Additions to the Rosh Hashanah Seder Akhilat haSimanim for the Shmitah Year, by Rabbi David Seidenberg (neohasid·org)
Source Link: https://opensiddur.org/?p=28876
open_content_license: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license date_src_start: 2019-12-31 date_src_end: 2019-12-31 languages_meta: [{"name":"English","code":"eng","standard":"ISO 639-3"}] scripts_meta: [{"name":"Latin","code":"Latn","standard":"ISO 15924"}] Date: 2019-12-31
Last Updated: 2025-04-11
Categories: Symbolic Foods, the Shmitah Year (Earth's Shabbat), Seder Akhilat haSimanim
Tags: 21st century C.E., 58th century A.M., ecoḥasid
Excerpt: Many people eat special foods as part of a mini-seder at the beginning of the Rosh Hashanah meal and invoke blessings for the year as they eat them. This year, you can add figs to your Rosh Hashanah seder (apples and honey, or apples, dates, beets, etc.) and recite with this kavvanah (intention). . . .
Content:
Many people eat special foods as part of a mini-seder at the beginning of the Rosh Hashanah meal and invoke blessings for the year as they eat them. For the Shmitah year, you can add figs to your Rosh Hashanah seder (apples and honey, or apples, dates, beets, etc.) and recite this kavvanah (intention):
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Source (English) |
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In the year of Shmitah, the sabbatical year,
our ancestors would let the land rest from their plows,
receiving and eating whatever grew and ripened by itself from the land.
And fig trees were especially prized in Shmitah,
because they would ripen little by little over many months,
always providing food.
And some say that the fig was the fruit of the tree of knowledge,
and that Shmitah is our time to receive the knowledge from Eden
in the right way and the right time,
when all is ripened toward understanding.
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May it be Your will
YHVH our God and God of our ancestors
that during this year of Shmitah,
as the world ripens for us little by little,
always turning again toward us
to nourish and sustain us,
that we may turn
to receive in gratitude
what is offered so freely and lovingly,
so that we may turn
and ripen in justice and love
toward this world and all its creatures.
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(Eat the fig!)
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For a full Shmita Rosh Hashanah seder, see also R. Nina Beth Cardin’s seder at: The Sova Project.
Contributor: David Seidenberg
Co-authors:
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Name: David Seidenberg
Bio: Rabbi David Seidenberg, founder of NeoHasid.org, teaches text and music, Jewish thought and spirituality, in their own right and in relation to ecology and the environment. With smikhah (ordination) from the Jewish Theological Seminary and from Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, he has taught at over 100 synagogues, communities, retreats and conferences across North America (and a few in Europe and Israel). Rabbi Seidenberg's teaching empowers learners to become creators of Judaism through deep study and communion with texts and tradition. Areas of specialty include Kabbalah and Ḥasidut, Talmud, davenning, evolution and cosmology, sustainability, Maimonides, Buber, and more. Rabbi Seidenberg has published widely on ecology and Judaism and is the author of Kabbalah and Ecology: God's Image in the More-Than-Human World (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
Website: https://neohasid.org
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/david-seidenberg
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Name: Neohasid·org
Bio: NeoHasid.org, founded October 2005, was first created by Rabbi David Seidenberg to help folks integrate ḥasidic song, learning, and nusaḥ into their davenning and communities and to explore embodied Torah. It evolved to focus on eco-Torah and to share liturgy that honors our relationship with the Earth and/or expresses gender parity.
Website: https://neohasid.org
Profile Link: https://opensiddur.org/profile/neohasid-org
Featured Image:
Title: What should I do with my fresh figs? (Keith McDuffee CC BY)
Caption: "What should I do with my fresh figs?" (credit: Keith McDuffee, license: CC BY)