In the Beginning, again

Well. Another year has gone around again. That seems to happen a lot, actually; I have annual-cycle moments in October, January, February, June and August. At least. But this time it’s the liturgical cycle that’s come around again. This week’s reading is B’reishit, and we start again.

Last year, when I did Scripture notes on the week’s reading, I wrote about the haftorah portion. I did about half the weeks of the year or so, not very impressive, but there it is. A fair amount of the time, I was reading stuff I had never closely read before, so the project was a Good Thing. I suppose I’d like to set up some sort of project for this cycle, which if nothing else would get me to spend a portion of my Shabbat thinking about the Scripture. I don’t have any ideas, though.

I had an idea to take text from Pirke Avot, instead of looking at the weekly portion. I love Avot; I read it again and again, and I think I would enjoy discussing it here in the Tohu Bohu. On the other hand, there are good arguments against it. For one thing, it’s not the weekly portion, and so I would not be looking at the weekly portion, so that would be bad for me. Also, with the weekly portion, if I skip a week, the week is gone and I don’t get it back, which gives a little foot-to-behind motivation. If I am just taking the next verse of Avot, I could do it anytime. Also, Gentle Readers, for reasons that I’m sure seem good and sufficient to y’all, don’t spend your Saturdays on-line writing comments on this Tohu-Bohu, so the idea of having Saturday discussions is not really clever. Yes, y’all may come around on Monday and post, but that isn’t actually all that likely. And, in truth, as much as some GRs enjoy my little Scripture notes, I don’t think there’s a critical mass interested in such a discussion.

So what shall I do? I could just go through the reading and pick out something that catches my eye, looking for something I haven’t written about before. There’s still plenty there. Or I could come up with a theme (the environment, prayer, violence, goyim, siblings, whatever) and look at each week’s portion with that theme in mind. Or I could just let it go, and instead of writing about Scripture most weeks (well, many weeks) just write about it when it crosses my mind. What do you think?

See, this week is B’reishit, in the beginning. We begin again, like we do every year. Everything, in fact, begins again: the Divine creates the world again every day, we are told. But at this time of year, at the beginning, it seems like I should come up with some sort of a plan, a plan that will take me to the end of the year, when it will be the beginning again. Right? Of course, right.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.