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I went outside to bentsch lulav -- to take up the Four Species of date palm, willow, myrtle, and etrog, bring them together, make a blessing, and shake them in all six directions. I waited until the temperature rose to 40F (4.4 C) and the white rime of frost had melted. Even so, a plastic flowerpot that had filled with rain had frozen over. I could see my breath. I came back inside pretty quick.

Sometimes I'm mildly envious of people who live in Mediterranean climes at this time of year. I see photos of sukkot in California: open, airy spaces decked with tapestries and pillows because rain is unlikely. It was like that in Texas where I grew up, too. Here in New England, especially when the holidays are late on the secular calendar, Sukkot is cold. We wrap up in lots of blankets. 

Torah doesn't explain the taking up of the Four Species. Maybe in antiquity they just made sense. A lot of people see them as fertility ritual (the etrog could be analogous to the womb; bringing it together with the phallic lulav carries some pretty clear symbolism.) We know that lulav and etrog were taken up and waved in the Temple daily at Sukkot during the centuries when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. 

Midrash teaches (Lev. Rabbah) that of the four species, one tastes good (dates / palm), one smells sweet (myrtle), one is neither sweet-scented nor sweet-tasting (willow), and one is both tasty and delicious (etrog). These in turn represent people who study Torah but don't do good works, people who do good works but don't study Torah, people who do neither, and people who do both. (Be an etrog.)

Sometimes they're understood to represent four parts of the body with which we might serve the One (eyes, lips, spine, and heart), or the four letters in the Holy Name. And they can also evoke four ecosystems in the land of Israel. The lulav / palm hints at the lowlands; the aravot / willows suggest the rivers; hadassim / myrtle, the mountains; and the etrog, the irrigated areas where people farm.

I wonder how many people just stopped reading because I mentioned the land of Israel. I just wrote several impassioned paragraphs about that, and then deleted them. I shouldn't need to present my progressive bona fides in order to meditate aloud on these sweet ancient earth-based rituals of sukkah, lulav, and etrog, and why they connect my spirit with the place where this tradition began. 

All over the world, Jews don't pray for rain during the Land's dry season. (Ending in a few days.) Our daily prayers remind us when the Land relies on dew, and when the rains might come. Local climate notwithstanding, my lulav hyperlinks me with there. "[A]s wines on far continents prickle / to bubbles when their native vines bloom," as Marge Piercy wrote in her poem about Tu BiShvat. 

I love this 2000-year-old connection with the earth and weather, the plants and seasons, in the place where Judaism began. The older I get, the more meaning I find in remembering that the place where Judaism began shaped it, and therefore shaped the spiritual practices we've been carrying with us for centuries. Sitting in my sukkah I'm part of a chain of tradition bridging both time and space.

This doesn't obviate the fact that Palestinians are spiritually and physically rooted in that place too. (And now I've ticked off a whole different group of readers!) I reject the right-wing fantasy of "Greater Israel." I don't know how the two peoples will ultimately coexist, but along with every Israeli I know, I believe that they must. I yearn for dignity, self-determination, safety, and peace for all.

How will they get there? I have no idea. I suspect the folks at Standing Together have plenty of thoughts. The realm of what I can impact feels very small. At least in my own spaces, like this one, I can push back against those who would use this practice to deny another people self-determination, and against those who would deny the geographic roots of this practice and my religious tradition. 

Engaging in imaginary arguments with people to my right and with people to my left does no one any good. I scratch the etrog lightly with my thumbnail and breathe deep, grounding myself in spiritual practice and in things I can touch and sense. The clack of palm fronds. The spice of myrtle leaves. The knowledge that all over the world we are taking up our lulavim and praying for better days.

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