Yom Kippur 5771: The Blessing of In-Betweenness

Shana tova.

Summer vacation has ended. The school year has begun. On the first day of school, the teacher asked all of the children about their vacations. Richard, what did you do this summer? “We visited my grandma in Oconowok, Wisconsin.” “Good Richard. Now, can you tell the class how you spell that?” After careful thought, Richard said, “Actually, we went to Ohio.”

We may not always be able to spell our vacation destinations, but we love them when we arrive.

Earlier this summer, I enjoyed some quality family time traveling to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone National Park. Now I know that driving 3500 miles with 4 boys in the back seat is not everyone’s idea of fun. But we made a time of it stopping on the way for sight seeing.

License plate games and snack bags, highway tick-tack-toe and books-on-tape helped pass the time. Not surprisingly, though, it took less than an hour after leaving home for the first, “are we there yet?” You can imagine how our “no, were not there yet. Just enjoy the scenery,” went over. For the next few thousand miles, the refrain continued unabated, “are we there yet?” “No.” “Are we there yet?” “No.”

We were on cruise control doing 65, ok 70. We were on cruise control doing 70 ok a little over 75, somewhere in South Dakota playing a trivia game when it clicked. I figured out how to answer the now annoying question, “are we there yet.” “Fill in the blank,” we read from a deck of cards.” “There is no place like…” And there was silence. Golden silence- until a water bottle dropped and splashed on two boys with its expected pandemonium that followed. Water wiped up. Back to the game. “There is no place like…” We waited for the answer when finally one of the boys took a stab. “Here?” There is no place like here.”

Well, I know plenty of people who if they were in the middle of North-Dakota would beg to differ. But that innocent answer was wonderfully insightful. While it is true there is no place quite like home; it is also true, there is no place like here. Just ask Jacob.

Yaakov had left Beer Sheva and was headed toward Haran. Somewhere along the way, he paused to catch his breath and rest. Vayifaga b’makom. He came to a place. He arrived at a place he hadn’t intended, a place that on the surface looked pretty ordinary, even dull. And in a scene we know so well, Jacob lay down for the night and dreamt of a ladder. He woke up the next morning and pronounced those memorable words- ma “nora hamakom hazeh. How awesome is this place!”

Jacob had traveled far and yet had a ways to go. He had left home but hadn’t yet arrived. And when he saw that place in the light of a new day, he said, “there’s no place like here.”

We have all had experiences like Jacob of discovering a special place when we least expected it, of uncovering the sacred in what thought would be mundane. Of course, none of that mattered a bit to my kids. The next time they asked “are we there yet” and I answered, “yes, we are there; for there is no place like here.” Well let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.

I won’t bore you with the rest of my summer vacation because I think you understand the point. And you know, this isn’t a message simply about long car rides with kids in tow. For, like Jacob, we live at the intersection between here and there, between yesterday and tomorrow. We have left home but we haven’t quite arrived. We are somewhere in between. And that is not an easy place to be.

It is hard to say “there is no place like here” when our sights are set on getting “there.” It’s much harder to say , for example, “there is no place like here” in the flat plains of North Dakota after having stood before the towering Grand Tetons. Many know that it is harder to say “there is no place like here, no time like today” when they think of yesterday’s success amidst today’s failure. Others know, it’s harder to say “there is no place like here, no time like today” when you felt younger and more vibrant yesterday. It is harder to say but “here” is where we are, somewhere between our departure and our destination, our beginning and our end.

Jacob woke up and realizing he has landed somewhere called out, “ma nora hamakom hazeh, how awesome is this somewhere-place.” It’s not that he forgot the past or gave up on the future. Instead, it was a moment in which Jacob was open to all that the present had to offer. To say, “There is no place like here” doesn’t mean we have arrived, we have finished our journey. It doesn’t me we should be satisfied with today, stop striving for tomorrow. No, Jews following in the footsteps of Jacob are sheheheyanu people. We give thanks for arriving, for reaching our destination and attaining our goals. Instead, ma nora invites us to pause and search for God in the in between moments of our lives.

