SEASONS of the MOON 
The Jewish Year seen through its months 
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Shvat 5759 / January 18 - February 16, 1999 
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    This publication is available in HTML and Adobe Acrobat format at  
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WRITTEN IN STONE 
 
Don't you sometimes feel like your life is written in stone - that you   
can't change? Sometimes, we want to go back to a more innocent time -  a   
time when we were pure and our hearts unsullied. But we feel we can't  
break   the mold we're stuck in. We've created a treadmill from past bad  
decisions,   and now we seem doomed to run like a rat round and round ... 
visiting  and   re-visiting all the mistakes we've ever made. 
 
Hopelessness is the feeling that things are forever frozen in stone. 
 
When the world came into being, it first existed as primordial matter   
without form: "Darkness on the face of the deep; and the Divine  Presence   
hovering on the face of the water." The world was then a world of  water.   
Water is the ultimate symbol of matter without form. Water has no  form; it   
flows where it may. It can take any shape at all. It waits for the  vessel   
that holds it to give it shape, to give it true purpose. 
 
There are times when we lose contact with our true purpose. Times when  the   
form that we have made for ourselves is not what the Creator intended.  We   
have become sealed and unresponsive to spiritual reality. In Hebrew  this 
is   called tuma. Impurity means to be cut off from the Source. Sealed. The   
landscape of that sealed existence is a world of hopelessness. 
 
If only we could return to a world where things were not sealed in  stone;   
where we could re-fashion ourselves in the form that the Creator  intended   
for us! 
 

 A WORLD OF WATER 
 
Every month the Jewish Woman, the Woman of the Moon, returns to the  Waters   
of Eden. The waters of the mikvah. When she returns to those waters,  she   
returns to a primordial world. A world of water. An amniotic world  where   
existence has no shape. A world of formless matter where things have  yet 
to   be defined. It is there that she is renewed like the moon. Re-defined.  
The   Woman of the Moon returns to the water, to an earlier stage of  
creation, to   that primordial world before definition and form. And in 
that water  she is   re-formed, as new. 
 
The word mikvah comes from the same root as the word tikvah - Hope.  The   
essence of hope is that we are not bounded and trapped by our present   
reality. Hope says that we can connect to that which is outside and  beyond   
ourselves. To the Source. Every mikvah is like a little sea. The  gematria   
of yam (sea) is 50. 50 represents the transcendent. The gateway to  that   
which is beyond. 
 
This is the essence of purity. Of tahara. Life is not frozen in stone.  
Hope   tells us that we can return to the world of water to be become  
purified.   This is the essence of hope: That things can be re-made. That 
we can  change   ourselves. That we can break the treadmill. The mikvah 
tells us that  we can   go back to the world of water, to that world of 
pure matter. The  mikvah   tells us that we can regress to a world before 
form, that we can re- make   ourselves and become pure.  
 
 
MOON-LIGHT 
  
The moon has no light. All its light comes from the sun. The People of  the   
Moon have no light of their own. All our light comes from the Creator.  We   
are a glimmer of moonlight in a dark world. That is our purpose. To  
receive   and reflect G-d's light. We measure our success in this world,  
individually   and as a people, to the extent that we are reflectors of the 
Divine  Light.   If we want to light up the world with our own egos, we 
block the  Divine   Radiance. The ultimate aim and purpose of the People of 
the Moon is to  be   like the moon - that all its light comes from the sun. 
 
This is the secret of the survival of the People of the Moon. This is  what   
has baffled historians for millennia. Why are the Jewish People still  
here?   The glory that was Rome is sipping cappuccino on the Via Veneto. 
The  Greeks   are eating calimari in the shadow of the ruins of the 
Parthenon. The   Persians are weaving rugs. And the People of the Moon are 
what they  have   always been - one nation declaring that G-d is One and 
His Name is  One. Who   is like Your people Israel, one nation in the 
world? 
 
Every month the moon seems to die. It disappears from the sky and is  no   
more. But at the very moment it seems to die, it is reborn. Many times  in   
our long and difficult history, we have been written off as fossils.  But   
just when we seem to have been gassed and burned into oblivion, the  sounds   
of children's voices learning G-d's holy Torah are heard in the  suburbs of   
Jerusalem. Like the moon, we rise renewed and reborn. What is the  secret 
of   our eternity? 
 
The classic nations of world history burn like a supernova. A hard  fire   
that flames so brightly. The world is awash with their light. You  would   
think that nothing else exists in the universe except them. In their  
glare,   the People of the Moon look very shabby and forlorn. A little  
moonlight   almost lost in the brash glare of a vaunting star. But, like 
some  Hollywood   epic, each great empires fizzles out, to be lost in the 
black holes of   history while that little moonlight keeps on shining. 
Receiving.   Reflecting. 
 
Only one Light is eternal. Everything else turns out to be as dead and   
empty as a pack of used batteries. This is the secret of the People of  the   
Moon. We have no light of our own, and therefore it can never run out.  We   
are powered by He who creates reality, who contains the world and all  that   
is in it. Only in His Light do we see light. This month's sign is   
Aquarius/The Water Carrier, or in Hebrew, D'li. The Water Carrier is  the   
astrological sign of the Jewish People. A water carrier has no purpose   
other than to be a vessel for the water. The Jewish People, too, have  no   
purpose except to be the "water carrier" of the living waters of the  
Torah.

Special thanks to Rabbi Yosef Brown and Rabbi Heshy Grossman 


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Tahara

I remember you 
Before you were born 
Distant drumming 
In a waterworld 
Hearts beating in hope 
You and mummy and me 
And all our hopes 
That return one day 
To the sea 
In Purity


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"Seasons Of The Moon" is written by Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair
General Editor: Rabbi Moshe Newman.
Designed and Produced by the Office of Communications-
   Rabbi Eliezer Shapiro, Director
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