Around 1 in the morning Monday night, I awoke to the sounds of it. The soft pattering quiet I had not heard for a season. Unmistakable. Rain. The first rain of the season soaking the bamboo roof of my Sukkah.
The timing seemed supernatural. The next day was Shmini Atzeret, the little-known holiday at the tail end of Sukkot whose primary ritual act is to pray for rain. Twice a year, the liturgical calendar asks us to switch out a tiny phrase in the Amidah prayer, traditionally said three times a day. Usually for me the line is a semi-conscious blip in the course of a service. Sometimes it lifts me up into an awareness of seasons and the preciousness of water. Twice a year, it expands into a beautiful poem of hope and vulnerability as we acknowledge the Earth’s cycles and our human dependence on rain and dew to feed our bodies.
Eloheynu v’Elohei Avoteynu v’Imoteynu – Our God and God of our ancestors:
B’gishmei orah ta’ir adamah — With raindrops of light, illuminate the Earth,
B’gishmei bracha, t’varech adamah — With raindrops of blessing, bless the Earth,
B’gishmei gilah tagil adamah — With raindrops of rejoicing, give joy to the Earth…
The prayer is an acrostic, moving through the Hebrew letters and praying for every kind of goodness to wash over us as the rains begin. Then it introduces the phrase which will be said in the midst of the Amidah until the end of Pesach as the season shifts again.
She’atah hu Adonai Eloheynu rav lehoshiah, mashiv haruach u’morid hagashem – for You are Adonai our God, whose power to save is great, the One who makes the wind blow and the rains fall.
This morning, a few days after Shmini Atzeret, as I obsessively checked for news, I had all but forgotten the Earth and its seasons shifting around me, the powers of the planet and its rains and winds. Caught up in the pain of the moment, the outrage and disillusionment happening on our human scale, I had completely given in and cut myself off – running my life by the cycles of headlines and scandal rather than the cycles of prayer, water and sun.
Painful as it is – I am glad to be awake. I know that for the sake of my children, and God willing their children’s children, I need to pay attention to the politics of our moment. I need to remember what I committed to on Yom Kippur for the sake of the world. I need to do more than I did in 2016 when that consequential election loomed. Actions like making calls, giving to campaigns and getting out the vote not only make a difference in the world, they also (more selfishly) make a difference to my distressed inner state.
I also know that all of our human structures of government, technology and community are built on a foundation of Earth. In Hebrew, the first human beings are called Adam – from the word Adamah, Earth, that features so much in the prayer for rain above. We are formatively and linguistically — creatures of the Earth. And that quality reminds me that there is a frame here beyond the momentary dramas on the political scale.
I find myself longing for grounding. For perspective. Yesterday I sat with a family who was planning to bring a 101 year old great grandmother to attend a Bar Mitzvah service. I mused about how I would love to ask her how she sees our moment. I wondered if she feels it is as unusual and troubling as it seems to me – or if it is just another cycle, far less worrisome than others she has lived through.
Not all of us have access to clear-minded elders who have lived through a century of human craziness. But all of us do have access to the Earth and the Sky and our own community gatherings. In our part of the world, we even have access to the ocean.
As these next weeks of political intensity unfold, we will all no doubt be tempted to cut ourselves off from our Earthliness, and our fellows humans, losing ourselves in hours of screen-time, reading every update. But I hope in the midst of this tumult, we can all find times to connect with our spirits, with one another, and with our Earthliness.
I trust in that. I do. It’s not just that I run to a shabbat service or the outdoors as an escape. It’s that I know good things come when I take time to ground myself in the prayers of community and the natural world. Clarity, peace, insight, inspiration: these are not just luxuries to seek in the redwoods or a room of singing voices when the fight is won — they are qualities we can find and bring to the struggle as we go. May our voices joined together and our beautiful Earth remind us of who we are and what it’s all for, and may this season bring us much needed raindrops of hope and transformation.
rabbikatiemizrahi 