolls, celebrating that we completed another year of reading through the entire text on Shabbat mornings. Simchat Torah was celebrated by American Jews last Thursday and Friday, and once it was finished, the busiest season in the Jewish calendar was completed. The month of Tishrei, the month that contained all of those holidays, ended this past Friday at sundown (in the Jewish calendar, days end and start at sunset) and the new month, called Cheshvan (the ch in this word sounds like Bach, not choose), began Saturday.
After a month when you come to expect that another holiday is coming along as soon as each one is completed, after a month filled with constant activity and a seemingly endless supply of special days, Cheshvan can feel like a bit of a letdown. In fact, in ancient times, this new month was referred to as being “mar” — the word for bitter in Hebrew — because unlike its predecessor, it contains no holidays. Cheshvan offers nothing special other than 30 days and a regular quantity of Sabbaths (this year, it contains the American holiday of Thanksgiving, but due to the vagaries of the Jewish calendar, that usually doesn’t happen).
This is usually a time when your attention returns to day-to-day business, and when you start to address all of the non holiday-related things that came up over the last couple of months that you had to put on hold because you were consumed with preparing for and then celebrating these holidays. In many ways, Cheshvan a return to banality.
Now, I’m willing to admit in this public forum that many congregational rabbis, along with other people who work in synagogues, usually disagree with describing Cheshvan as bitter. To be honest, for all of us for whom planning and carrying out these celebrations is part of our vocation, a month without holidays can feel like a relief. As anyone whose work life includes a busy season can understand, it’s pleasant to leave all of the extra obligations behind and to get back to the everyday, to return to normal. It can take some time to come down from the highs of having so many celebrations, but for my colleagues and me, the practical reality of Cheshvan can be pleasant.
I also think that our experience can be a good reminder for all of us to celebrate and attend to not only the special things and moments in our lives, but also, the things that are regular and everyday.
It’s pretty easy for us to get wrapped up in the things in our lives that seem important and significant and to ignore everything else. Doing this makes us feel important, and it fills up our time and our consciousness, but it also means that we are avoiding so much that’s worthy of our attention. For the last couple of months, I got in the habit of quickly evaluating almost anything I encountered as something that was either relevant to the holidays, or something that I needed to set aside for a while. This meant that I ignored, or brushed off, a lot of smaller but attention-worthy ideas, encounters and pleasures.
In this last week since Simchat Torah, I have instead found myself slowing down and relaxing more often, in a way that I really haven’t since we started planning for the holidays over the summer. Instead of hurrying from one thing to the next, instead of being preoccupied with the major projects that were looming on my horizon, I’ve been stopping to notice the things — both the sublime and the mundane — that I had regularly been rushing past. I’ve paused to look at the changing leaves, and I’ve stopped to chat with people as I walk down the street. Instead of hurrying through most of them them, I’ve been deliberately paying attention to more of my meals and chores and activities and conversations. I’ve started to remember that the best way to find meaning in our everyday lives is to do our best to fully and truly experience whatever comes along — even the things that aren’t connected to the supposedly very important things that we’re working on, whatever they may be.
The holidays of Tishrei are unquestionably extremely important to my community, and I know that most communities have similarly important seasons, but it’s vital to remember that they’re not where most of us usually live. Most of us usually live in what I’ll call “Cheshvan time” — the times when our lives are composed of regular, everyday moments. May the idea of Cheshvan, a holiday-free month that follows a season of celebration, remind all of us that so much of the meaning and value of life can be found when we go back to the everyday, and focus our attention on whatever it is that life brings us.
May we all experience a Cheshvan of presence, meaning and joy.
David Katz is the rabbi at Temple Beth El of Williamsburg.
