3 minute read
A season of joy, affirmation and aspiration
Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross
It may very well be that “June is bustin’ out all over” on the coast of Maine, where Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Carousel” is set, and where early-summer temperatures run around 65 degrees. But in our part of the world, here on the Gulf in the semi-tropics, the weather in June is more apt to find us wilting.
That is fitting enough, because in our annual circuit of the sun, June is a month of transition, which sees us preparing to tackle summer in earnest. The sun has been rising earlier and setting later every day since the Equinox last March, leading up to the longest (and therefore essentially hottest) day of the year on the Summer Solstice in June.
The Jewish calendar reflects a corresponding shift since June this year begins with the last-gasp tail-end-of-spring month of Sivvan and ends with the goshit's-hot down-and-dirty summer month of Tammuz. A striking contrast, given that our fabulously ancient people function spiritually in a kind of dreamtime that keeps us cognizant always of our long history.
We recall that in the land of Israel, in antiquity, Sivvan marked the conclusion of the annual grain harvest, ongoing since Passover, marking this month as one of jubilant thanksgiving to God. We remember, as well, that the end of the very same harvest was observed with mourning by our pagan neighbors of the Assyrian Empire as marking the death of the Mesopotamian fertility god for whom Tammuz is named.
It strikes us as an irreconcilable paradox to rejoice one month, because your hard work is rewarded by a full granary, then to grieve the next, because this means there’s nothing left in the fields but stubble and straw. That jarring incongruity is fully as ridiculous as the character in one of Elick Moll’s marvelous novellas, who disregards the personal beauty and artistic magnificence of the Venus de Milo and merely remarks, “Poor girl, such stubby arms.”
We of the Household of Israel view this time of year as a blessing and a celebration, on all counts. In terms of the once-a-year solar cycle, in circular time, this month of Sivvan is a celebration of the harvest season in Israel just concluded. And in terms of linear time (the “on this day in history” approach to Jewish life), Sivvan rejoices in recalling and reliving the Sinai Covenant that gave direction and meaning long ago to our Israelite forebears who had left Egypt 50 days earlier.
Any way you approach it, this is a season of joy, affirmation and aspiration. With which, as a given, wilting doesn’t bother us. Because, however hot the ensuing summer turns out to be, we are united in blessing and sacred purpose.
Rabbi Mark Wm. Gross serves at Jewish Congregation of Marco Island.
