Wedding Weekend
One takeaway from the wedding weekend is that the hora doesn't happen on its own. You know. The hora! Simin Tov and mazel tov, y'hei lanu… Sadly, no magical hora fairies manipulate chairs like Beauty and the Beast. Jewish men don't just beam down from the Jewish mothership. Drunk and ready to lift anyone brave enough to be thrown around like a sack of potatoes.
Yes, friends, the hora takes a little bit of work. Some of it happens behind the scenes, but it's everyone's hora once the ball gets rolling. It gains momentum. Pulling air and water around it to use as fuel in its wake. But it has to start somewhere, like a tropical storm.
This is all the long-winded way of saying that Jewish ritual also doesn't just happen. It doesn't stumble, trip, and fall and exist by doing nothing. It has to be caused. Willed. As I learned from my own, weddings also don't just happen. Thanks to my now wife. Who, for this analogy, we will call “the Prime Mover.” Because, as they say, there is an equal and opposite reaction for every action in nature. But there has to be an initial force! An initial drive. An origin. Mine was and still is, for the most part, Wendi. She gets a lot of things going in our household, which is precisely the point I'm making.
One of my favorite Jewish songs goes like this, “Mitzvah goreret mitzvah, averah goreret averah.” Typically translated as "one good deed will bring another good deed, one transgression will bring another offense." But it really means that one mitzvah, one good deed or commandment, pulls another in its wake. To me, this phrase, this idea, is what governs my life.
Life is about ways of energy. The current of your energy with all your desires and wants and needs. And that of the rest of the world. Sometimes, shockingly, what we want is different from what others want. Hence, why it’s imperative to cause our own life to happen. If not, you get caught in someone else’s catastrophic storm of a life narrative. Someone else’s energy. Not the one of your choosing. And it doesn't take a big push to get going.
It doesn't have to be a whole thing. All you need to do is just one thing. Just one mitzvah. Just one action to get the ball rolling. And then, you gather your little sparkle of this and that. And then, over time, you've accumulated enough energy that life will move in that direction because you wanted it. Sometimes, life needs a small “push” in the right direction.