time for pruning

the days grow short, the moon fills and begins to wane.

The date clus­ters hang ready.
Come with me to the oasis.
The late sum­mer har­vest has begun.
I sort the fruit of my past year’s labor.

The fruit is full and sweet.
I look back on my year’s efforts with satisfaction.

The time for prun­ing has come.
Much dross weighs down my life.
Our lives are fleet­ing moments.
Teach us to num­ber our days.

The Sukkah is a frag­ile booth.
Dur­ing many years of desert life Sukkot housed our people.
The booth is tem­po­rary; our peo­ple lives for eternity.

My body is the frag­ile house of my consciousness.
My body is temporary.
My soul emerged from and will rejoin its Source.
May we con­tin­ue to dwell together.

ופרש עלינו סכת שלומך
Uf’ros aleinu sukkat shlomecha.

Spread over us the shel­ter of Your peace.

First post­ed: Octo­ber 17, 1997.
Last updat­ed: June 9, 1999.

so that even when the wind shakes the sukkah we will be secure enough to shake our bouquet

As I men­tioned else­where, many lapel but­tons are nov­el­ty items, some­times pro­duced com­mer­cial­ly. This one how­ev­er, was pro­duced by an orga­ni­za­tion, the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion of the Unit­ed Syn­a­gogue of Con­ser­v­a­tive Judaism (look towards the bot­tom of that page). As of this writ­ing, a cou­ple of the kits, of which the but­ton was one part, are still avail­able. Liv­ing as we do in New York City, and not hav­ing the abil­i­ty to build my own sukkah, and take the first steps in prepar­ing the sukkah, I put the but­ton on imme­di­ate­ly after Yom Kip­pur… as my way of focus­ing my efforts on the hol­i­day to come.

Make a Lulav Shake

your lapel buttons

Many peo­ple have lapel but­tons. They may be attached to a favorite hat or jack­et you no longer wear, or poked into a cork-board on your wall. If you have any lay­ing around that you do not feel emo­tion­al­ly attached to, please let me know. I pre­serve these for the Jew­ish peo­ple. At some point they will all go to an appro­pri­ate muse­um. You can see all the but­tons shared to date.