Now is the time for contemplation. It isn’t that contemplation is a new form of exercise that I have hitherto not engaged in, but  it seems everyone is being urged to slow down their frenetic pace, increase awareness of themselves and fellow humans, ante up their compassion, selflessness …… it’s endless

Does all of this above require a crisis, I sometimes wonder?

On my walk along the river, (yes, the very same river), I discovered a new texture to sky and water. Perhaps, Venus being the ruler of my chart, astrologically speaking, beauty is hard to escape and with a Moon conjunct Jupiter, beauty in everything appears magnificently amplified.  (It is incredible how the constellations and the cosmos can be used to weave elaborate stories of ourselves, where we play the central protagonist and every avatar that we deem appropriate, to create a montage of scenes in our lives).

In this random recollection of thoughts , having not found the time to do all that I wished to cram into this beautiful Sunday, I did manage to treat myself to yet more of Chava Alberstein. Her rendition of Had Gadya , where she adds to this Passover staple her own interpretation, has an emotional intuitiveness that is very touching.

Why are you singing Had Gadya?                                                                                             Spring isn’t here and Passover hasn’t arrived.                                                                            And what has changed? What changed?
This year, I changed.
On all nights, all nights,
I would ask four questions
Tonight I have another question
How much longer will the circle of horror last?
The chased chases, the beaten beats,
when will this madness end?
And what changed? What changed?
This year, I changed.
I was once a sheep and a peaceful lamb,
now I am a leopard and a predator wolf.
I was a dove and I was a deer.
Now I don’t know what I’ve become.

Walking along the river, absorbing the munificent alterations of sky and water, I ask myself, what changed?

I changed.