Dearest Lab/Shul,

Tonight we celebrate Simchat Torah, coming full circle on another year’s worth of recycling our sacred story, again.

Today I’m wrapping up the year-long journey of the Weekly Word – passwords to the riddles of our lives, shared each Friday online, since October 16, 2020. 

I began this journey of exposing scriptural words, curious to explore some hidden meaning in specific words found in each weekly Torah portion, words that may help us navigate our lives mid-pandemic and lift our spirits. I also sought concepts, often lesser known, that may help us investigate and celebrate  older Jewish narratives that go beyond binaries and fear-based dogma, preceding the patriarchal Judaism so many of us assume is all there is, to expose the earlier, more expansive, radical, and often surprising matrix of our heritage.

Our first word was “Anochi” – the vertical sense of identity, a loaded word demanding of us to look inside and truthfully answer “am I my siblings’ keepers?” As we moved through the weeks, and through our inherited stories – problematic and powerful, inspiring and in need of new interpretation – we found more words and passwords that helped us, I hope, coming back to that original word and our responsibility to ourselves and to each other.

In a year that held so many historic firsts – the beautiful and the devastating – I hope these passwords unlocked new ways of making sense of life and appreciating the mystery of our ever evolving story, sometimes referred to as a poem.

A poem is what came out of this year’s list of 50 words, an emerging pattern, an invitation to pause, celebrate the harvest, and to begin this Torah cycle, again. 

And, by the way: I won’t be offering a weekly Word this coming year, as I’ll be taking the Shmita year of release seriously and let some of myself go fallow. I hope that those of you who found this exercise meaningful will go on reading each weekly portion and finding your own passwords to the riddles of your lives, dismantling patriarchy – one sacred word at a time. 

You can check out the full list of words and videos HERE.

My thanks to our team that helped make sure each weekly word was uploaded and shared far and wide. Thank you all for joining us this past year, for sharing feedback and suggestions. Let’s do it again soon.

Wishing us all a meaningful holy day and night as we end these Days of Awe, and begin this year, and this Torah cycle, with hopes of healing, responsibility, release and renewal. 

Rabbi Amichai

50 Words: A TorahPoem

Simchat Torah 5782

by Amichai Lau-Lavie

I Am a son of Semites: 

A blessing – Together.

Meditate: Wounded Howl

I will thank; Alone.

Pit.
Famine.
Weeping.

Remember:
Pharaoh,
Breathless,
First Born,
Miriam: The Prophet of Pulse,
The Purple People.

Loving and Golden,
Third Eye, Cannabis
Gather for Soul Food: Essence, Belief.

Speechless Leper – Holy All.
ReCount. Release. Rage
Peace, Heal the Negative with Enough water.

God-of-Holes, Daughters, Loot:

How do we Love If Destination is Ashera  the Godx,Kadesh the Sacred Sex Worker?
Wise Up.
Here is The Year of Release 

Alive:
The End.