It is the Jewish way to live from holiday to holiday, leapfrogging from one celebratory mode to the other. So after Purim we immediately look to Passover and all the plans to make for that holiday – the cleaning, the shopping, the inviting…
Life is easier when you feel ready for the next big thing, and anticipating what is to come helps us feel more in control over the direction of our lives. But so often something comes to remind us just how little control we do have. There, right in that moment when you…
…place the ring on her finger,
…receive a letter beginning with “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted…,”
…hold in your hands the keys to the car, the keys to independence,
…lose a game to your child where you were not trying to let them win,
…hold a Torah and recite the Shema as a Bat Mitzvah, or as a newly-minted Jew,
Or when you…
…see the place once occupied by someone of importance to you, empty,
…hear the words “Baruch Dayan ha’Emet” – blessed is the true Judge,
…make the Thanksgiving or Passover dish that your mother or grandmother had always made,
…experience the first time that your body simply will not allow you to do what it has allowed you to do for your whole life,
These are all liminal moments, happy and sad, moments in life when we become very aware that we are on the threshold of change. Our lives are full of them, whether we are conscious of them or not. I believe that Judaism helps us to become more aware of them, so that we can appreciate these moments of transition and turn them into opportunities for transformation.
This may sound awfully like a Holy Holiday sermon topic, and it is. We’re at the six month marker from the next High Holiday season, which in itself is another kind of Jewish New Year. We are at the beginning of the cycle of months. Nissan, the month of Passover, begins on April 5th, and is considered the first month of the Jewish year. (Tishrei, the month of the Rosh Hashanah and Days of Awe, is the seventh month.)
Why so many New Years? Perhaps it is because Judaism relishes each holiday, mile markers, new month, new month, and birthday as signaling the possibility for change. Change is good, even when it hurts. It’s these liminal moments that help us realize the precious urgency of life, pushing us out of our comfort places and into new growth. The Jewish lifecycle and year-cycle celebrates the liminal moment, big and small: the beginning and ending of Shabbat, every sunset and sunrise, the first buds of spring, and first cries of new life.
Pesach is the liminal holiday par excellence. During Pesach, especially those first nights of seder, we are no longer oppressed, but we also haven’t loosed the bonds of slavery completely either. We search for questions as we grope for our new selves and an undetermined future. We are encouraged to be neither slaves nor free people, but to feel ourselves as in between as possible.
This Pesach, I hope we all experience the profundity and sense of human vulnerability that come when we choose to linger in the liminal space. Maybe you’ll write about it or make a ritual out of it, perhaps you’ll say a blessing like the Shehechiyanu. Because it is a blessing to be fully human: to be in a state of not knowing, to not always feel in control of our lives, to feel the need to reach out in some way.
And as a result, may we find ourselves changed, renewed, and transformed.
Biv’racha – with blessing,
Rabbi Anna
