Shabbat, Shmita and the Wintering We All Endure As I grow older, I have become more and more understanding of why people want to move to Florida. I used to love the winter, but as the chill penetrates my bones and my head gets colder each year from November through April, I ask myself how it was that I made it through Ann Arbor winters in my college years. But reading Katherine May’s new book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat has made my feeling about winter begin to change. “Wintering,” according to May, is not about cold, snow and mittens, it is rather "a fallow period in life.” It is a time when we are set apart, either by our own choice or by circumstances placed upon us. It is “when you're cut off from the world, feeling rejected, sidelined, blocked from progress, or cast into the role of an outsider." Wintering is not a state of the climate, it is a state of our being. The Parsha of Bahar is bookended by the concept of Shabbat, of fallow. It begins w
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Showing posts from May, 2021