Full moon blessings, people.
We’re halfway through the month of Cheshvan, which is sometimes called “Marcheshvan” or “bitter Cheshvan” because there are no holidays or festivals (except Shabbat!) It can be a kind of relief after Tishrei, a month that is so extra in terms of holidays. Cheshvan rolls with scorpio energy. Where I live, the leaves are golden and fiery, falling down to the earth. The air is full of the smell of decomposing earth. This is a season of decay, digestion, and decomposition – the generative work of death.
Cheshvan is often thought of as a month to connect with the element of water. It is the month we add the prayer for rain into our daily liturgy, and the month in which the Great Flood covered the earth with water. In Judaism, we hold water as a primordial force, a source of life, and a vessel or mechanism for blessing, healing, cleansing and protection. The waters of Cheshvan are Scorpionic : deep oceans, rivers of tears, the waters of sex and transformation.
In this time of climate catastrophe, in which people all over the world are experiencing life threatening conditions of both drought and flooding, what does it mean to connect with the element of water? To pray for rain? How does this moment in time connect us even more with our ancestors who also were in touch with the precarity of life? As fires rage through the parched places around the planet, as sea levels rise, as beloved towns and cities flood, as precious ocean life is destroyed by extractive and militarized conditions, what are the prayers on our hearts? Our ancestors prayed for rain like their lives depended on it, because they do. What devotional practices might serve us now to remember our connection to Mayim Chayim, living waters?
A few years ago, on the new moon of Cheshvan, I was part of a ritual action outside of TD Bank, a bank that was funding the Dakota Access Pipeline in North Dakota. We gathered around the bank with these signs designed by Micah Bazant, dressed in blue, with blue fabric to represent the Cannonball river, all of us holding bowls of water. We welcomed the new month with a collective handwashing ritual, renewing our commitment to honor indigenous sovereignty and show solidarity for the water protectors at Standing Rock, demanding TD Bank divest from the pipeline project. We listened to indignous voices coming out of Standing Rock, and made connections to water justice all over the world, from Standing Rock to Palestine.
One of the pieces that we read was the Cochabamba Declaration, which we used as a water blessing as we washed our hands. I first encountered this declaration twenty years ago, when I was participating in direct actions in the Bay Area in solidarity with the water protectors in Bolivia, and ever since then, I have hung this statement over my sink as a water blessing. As a ritualist and liturgist, I am in love with reading non-liturgal text as a prayer or blessing, or perhaps a spell. One ancient Jewish healing tradition is to whisper psalms or prayers into wine or water as a way to embody them – imagining the words and intentions moving from one vessel of water into the vessel of water that is our bodies, connecting us to all bodies of water.
Below are some of the water related texts I love – perhaps you want to hang one above your sink, turn it into a song or a prayer, read it each morning, whisper these words into your glass of water, your bath, shout them to the sea or the river, or write your own love song/gratitude prayer/blessing for water.
Cochabamba Declaration, Bolivia, 2000
Water belongs to the earth and all species and is sacred to life, therefore, the world’s water must be conserved, reclaimed and protected for all future generations and its natural patterns respected.
Water is a fundamental human right and a public trust to be guarded by all levels of government, therefore, it should not be commodified, privatized or traded for commercial purposes. These rights must be enshrined at all levels of government. In particular, an international treaty must ensure these principles are non controvertible.
Water is best protected by local communities and citizens who must be respected as equal partners with governments in the protection and regulation of water. Peoples of the earth are the only vehicle to promote earth democracy and save water.
This I Declare
Elliott batTzedek
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid t’hilatecha
This I declare, the earth is not ours
This I declare, we belong to the earth
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid haemet v’tzedek
This I declare, we cannot live if the rains don’t fall
This I declare, we cannot live if the rivers don’t flow
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid t’hilatecha
This I declare, what we’ve planted we will reap
This I declare, what we’ve poisoned we will reap
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid haemet v’tzedek
This I declare, we must choose either life or death
This I declare, our harvest is upon us
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid t’hilatecha
This I declare, every act is a choice we make
This I declare, every breath’s a prayer it’s not too late
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid haemet v’tzedek
This I declare, the earth is not ours
This I declare, we belong to the earth
Adonai sefatie tiftach
ufi yagid t’hilatecha
“We are made of water: Salty rivers run in our veins, lymph ebbs and swells, saliva and tears leak into the air and dry. We are always changing: wide seas into clouds, rain into puddles, rivers into muddy fields that run along ditches into the sea. We flow, freeze, boil, rise, disperse, are hurled this way and that. We declare that we are the blue edge of glaciers, the great ocean swell, stagnant teeming ponds, months long tropical downpours, the delicate tracery of frost on a dry leaf, rusty drip of a faucet. We are the shape of what’s happened to us. We are caught up in doing, and whirl through our lives, suffering, joyful, filled with doubt. And yet we return to ourselves again and again, to the Self that is all there is. We are made of water, called to find our true level by that great force of love we call gravity. We are made to trust our destination. We are not lost.”
RESOURCES FOR CHESHVAN
READING
We Are Water Protectors and Young Water Protectors, children’s books
Undrowned Black Frminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Rematriation Resource Guide from Sogoreate Land Trust Project
LISTEN
Cheshvan playlist on spotify
Water/Mikveh playlist on soundcloud
Mimainei by Avra Shapiro and Yael Schonzeit
TZEDAKAH
Haitian Bridge Alliance Support and develop a self-sufficient community of Haitian immigrants in California and beyond.
Imagine WaterWorks is a Native, Creole, queer, trans-led organization that supports climate justice, water management, and disaster readiness and response. This fund goes directly to relief efforts led by locals.
Sending blessings for waters that flow sweet and clean and clear, bringing life and healing to all the places that need it.
Lots of love,
Dori
