The Kibbitz
our liturgy and we start praying for dew because the rainy season’s over. The rainy time is when we’re seeding and when we want things to be green- ing and growing. When we enter into Pesach, we enter into this very special period of time that’s centred around the harvest of grain, specifically of bar- ley and wheat. [In hot climates, these crops are often harvested much ear- lier than they are in North America.] This period of time is very auspicious spiritually, but also very crucial prac- tically because for the Jewish people, our central seed is wheat. We’re wheat people. When I talk about this with our farmers, I talk about how the inner sanctum of the Beit Hamikdash wasn’t filled with gold or piles of riches. There was a really elaborate table full of bread. I also think about the bitter greens that we’re eating. The greens that come up early in the season are often bitter. The maror that we eat to- day is a legacy from Ashkenazi dias- pora in Eastern Europe because there are no greens there in March or April: horseradish is one of the only things that’s coming up green at that time. Then we begin the period of count- ing the Omer between Passover and Shavuot. During this period, every day we are praying that it’s not going to rain, because we’re counting on our grain harvest, and when grain is har- vested you want it to be dry. You need it to store up well; you need it to hold you through a whole year. So we enter into this very tricky time, holding our breath for 49 days, counting the days between Pesach and Shavuot, when we end the barley harvest, which was traditionally food for animals. We have finished our grain harvest, all of the wheat is in for the year, and we eat bread. People talk so much about Shavuot being a dairy holiday, but it’s a fruit and bread holiday as much as a dairy holiday.
Hanging out with a hen at the Pearlstone Retreat Center in Reisterstown, Maryland.
I don’t think many people have this awareness of Judaism as an agri- cultural set of holidays. They think of all of the things that we map onto the holidays: the exodus from Egypt, getting the Torah, living in huts in the desert. How do you walk yourself through the year, through these holidays? Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot are all agrarian holidays. They are all pilgri- mage holidays in which our ancestors brought some of their harvest to the
Temple in Jerusalem. That pilgrimage was an ancient farming conference, the time of year that you see all your farmer friends and you’re just like, How are you? How’s your family? I heard your daughter got married. You’re reconnecting. It’s when you see everybody. At Pesach, we’re coming out of the rainy part of the year, where we’ve been in our liturgy since Shemini Atzeret. Every day we’ve been pray- ing for rain. On Pesach, we change
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