Like honey and milk, it lies under your tongue
When we’re born we count our age in days,
That quickly changes to weeks and then months
which lasts for a while, even after a year.
But then, it is only years we measure our time by.
Imagine if three decades in someone proclaimed
to be three hundred and sixty months old.
At a certain point we can only perceive the
passage of time in the largest possible increments.
The minute by minute details, lost to our past.
Then, once a year, after we put the matzah away
we slow it back down to weeks – to savor the
passing moments, to establish a yearning for
what we will be given. All of us, standing at the mountain
as if our flesh was on that soil. As if we spent
forty days looking up, as if we were prepared for
the sweetness about to land on our tongues.
It is at this point our memory kicks in, of
miracles we saw through other people’s eyes.
This book of our past which we read to
guide our future, which we struggle with
to understand the why and how of history.
This Jewish textbook for our lifelong master class.
We are the people of the book, and this is the book.
We received it thousands and thousands of weeks ago.
Before we understood how to separate milk from meat.
Before Ruth went where she went.
Before we even knew what a blintz was.
We’ll do this again in an appropriate number of weeks.
I wouldn’t plan on getting any sleep tonight.
There’s too much to know.