🌳 The smell of cinnamon and Songbirds 🐦 | Shvat: Trees teach us we are all one

Chodesh tov Shvat! Happy Rosh Chodesh Shvat! (there are two days of Rosh Chodesh this month!)

January 6th was my birthday. As someone captivated by transmutation and change, I saw the events of last Wednesday and the response to them as part of the deep paradigm shift we are amidst. Rosie Finn lays out the paradigm shift in four phases: Vision, Power, Justice and Reform. 

As Jews our ancestors were familiar with big shifts. And with them, there is always grief. As Jews, we are also familiar with grief. We are familiar with what it means to build community and mutual care behind the scenes of top down government structures. We have long praised and learned from the animals and plants we live with, allowing them to shift us into new ways of experiencing ourselves and community. 

This week we began to read from the book of Exodus.

Short synapse: The story begins with the death of one Pharaoh and the accession of power to the next. This new Pharoah ignores the contributions of the Israelites and proceeds to enslave them and make their lives miserable. Eventually the demagogue* is outwitted through the genius of the plants, animals and Israelites working together. The Israelites escape through the parting of the Sea of Reeds. It takes them many years to recover from the trauma they experienced. 

So it will be with us and this current version of democracy we are living through. 

There will continue to be those who choose to side with the love of power. There were Jews who worked with the Egyptians discouraging their own liberation  (internalized oppression). To lead the Egyptians, they sprinkled bread crumbs (read: manna) along the trail the Jews were to take to the Sea of Reeds. They didn’t consider the birds! Thousands of birds swooped in, eating the manna and undoing the evil work. 

As the Jews passed through the Sea of Reeds, the birds accompanied them, singing songs of glory. On January 30th, the 17th of Shvat we celebrate Shabbat Shira, the shabbat of songs, in honor of the birds. 

Songbirds help us move through grief.

There are many phases of grief. We tend to spiral forward and backward through them: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. But what about joy? I have often experienced my most profound joy during times of grieving. These days my joy is in listening to the song of justice work. Locally, I am a part of a project of love to secure housing for a Black family deeply affected by police violence. This collective effort is the gathering of songbirds, singing towards justice just as the memories of my ancestors delighting in songbirds led them to freedom. Their flight, their song, a joy amidst the adrenaline and stress of running for their lives. Their flight, their song, an inspiration and a reminder to stay present to the joy of the moment, whether that be a deep wail or a belting out melody. Their flight, their song allowing their hearts to collapse into the enchantment of liberation. We, everyday people write our songs of glory through doing the one small thing to awaken a new world.

Last night we began the month of Shvat. In Shavat we celebrate the birthday of trees, the homes to most birds. On Tu b’Shvat we eat the fruits and nuts of many trees. Almond is the harbinger of this holiday. In the middle east, almond flowers during Shvat, blossoms an essence of hope in winter. They also remind us to be steady and patient. The first to flower but last to fruit, almond reminds us we avoid the evil eye (the shape of the nut is like an eye and also a symbol to deter the evil eye) with patience, by staying grounded on earth, by maintaining our human container, not flailing off into spiritual bypassing and by doing acts of justice. This is how we awaken (the meaning of the Hebrew word for almond, shaked: awaken).

Shvat is associated with the letter tzadi (צ). It is said that tzadi is the first letter in time. The goddexx created tzadi first because tzadi is righteousness. Tzedakah: deeds of justice, tzedek: righteousness, a tzadik is a person who does righteous acts. This is the foundation of our world in Jewish thought. As Laurance Kushner writes, “To make room for other letters, the Lord of Hosts had to step back and remove himself.” This retreating and constricting is a kabbalistic process called: tzimtzum, goddexx becoming smaller to make space for the universe to emerge. 

There is a story I love from the Babylonian Talmud told to me by my teacher Jill Hammer - that the trees of Jerusalem were cinnamon and their smell carried throughout the land when they were harvested. During the destruction of Jerusalem the trees were hidden, the few remaining can be found in the treasure house of Queen Tzimtzemai (she who makes herself smaller).

What else is hidden away, mysterious, still to be uncovered from our histories of assimilation, oppression and corporate greed? I have been taught a tree has one thought their whole life. When we slow down our thoughts and tap into tree energy we listen closely to our true desires, to what actually makes us feel joy. 

Love of power and greed tell us to take up lots of space for the stoking of our own ego. Unlearning oppression we learn to be “right sized.” We understand that our gifts are not of us but of a universal creative force moving through. Just as goddexx energy retreated in order for the world to become, we too can retreat in order for new creative discovery to emerge.

The reformation, the revolution has begun. It begins with artists/ creatives/ activists (which we all have the power to become) and the ingenuity of those who have been most impacted by systems of oppression. It began as soon as the first Indigenous people on Turtle Island resisted genocide. It began when the first Africans resisted slavery. It began when Jews kept procreating despite Pharaoh's decree to kill the first born son. It began when kedeisha (sacred prostitutes) tricked greedy men to save the Jewish people. It’s been building and growing and now it’s our time to do the work to allow the emergence of complete healing, a complete reform.

Blessing:

May the song, the vision of the birds, the smell of cinnamon beg your joy awake. May you do acts of tzedakah to remind you that all things begin with a small act.  

Ritual suggestion:

Hold a cinnamon stick in your hand. Examine her folding and spiraling in. Smell her aroma. Listen to her one thought.

*when I used this word to refer to T the other day my mom said, “Ahh, and how our vocabulary has grown as a result of this administration!” 

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