This week's portion: mobius
MOBIUS (V'ZOT HA-BRAKHA)
I want to write the Torah
on a mobius strip of parchment
so that the very last lines
(never again will there arise,
arpeggio of signs and wonders
stout strength and subtle teaching)
would lead seamlessly to
the beginning of heavens
and earth, the waters
all wild and waste, and God
hovering over the face of creation
like a mother bird.
This is the strong sinew
that stitches our years together:
that we never have to bear
the heartbreak of the story ending
each year the words are the same
but something in us is different
on a mobius strip of parchment
I want to write the Torah
One of my favorite moments in all the year comes when we read the solemn last lines of the Torah -- these last words from this week's portion, V'Zot HaBrakha -- and immediately read the opening lines of the Torah. Sometimes we do it with two scrolls. Sometimes we unroll a single scroll all the way from end to end, holding it in gloved fingers carefully in a giant circle around the room so we can see it in all of its complex beauty. We read the ending, and then we read the beginning.
It's the original neverending story. Just as the story of human growth and potential never ends, only spirals onward, so our reading of the Torah never ends but we begin again. For me as a lover of story, this says something important about who we are and how we understand ourselves.
Every year offers us a chance to begin again. Every year that new beginning is informed by who we are and where we've been. One door closes and another one opens. The last words lead to the first words which will eventually, a year from now, lead us to the last words again. And then, again, the first words. One of my favorite moments in all the year.
Technorati tags: religion, Judaism, Torah, Deuteronomu, SimchatTorah.
