Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, Congregation Am Echod in Lindenhurst
What if the
hokey pokey is what it’s all about?
I saw this
saying on a bumper sticker, and ever since then, I’ve been certain that this is
a very wise, very Jewish idea.
Think about it:
You put
your whole self in,
You put
your whole self out,
You put
your whole self in,
And shake
it all about!
On Rosh
Hashanah, we put our whole selves in:
we reflect on our thoughts, behaviors, and relationships – we take an inventory
of our whole selves. Then, on Yom Kippur, it can be argued
that we take our whole selves out –
we don’t eat, we don’t drink, we don’t bathe or anoint ourselves; we don’t
engage in physical or sexual activities.
And now, it
is Sukkot, the next holiday in our busy autumn of Jewish festivals.
Sukkot is all about turning
ourselves around, shaking ourselves about.
On Sukkot,
we leave the comfort of our daily lives and literally dwell outside in flimsy Sukkot, intentionally temporary and
fragile compared to the temperature controlled, well-lit and insulated houses
we normally choose.
On Sukkot, we invite neighbors and guests
to our table – there is even a tradition of ushpizin
– inviting unseen guests – like our ancestors, people from our collective and
personal histories who are not physically alive anymore, into our Sukkot.
On Sukkot, we move from introspection,
solitude, fasting, and theoretical new years’ resolutions to the realm of action.
We go
outside to build Sukkot.
We are
commanded to gather together the four different species of plants into
our hands: the three branches of the leafy lulav is pressed against the skin of
the etrog and (as we just did in the Sukkah
outside the temple tonight) we shake it all about!
Tradition
teaches that the etrog and lulav represent a person. The palm looks like a backbone, a spine. The myrtle leaves remind us of our eyes. The willow leaves appear like a mouth. And the etrog is shaped similar to a heart.
In
the hokey pokey – we take one part of our bodies at a time: first one arm, then
the other, then our legs, our front sides, our back sides, our heads, then
finally our whole selves in. If
we were to follow the order of the spiritual interpretation of the significance
of the parts of lulav and etrog, we would instead put our backbones in / then
our eyes / our mouths / then, our hearts, before we’d shake it all about.
What
would it mean to participate in life and in community with each of these parts
of our bodies? To really put our
backbones, our eyes, our mouths, and our hearts in as we lived our daily
lives?
1) What might it mean to
put our backbones IN?
- We’d better decisions
- We’d have better
boundaries with ourselves and those we love
- We might give more to our community or we might give less!
- We would use our
strengths – that part of us which holds things together, our literal backbones - for good in the community.
2) What might it mean to
put our eyes IN?
- We’d use our special
skills to see things in a new way,
enlightening those around us with our unique insights
3) What might it mean to
put our mouths IN?
-
We’d be more thoughtful about the words
we speak, and the words we refrain
from speaking
-
We’d avoid gossip, we’d reach out to
those in need, we’d offer words of
kindness and support to our friends and neighbors.
4) What might it mean to
put our hearts IN?
-
We would love with our whole hearts, we’d “dance like no one was
watching”, “love like we’d never been hurt”
-
We’d give only as much as we received; we’d respect our emotional selves and
care for our own hearts, never being reckless with our own hearts or the hearts
of others.
What
would it mean to shake them all about?
We
would do everything completely differently than is usually our pattern!
I
really think the hokey pokey is what
it’s all about.
Other
people seem to agree with me. Down the
street from where I used to live in Venice, California, there is a recovery
house for people recovering from addictions.
Every morning, as I walked by, I could hear them singing the hokey pokey. At first I thought it was just a kitchy part
of their morning routine – or, as a fellow passerby remarked, “it must be an
exercise in playfulness, or a way to get them all to practice following
directions”. But I now believe that
these recovering addicts are coming to understand a fundamental truth about
life, about change, about teshuvah.
You put your whole self in,
You put your whole self out,
You put your whole self in,
And shake it all about!
Shabbat
Shalom!
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