OWNERSHIP

 First thing first: Miss Myrus, at 91, is alive and well and living in New York City. I am verklempt! I am hoping to have updates from the lady herself soon. I hear she does email!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, this past weekend marked the end of 5783 and the start of 5784. All things considered, the Jewish year is supposed to be from the beginning of the earth until now, but uh, our history goes back a bit further than 5700 years. But for the moment, let's talk about the Hebrew calendar. 

Fundamentally it's a lunar calendar, but in the land of mathematics and calculations, it's a luni-solar calendar. How the holidays and leap years are calculated is a total mystery to me, but there is a High Holy Day to next High Holy Day calendar in the kitchen in plain sight so I can adjust my life according to all the holidays and observances. 

On a social/familial level, my life, and the lives of most of my family members, are kinda marked in relation to the Hebrew calendar. Grandma Bessie was born on Shavuot in 1900, but died on Sukkot in 1977. Ziggy died the week after Shavuot. I got married right under the wire for the solemn days before Tisha b'Av. Uh-oh, that's really close to Passover....so forth and so on. You get the idea. 

I don't think the holiday/home event correlation is much different in any ethnic group. Major events happen, and often they are put into perspective in relation to a community event...like a holiday. It's a time marker and one that can be quite comforting....or not. Our earliest memories are often tied to events like Passover or Christmas or Eid or Diwali...some special occasion when families gather. Not all memories are good, but good or bad, they link us to our personal past. I had great Passover memories, but Ziggy had terrible Christmas ones that ultimately helped to steer him toward Judaism...and a way to make a whole set of new memories, most of which were pretty good because they were family times. 

Rosh ha'Shanah, the first of the Days of Awe, is really a call to introspection. It's mental house-cleaning. The expectation is that we look at the good and the bad of the year, figure out what we can fix, and what needs improvement in the coming year. I take that examination pretty seriously; it's for me, highly personal, and definitely not easy. And it takes place in the middle of pretty happy family stuff. My big bro comes in from Philly to spend the holiday with us, which is cause for great celebration amongst the kiddos. The food is really good, services might be a bit long, but they're also kinda nice. Standing somewhere in the middle of this, I'm trying to figure out how to do better.  

Instead of Happy New Year, we say "l'shanah tova u'metukah," (שָׁנָה טוֹבָה וּמְתוּקָה‎)...to a good and sweet year. At the same time, we use the Book of Life as a metaphor to address that coming year. We wish a good year by saying, May you be inscribed in the Book of Life, but closer to (and on) Yom Kippur we say, May you be sealed in the Book of Life. 

In the liturgy for Rosh ha'Shanah, there is a piyyut, a poem, that addresses exactly that called Unetaneh Tokef. Who wrote it and when is pretty much a debatable issue, but that doesn't change the awe-filled intent of the prayer. It's pretty scary stuff, especially when you're a kid, but the older you get, the more you understand why facing life and death head on is a part of our very existence. 

All mankind will pass before You like a flock of sheep. Like a shepherd pasturing his flock, making sheep pass under his staff, so shall You cause to pass, count, calculate, and consider the soul of all the living; and You shall apportion the destinies of all Your creatures and inscribe their verdict.

On Rosh Hashanah will be inscribed and on Yom Kippur will be sealed

how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created; 

who will live and who will die; 

who will die after a long life  and who before his time; 

who by water and who by fire, 

who by sword and who by beast, 

who by famine and who by thirst, 

who by upheaval and who by plague, 

who by strangling and who by stoning. 

Who will rest and who will wander, 

who will live in harmony and who will be harried, 

who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, 

who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, 

who will be degraded and who will be exalted.

But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity mitigate the severity of the Decree.

The last line is the best, the one that tells us we can fix ourselves, that no decree is final, and that there is always hope. But here's the kicker about that last line: we must take responsibility for our own actions. We own who we are and what we do. As a kid, I totally believed that. Come to think of it, I still do.

I can remember Grandma Bessie weeping on Rosh ha'Shanah as she recited Unetaneh Tokef. She used to tell me the only one who could change the Holy Decree was me, and that I was in charge of what I did. And if you don't think this 8 year-old was terrified by that idea, you have another think coming. 

Terrified as I was, however, the idea that I was in charge of me was planted pretty early. I hope I did the same for my guys. But it's not something I can or would ask. This is the deepest part of one's being...the admission that one is in charge of one's own actions. 

