The Jewish new year begins at sundown and I, for one, am glad. All summer I’ve been gripped by fear and now everything is coming to a head. Will I transcend these challenges? I have so far to fall and nothing tangible to catch me, not since I left my father’s house and stopped looking for new daddies in other men’s eyes. I pray to rise with my work and my heart above existentialist struggles, for the bravery to handle what comes next, for the faith to live in a brighter light. I am grateful for every quality that has brought me here, as vulnerable as I currently feel, and I am grateful for those before me who’ve had the temerity to make themselves. I pray for the wind of this new year, new moon, new day for me, for you, for we. And (again) I think of Marge Piercy’s words:
Those old daddies cursed you, Eve, and us in you, damned for your curiosity…You are indeed the mother of invention, the first scientist. Your name means life: finite, dynamic, swimming against the current of time, tasting, testing, eating knowledge like any other nutrient. We are all the children of your bright hunger. We are all products of that first experiment, for if death was the worm in that apple, the seeds were freedom and the flowering of choice.
L’shanah Tovah.
