Posted by deathcaredc on Sep 30, 2024
The Jewish high holidays are days away. Rosh Hashana begins at sunday this Wednesday, Sept. 30. For us Jewish folk, the new year starts right after that.
A tradition for many Jews during the Hebrew calendar month of Elul, the month leading up to the new year, is to visit the graves of ancestors. For me, this meant physically heading to the cemetery and visiting with family members who've died. It meant spending time with tarot to see what guidance ancestors have for the new year ahead. And it meant dreaming, while I slept, and getting visits from those who've come before me.
Some of this is within my control. I can drive to the cemetery. I can flip cards in the tarot deck when I feel called. I can go to sleep. But I can't for the life of me have a lucid dream.
I spend time sitting by a grave and literally talking to my family who are no longer alive. I talk, they don't respond; sometimes the trees and birds and squirrels do. I bring them stones, as is traditional for Jews, to leave on their graves; I bring them shells, as is less traditional, but my family loves the beach.
I spend an hour with a tarot deck pulling cards. I ask my ancestors to guide the cards I choose and my understanding of them. They suggest a year of turning inwards is ahead; I lament that it feels similar to last year, and then catch myself. All years can't be the year of the extrovert.
I spend my nights asleep -- or at least trying to be. I've never been able to control my dreams, though in the past I've spent many months trying. This past year, I've been visited by the dream regulars and some new ones. My uncle who died nearly a decade ago now gives me a big hug in a dream last winter. A friend who died last spring visits me a week or so later in a dream. And this Elul, my mom and her parents join me in a dream in festive celebration at their house I used to visit before they were all gone.
What I'm trying to say is, there are many ways to fulfil the mitzvah (good deed) of visiting with our ancestors. These are a few ways I've done it, and there are infinite more. Meditation, an altar, writing, going for a walk -- the options of ways to connect are endless.
What are ways you connect with your ancestors who have died? Where does their energy live now? Where do you meet with them?
L'shana tova (happy new year),
Rae