"Welcome to Rosh Hashana - 5770"

by Rabbi Margaret Holub

Ten years ago this Thanksgiving I jumped on the Green Tortoise bus with a bunch of other folks from around here and went up to Seattle to join the anti WTO uprising there. It was a wild, wonderful, Fellini-esque experience for me. I mention it now not to talk about fair trade or localization or the privatization of land and water, though I probably should – but because a tiny, private, dream-like image from those days keeps coming back to me today.

There was a march of sea turtles. It had something to do with large-scale commercial fisheries, I think, and the incidental destruction of turtles. Anyone who wanted to participate in the march was invited to meet at a certain corner and put on a sea turtle costume. Some dedicated group had constructed several hundred of them and gotten them to Seattle. They were magnificent: human-sized heavy cardboard carapaces, intricately joined and brightly painted, matching turtle heads. I was told that each one took five hours to assemble. I missed the march itself, but I can only imagine that it was something to see. What I did see was tired sea turtles all over the place on the Seattle streets after the march, peeling off their helmet-like masks, struggling out of their sea turtle shells, carrying them over their shoulders. There was something very tender and vulnerable about the post-march post-turtles. They looked skinny and sweet and very human.

I come to Rosh Hashana this year with one simple wish and intention for all of us: that we can feel our souls underneath our bright and beautiful shells. I hope that our souls are awakened and nourished through all that we do together.

I’ll say more about all this later. But for now I just want to welcome you to take off your costume if you’d like to, to whatever degree you’d like to, in whatever way you’d like to -- hang it out in the foyer, stack the helmets on the bench. It will be there whenever you want it. For now let us welcome your tired, vulnerable and intensely beautiful inner selves to this Day of Awe.

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