Holiday: Days of Awe
Days of Awe(some)
by Noach Dzmura on Friday October 03, 2008
4 Elul 5768
Days of Awe

If ever there were a Jewish holiday custom-made to the specifications of a gender variant Jew, the Days of Awe would have to be it/them. The Days of Awe are the ten days bordered by Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They are not a discrete event, rather, they are ten days of liminality – betweenness – within which we prepare ourselves for our closest encounter with the Infinite this side of death. Sounds like transition to me, nu? This holiday rings, shouts, nay, this celebration of liminality blasts forth, bleats, laments and exults with the shofar call of transformation. I hearby dub them instead the Days of AWESOME! Wake up! The shofar says, for:

This is the holiday that recognizes

Even the gender invariant

May be intentionally reconstructed

May have the benefit of masculine, feminine and

That which lies between and beyond

Recognize who you are

Know what you have been this past year

Die

To your shortcomings

Then think yourself

From one image of G-d to another.

Take a firm grip on the tree

Of your own life and

Hold on with your clutching fingertips

To the illusion you embody

A fruit of that tree, you

Hang over the depths

Of your own abyss

And work within

To bear the darkness

For the potential

The gestation

It offers

Then let go

Fall and fly

And laugh for yichud*

May your Days of Awe lead you toward peace with your Finites and with your Infinites. As a result of your Awesome Transformation, may you be Made of Awesome in the coming year.

• yichud– unification, often used to refer to the unification of the male and female aspects of the Divine