The sidrah: First Day Succot

Cain and Abel were the first people to be born of human parents. And therefore the first possessors of a belly button!

Much is made of the pitam, the stalky stigma that marks the place where the etrog plant was pollinated. But the other end of the etrog, the oketz, is even more interesting. This small barely-there indentation marks the spot where the etrog fruit was attached to the tree — the etrog’s belly button!

Every etrog has an oketz, just as each of us has a navel. For none of us could live, had we not once been tethered to a life-giving force that sustained us until we were able to achieve independent existence. At the very centre of our body is our pupik (Yiddish for belly button), a touching and quaint souvenir of the nourishing and nurturing we enjoyed gestating inside our mother’s body.

The feminist theorist Mieke Bal talks about the navel as a universal and democratic feature of all humans, stating simply that each of us was born of woman.

In talking about Rembrand’s paintings Bal theorises: “The navel then, is a metaphor for an element, often a tiny detail, that hits the viewer, is processed by her or him, and textualises the image on its own terms.”

Bal perceives the “navel” of a piece of art or literature as a hint that subtly communicates with the sensitive viewer or reader.

The etrog reminds me of my embodied existence and my physical connection with my mother and a long line of ancestors stretching way back to the Garden of Eden.