![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Well, the contract is signed, my parchment is here, my ink is here, I've got a tikkun, I've cut a quill, and I'm ready to go.
I'm planning to go to the mikveh on Sunday night, before I start. This has absolutely nothing to do with ritual purity! In Torah, water transforms. The metaphor of water washing away the past crops up again and again - the earth itself emerged from the waters of creation, moralised humanity emerged from the waters of the Flood. The mikveh symbolises new beginnings; one immerses before conversion, before one's wedding, before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). I feel that going to the mikveh before starting this project accomplishes not only a revitalisation of my ability to sanctify my writing, but a fitting marker for a transitional moment in my life.
My klaf arrived in the USA on Shavuot itself (FedEx don't have to observe the Sabbath and Festivals). Shavuot is the festival where we celebrate God's revelation of the Torah to Israel, when the mountain quaked and trumpets blew, and the people received the commandments which were to forge them into "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." As I set out to write, what better place to start than with the giving of the Torah? The Shavuot liturgy tells the story with a reading from Exodus chapter 19, and so as we celebrate the giving of Israel's Torah by reading the story of its revelation, I shall celebrate the giving of my own Torah by writing the story of its revelation.
I'm planning to go to the mikveh on Sunday night, before I start. This has absolutely nothing to do with ritual purity! In Torah, water transforms. The metaphor of water washing away the past crops up again and again - the earth itself emerged from the waters of creation, moralised humanity emerged from the waters of the Flood. The mikveh symbolises new beginnings; one immerses before conversion, before one's wedding, before Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement). I feel that going to the mikveh before starting this project accomplishes not only a revitalisation of my ability to sanctify my writing, but a fitting marker for a transitional moment in my life.
My klaf arrived in the USA on Shavuot itself (FedEx don't have to observe the Sabbath and Festivals). Shavuot is the festival where we celebrate God's revelation of the Torah to Israel, when the mountain quaked and trumpets blew, and the people received the commandments which were to forge them into "a kingdom of priests, a holy nation." As I set out to write, what better place to start than with the giving of the Torah? The Shavuot liturgy tells the story with a reading from Exodus chapter 19, and so as we celebrate the giving of Israel's Torah by reading the story of its revelation, I shall celebrate the giving of my own Torah by writing the story of its revelation.
Tags: