Samhain New (Winter) Moon
Watched several different people, a rabbi, a politician, a cantor, a newspaperman and a Chamber of Commerce woman struggle with lighting a menorah on the shore of Lake Evergreen. We’ve had chinooks for the last few days and though muted at night they still made the bic auto-match flicker and the temporarily burning wicks blink out.
The politician, Tim Neville, is a conservative Republican. He had real difficulty getting the shamas lit. It was as if the winds were saying this one has no light within him. To be fair, others had difficulty, too.
This was a pan-Judaism event with Beth Evergreen, where Kate and I have attended educational classes, Judaism in the Foothills and B’Nai Chaim reform synagogue collaborating. It was not a huge crowd, maybe 75 to a 100 people: a few boys with prayer shawl fringes dangling beneath their t-shirts, two rabbis and a cantor, tables with Hanukkah gelt, dreidels, a two table set up for the latke cookoff* and an adorable two year old girl whose body posture said she was ready to rule the world.
The evening was enough for Kate to say, “I want to join.” She means Beth Evergreen.
I was happy the event took place to a giant fir tree festooned with many lights. That’s my religious tradition, Germanic paganism.
*Kate’s latkes are superior, in every way, to the ones I tried last night.
