Living within the seasons

One of the things I quickly learned after moving to the country was how to plan ahead for Jewish holidays, because way out here, there just aren't any kosher specialty stores.  That's why I'm already thinking about Passover in January.

For example, you need nuts to make charoset, the apples-and-nuts mixture served at the Passover Seder.  And the nuts must either be certified free of any leavening products (that is, kosher for Passover), or still in their shells.  Finding Passover certified nuts in small-town America is next to impossible, and nuts in the shell can only be found in December or early January (except for peanuts, but they're legumes, not real nuts.)   So I learned very quickly to plan ahead and stock up on almonds and walnuts and such in December so I'll have them at Passover time in April.  (I also save black walnuts from my own tree in the fall, and wild hazelnuts when I can find them.)

The same is true for many other things people take for granted in the city.  One of the reasons my wife and I  are vegetarians (although by no means the only reason!) is because of the hassle and extra expense of trying to get kosher meat outside of the Metro area.  I suppose I could have learned to slaughter my own chickens (one of the best-kept secrets of the kosher meat industry is that any Jew who knows how can slaughter for own his household, provided he doesn't sell the meat as kosher to others) but I'm just not cut out for that.  My backyard chickens are friends, not food.  And to be honest, we eat much better as vegetarians than we would be for the same amount of money as carnivores. 

There have also been years when I couldn't find fresh parsley for the Seder, either, because the local grocery didn't have it and there certainly wasn't any growing out there under the snow.  In fact, this is why the traditional dipping vegetable at a Russian Jewish Seder isn’t parsley, because nobody in Russia had fresh greens when the ground was still frozen solid at Passover time.  So they used a piece of boiled potato, which falls into the same pri ha-adamah ("fruit of the earth") blessing category as parsley.  Even today, if you go to a traditional Lubavitch Seder, they still use the potato, because that's what their Rebbes used in Russia.  A piece of carrot would do, too.

I also grow my own horseradish for the maror (bitter herbs), because once again, fresh horseradish just isn't available here in April, and the kind in the jar isn't so easy to find, either.  The first year we were here, I had to special order horseradish roots and take 5 pounds -- but at least I had enough left over to start the patch that I've harvested from ever since.  (Of course, I need to remember to shovel away the snow a couple weeks before Passover time, so the sun can reach the soil and thaw it enough to dig the stuff out.)

Yes, I could order these things from the Internet (and I do that with some things, such as vegetarian soup mixes), but that's not the point.  Simplifying my lifestyle and getting in touch with nature is.  Up until recently, nobody had the same fruits and vegetables all year round.  Eggs weren't so easily available, either.  When I made the decision not to eat factory farm eggs and only use those from my own chickens or free-run hens from places I trusted, our winter diet changed radically.  Right now, in the dead of winter, I'm getting maybe 6 eggs a week from my little flock, if that.  So I'm not having eggs for breakfast today.  They will get saved for baking bread and other things for the Sabbath.  My winter breakfasts consist more of hot cereals.

Urban  Jews will read this and probably wonder why I put myself through all this trouble.  But I think I have a better understanding of Hasidic stories when I live closer to the way that early Hasidim lived.  Foods were seasonal back then, and this was reflected in the way our feasts were celebrated. Lots of spiritual reasons are given for serving eggs at Passover time (or Easter for my Christian neighbors), but the most down-to-earth one is, that, in the natural order of things, the hens start laying again in spring.  I think it's important not to lose sight of that.

Perek Shirah, The Song of Creation

"This is my Father's world,

and to my listening ears,
all nature sings and round me rings

the music of the spheres."

This old Protestant hymn, which I learned in Scout camp many years ago, expresses the same consciousness as an ancient Jewish text called Perek Shirah, "The Song of Creation" a mystical hymn that even today is found in many traditional Jewish prayer books.  It portrays all living creatures singing their individual songs in praise of the Creator. The universe is filled with hymns as cows, camels, horses, mules, roosters, chickens, doves, eagles, cats, mice, locusts, spiders, flies, sea creatures, fish, frogs, and many more offer Biblical verses as songs of praise to God.

 A number of years ago, I had an amazing experience; I actually heard a small part of the mystical Song of Creation.  It was on a warm summer day, and I was walking through a field of blooming alfalfa. The air around me was filled with hundreds of little orange and yellow butterflies, the ones known as "alfalfas" or "sulfurs," flitting from flower to flower. Suddenly I experienced an expansion of consciousness in which those butterflies were actually singing! Of course, it wasn’t a song in the way we usually think of a song, there weren’t any words per se. It was more like a joyous energy that I experienced as an inner sound, in which those butterflies were expressing a level of absolute joy. I had, for a moment, touched a higher level of awareness about how nishmat kol chai, "the soul of every living thing," is praising God.

Perek Shirah doesn’t mention butterflies specifically (they are apparently lumped in with insects in general), but they are part of Creation’s song, too.  And if I were to assign a biblical verse to the song of those butterflies, it would be ivdu et HaShem b’simchah, "serve the Creator with joy." (Psalm 100:2)  Most butterflies only live for a week or so in the adult stage, but judging from what I heard that day, they make the most of every joyous moment while they are here.

