Spill the Honey Reflects a Movement Out From Oneself to the Other

Rabbi Arthur Crispe reflects on the meaning of Spill the Honey

In a Jewish context, Spill the Honey is the movement out from oneself to the other, a signaling that the other is essential to the self, and the communication and recognition that results from this. An overflow of honey facilitates the outreach between people, between communities, between races, religions, and nations. It encourages us to turn to weak measurements which engender ever-growing subtle definitions with provisional status. The sweetness of honey eschews the prejudicial hard measurements which disturb and violate the otherness of the other in the act of knowing; it dispels the fixed mindset whose rigidity constitutes a paralytic for the other, leading to relations fraught with friction. 

Likewise, when we look at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. we know that while Black people suffered horrific prejudices and racism, he changed society, he transformed the reality, through his speech. He chose words to spread sweetness, to stick to the hearts and souls of all who heard him and who continue to hear him to this day. And just like Eliezer Ayalon [whose story inspired the name of our organization] had to make a choice whether to focus on the suffering or find the blessings, so too this was Dr. King’s message when he said: “Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred.”

Things can change. Things will change. But we choose how they change. And it begins when we change ourselves. We can shift how we think, shift how we view the world. Then we use the power of our speech to connect to others, to share that sweetness, to use it to stick to others.

Rabbi Asher Crispe is the Executive Director of Interinclusion.org, celebrating the convergence between contemporary arts and sciences and Torah thought. He is a world renowned lecturer on Chassidic and Kabbalistic Philosophy.