Posted by deathcaredc on Nov 23, 2025
Note: Today we're a couple days into the hebrew month of Kislev, which houses channukah! I wrote almost all of this post during Cheshvan, and edited and finished here in Kislev. I'm still counting it as my monthly post, since it's still November, but technically there will be two posts during Kislev this year!
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I'm coming in with this post just under the wire. I was having trouble figuring out what to write. The hebrew calendar month of Cheshvan, also known as mar (bitter) Cheshvan, is about to end. Kislev is next, which brings Channukah with it.
Since the dates on the hebrew and gregorian calendar don't match up, Jewish dates appear to move around a bit through the Christian year -- for instance, Rosh Hashana sometimes takes place in September, other years in October. Similarly, I noticed, is how daylight savings moves around too. This year in Chesvan, we moved back an hour, doomed again by Daylight Savings to repeat 2 am twice for a day. Moreover, my partner and I left and returned this month from a trip to Japan and South Korea; on our way back, we traveled for nearly 24 hours -- and we set foot back in DC about three hours after we left.
It all feels a bit random and chaotic. The calendar is what it is because it's accepted as such. A day lasts 24 hours, because it takes that many units of time that we've created for one earth's rotation to complete. And at the same time, patterns keep us routine. Rosh Chodesh, or the start of a new month, always takes place on a new moon. Some cycles feel unsettling, like jumping back or forward an hour at will, or losing or gaining dozens of hours after international travel. Others envelope us with familiarity, like seasons changing or the darkness of the night on a new hebrew month.
I've been, as usual, thinking a lot about death. This past month has no Jewish holidays in ashkenazi observance, which is where the "bitter" prefix comes from. Astrologically, Scorpios are celebrating their next rotation around the sun. And spiritually, we mark the death card in the tarot deck.
The death card often gets a bad rap; it invokes worry in me even though I know it rarely means literal death. Instead, it's a sign of change. Momentous catalysts. Chaos, perhaps. As leaves fall and dry out, as hibernations begin for the winter, it feels fitting that this card sits in the month where Jewishly, in many cultures we have nothing to celebrate. In a world filled with horrors, it often feels as though every day of every month we have nothing to celebrate. The contrast, here, is what I find hardest to embrace. And what I try hardest to embrace.
A couple nights ago, I went to see Yiddish folk punks Brivele and A Glezele Tey perform. The evening was filled with opposites -- joyful dancing and zingeray (sing-along), calls for mutual aid and fighting oppression in the face of genocide and fascism. In one song performed by A Glezele Tey, a beautiful tune popularized during the ghettos of World War II, the narrator wonders, "who will say Kaddish [the Jewish prayer for the dead] for me when I'm dead?... My horse will be the only one to say Kaddish for me when I'm dead." That one hit me hard. When all those who've known and loved us are dead, or have been murdered, who is left to mourn us? How will we not be forgotten? The weight of this scares me.
And that leaves me with immensely fearful uncertainty. Time is what we make it and what we say it is. It is also unforgivingly linear for humans. We can flow backwards with memories, we can flow forwards with manifestations. But we can't change what's been done, and we can't know what hasn't occurred yet. The present moment, everywhere, contains life and death. That is beautiful. That is terrible.
And that's the sum: Time is surreal. It is filled with beauty and horror; immense routine and chaos in every moment, everywhere. As we settle into the winter again in the northern hemisphere, may the darkness bring change that includes warmth, passion and ferocity that fills us with joy, drive and consistent fluidity amidst the chaos.