And this is why Rebbe Nachman of Breslov told his followers to spend an hour a day praying alone in woods and fields. He even said that the grasses and trees would join in the prayers. I take that quite literally.  Every living thing has a consciousness, even the rocks and clouds are sustained by  the "holy sparks" (netzotzot) and emanations of God's energy.  Sometimes, if we are very quiet and patient, we can tune in to their mystical songs.

Garden spider in my yard 2007



A tale of fowl language

If you have followed me around the Web on various sites, you probably noticed that I use the ID "rooster613" in a lot of places, including this blog and my eBay store, The Happy Rooster, which is located at rooster613.com.  This ID has a history dating back over 20 years -- so here goes:

When my wife Caryl (pronounced "Carol") and I moved to Sandstone, MN in 1988, we got a pet rooster. At the time, it was legal to have backyard chickens in town, but one of my neighbors didn’t like me very much, and kept calling the city administrator to complain about the rooster crowing.

As any rural resident knows, if you sneeze on one side of town, somebody will say "Gesundheit" on the other end. The fact we were Jewish --the only Jews in town and, in many cases, the only Jews many people here had ever met -- made us doubly interesting subjects of local gossip.  It seemed like everything we did was picked apart in detail, often very inaccurately, but that's a whole other blog...  Anyway, I got known around town as that guy with the darned rooster. My wife and I, in turn, argued that we were within our rights. Which we were.

Meanwhile, Internet access came to town. I began setting up my personal website. When the ISP rep asked what ID I wanted, I said "rooster" out of pure cussedness.  (So beware of angry roosters - -they use fowl language!)  Thus was my nickname born. Even after we moved to our little hobby farm outside of town, (where chickens are no problem), I kept the Rooster ID because, by now, the website was linked all over the Internet.  It also related nicely to the Hasidic parable by Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, about the mad prince who thought he was a rooster.  (Read my re-telling of the story.)  Or, some say, he was a turkey -- but I first heard it as a rooster... Besides, I'm not about to call myself a TURKEY!

The original reference in Yiddish was to the "Indian Cock,"which some scholars claim is the turkey (because people apparently mistook it for a peacock) and others say it is the Red Jungle Fowl of India, which is believed to be the original ancestor of all breeds of chickens.  (Wouldn't this make a really great Purim debate -- was it a turkey or was it a rooster???? We Jews can agree on the big things, such as One God, Ten Commandments... it's those annoying little details that really get us going. )


 Then again folk tales do have a habit of mutating. Did you know that the "goose that laid the golden egg" was originally a chicken, too? So nu, what is this? A revisionist plot to deny chickens their rightful place in history? There's fowl play afoot, that's for sure... Not to egg you on about this, but if you really want to pursue this profound dilemma, then check out the history of the turkey and the origins of the domestic fowl (chicken).

Anyway, the exact species of barnyard bird doesn't really affect the story, which I frequently tell, and which is my personal model for teaching Yiddishkeit (Judaism).  Plus, my wife and I like chickens, which we keep as pets on our farm. (Wec are vegetarians.  We do not slaughter our birds, although we do eat the eggs.)

Not long after I got online, Amazon.com came out with their Associates program and I decided to join. To my dismay, the “Rooster” ID was already taken on their system. So, I added “613" to my Amazon ID. Why did I choose that number? Because I’m an Orthodox Jew, and “613" has a special significance to religious Jews. It refers to the 613 mitzvot (pronounced “mitts-vote,” meaning “commandments”) in the Torah. (NOTE: They are communal rules -- no one person can do all 613 mitzvot, because some are for men, some for women, some for farmers, teachers, merchants, priests, soldiers, etc. Altogether, the Jewish community as a whole has the 613 commandments. Many are common-sense social rules we all follow anyway.  Others are connected with specific rituals and ceremonies.)

Nowadays, "613" has become a shorthand way that many Jews use on the Net to let each other know that they are Orthodox or Hasidic, similar to the way that Christians use WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) to identify themselves to each other. There’s even a site called 613.org with an extensive audio-video library of talks by various rabbis. Now granted, the number 613 doesn’t have a meaning to everybody, but at least it has a back story that people might remember once they hear it. My guess is that you will remember it now and that’s a whole lot better than using my age or my Zip Code.

When I later came to eBay, "rooster" was already taken there, too. So I carried over my "rooster613" theme. By now, I also owned the domain name rooster613.com which used to point to my personal website and now goes  to my eBay store, The Happy Rooster. (My website is located at RabbiGershom.com.)

However, we should note that not every "rooster613" ID online is really me.  There is some woman using it on a dating site who definitely is NOT me!  I emailed her once about changing it, but got no answer.  It's not exactly identity theft, since she clearly is somebody else and not claiming to be me, so this was probably just a random coincidence.  But it's a good idea to actually read the material in question and be sure you are actually talking to Rabbi Yonassan Gershom.  Conversely, if you don't want to get a lot of rabbincal questions and/or hate mail about Israeli politics (and I'm a PACIFIST yet!  Some people just target any Jew they find with their rants...)  then it is a good idea not to call yourself "rooster613."