Yom Kippur starts next Sunday night and ends at darkness on Monday night. Most of us will fast from right about 6:30 in the evening until 8:00 p.m the next day. This family will gather with our cousins as we have done for the last 37 years (except for two years of COVID) to break our fast with hard boiled eggs, bagels, herring, carrot ring, and assorted other really good stuff. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that odds are pretty good there won't be a blog next Monday night. Just so you know ahead of time. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Owning your own behavior, actions, deeds

is always a good thing no matter what you believe.

If everyone did that............

From Whence We Came

I learned something recently that, in hindsight, I should've known but didn't. It's one of those weird factoids anyone who lives in the L'Etoile du Nord should know. Seriously. I was even at the State Capitol a few weeks ago and didn't see it mentioned there, although I'm sure somewhere in the building, probably the gift shop, it's mentioned. I mean, it's even on Minnesota's Wikipedia page :

The word Minnesota comes from the Dakota name for the Minnesota River, which got its name from one of two words in Dakota: "mní sóta", which means "clear blue water", or "Mníssota", which means "cloudy water." Dakota people demonstrated the name to early settlers by dropping milk into water and calling it mní sóta. Many places in the state have similar Dakota names, such as Minnehaha Falls ("curling water" or waterfall), Minneiska ("white water"), Minneota ("much water"), Minnetonka ("big water"), Minnetrista ("crooked water"), and Minneapolis, a hybrid word combining Dakota mní ("water") and -polis (Greek for "city").

 Another version is Mní Sóta Makhóčhe; where the water reflects the sky. 

I just asked the Senior Son if he knew the original name of Minnesota and he did not. He did say, however, that it was probably a Dakota name, which it is, as opposed to Ojibwe or Chippewa. At least they taught them that much. 

Bdote Mní Sóta - where two rivers meet

I am in great favor of recognizing and renaming places with original names. I was thrilled when Lake Calhoun became Bdi Maka Ska. Although the high school formerly known as Henry Sibley (as in not a nice man who should have things named for him) became Two Rivers High School, I would've preferred Bdote Mní Sóta High School... The Joining of Two Rivers High School. There is something overwhelming and powerful at the place where the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers meet. The Mdewakanton Dakota thought of it as sort of a Garden of Eden kinda place. You can see why even now. 

Since I, too, grew up in the land of Indigenous Names, albeit ours were heavily Mohegan-Pequot, an Algonquin language group that dominated New England and Eastern Long Island, and Mohican upstate, I can actually spell all sorts of weird towns without thinking too hard. We learned this stuff in junior high civics class. Seriously. We did. We were expected to know what was spoken where and how the names came to be because, after all, this is how our state was born. 

As the kids come up on a new school year, I hope someone is taking the time to teach them about from whence We, the People, came. Not just the stories of immigrants and slavery, but of the people who lived here. The ones treated as less than human beings throughout much of the history of this country. The ones portrayed as ignorant savages when they were the ones who knew this land best. They may not have built cities or industries, but they lived full lives off the land as active stewards, a skill we have yet to master. They were the ones caring for the planet, not the Europeans who came having already befouled their half of the hemisphere. Not knowing is more dangerous than knowing. Understanding that the earth requires active care is key if we're gonna live here. Ignoring the heritage of the land, the lessons we need to learn, the practices of the past that must come into our future...is all at our own peril. 

On the other side of my world, we are coming up on the Yamim Nor'aim, the holiest days of the Jewish Year. I cannot help but think we should be pounding our breasts for more than the usual sins on the list. All of us need to add the sins we commit just living in our urban/suburban little bubbles. We need to add the sins that divide rather than unite a community. I think it's pretty much safe to say every one of us owns a sin or two for scoffing at the beliefs, religious or political, of others. Maybe as summer slides into autumn this is a good time to examine what we had, what we want, and/or what we actually need. I do believe all those answers are very different one from another. 

Everyone knows the first part of Deuteronomy 16:20: 

.צֶדֶק צֶדֶק, תִּרְדֹּף 

Justice, justice you shall follow...

But how many people know the rest? 

--לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה וְיָרַשְׁתָּ אֶת-הָאָרֶץ, אֲשֶׁר-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ 
...that you may live and inherit the land that G-d had given you.

 See how that all dovetails one into another? Teaching our children and ourselves is a communal, civic, and environmental responsibility. Make no mistake; this planet belongs to all of us. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o' the Week

Introspection is rarely a fun-filled activity.

Still, owning up to stuff we need to change is important.

More than important, it's crucial to our very survival as a species.