Sometimes we are so eager to arrive, we fail to notice moments along the way

We are so eager for our children to walk, we forget the blessings of crawling. We are so eager for the wedding, we forget the excitement of dating. We are so eager for retirement, we ignore the blessing of work. We are so eager for this service to end, we… no, no one is eager for that.

Typically, we think that the destination is the most important, most sacred place. But Judaism teaches us how to uncover treasures and blessings throughout the journey. Consider the Israelites. Where did they receive revelation? Not when they were enslaved in Egypt and not when they had arrived in the Promised Land. No, it was in the in between, in the desert where they met God at Mount Sinai. (Zoe Klein)

The same is true in our lives. We are constantly in between– in between jobs, in between relationships, in between projects. And though we may look ahead and ask, “are we there yet,” our Jewish tradition challenges us to say, “there is no place like here”– this moment, this time, this place in our lives. It may be a place of uncertainty but it is also a place of possibility. At first glance, it may look like a desert or endless plains. But look closely and you’ll discover, it is a place full of promise.

This lesson finds concrete expression in a ritual object with which we are all familiar. The ultimate symbol of in betweeness is the doorway. In that place, we have neither arrived in one room nor left the other. We are neither inside or nor outside; we are on the threshold, in between. And what do we do there? We affix a mezuzah. Far more than a lucky charm or a decorative feature, a mezuzah is the ultimate symbol of in betweenness. It sanctifies a moment of transition.

My teacher, Prof Neil Gilman, used to speak about “mezuzzah moments.” “Liminality” was the fancy term he borrowed from cultural anthropologists to explain mezuzah moments. Liminal places are the blurry zones between two clear spaces. Most cultures, mark liminal moments with special customs. HS graduation, birthday parties, carrying a bride over a threshold (“limen” in Latin), these are common moments of transition accompanied by well rehearsed rituals. Jewish tradition, Prof Gillman taught, does more than mark liminal moments; it sanctifies. It invites God to the in between times in our lives:

Mezuzzot mark the move from home to away,
Maariv the change to night from day;
through huppa we pass, “alone” now “together,”
havdalah- holy to ordinary whatever the weather.

These are mezuzzot in time, moments of transition between what was and what is yet to be, a time where one chapter has closed and another begun to open.

The High Holy Days are just such an example of a mezuzah moment for they are days of in betweenness.

We mistakenly think of Rosh Hashana as the “head” of the year. But in the wisdom of our sages, the High Holy Days occur in the seventh month, in the middle of our calendar, in between summer and winter.

The Talmud teaches that at this holy time, three books lay open before God. There is a book for tzadikim, the totally righteous who are inscribed immediately in the Book of Life. There is a book for r’shaim, the utterly wicked who are inscribed in the Book of Death. And then there is a third book, the largest volume, for those the rabbis called the benoniim, literally, the in between ones, people who are neither fully righteous nor fully wicked (RH 16b). Their fate, according to tradition, hangs in the balance “bein rosh hashana l’yom hakippurim, between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.”

This time, then, is designated as the intermediate month, in between seasons, for the in-betweeners. Less arrival than a passage way, the High Holy Days are like the mezuzah. Tilted up when we enter a room, they nudge us l’eila l’eila to live slightly higher as we continue our journey.

For the rabbis, a benoni was an in-betweener; she was a person who had an equal measure of good deeds and bad deeds. Benoni was a little like North Dakota, a State you quickly tried to cross on your way to becoming a tzadik, a person whose righteousness soared like the Grand Tetons.

But there is a different way to look at the benoni. The Tanya, by Shneur Zalman, is a classic Hasidic work. It is also known as Sefer Habenonin, the Book for the In-betweeners. For Shneur Zalman, benoni is a measure not of deeds but a description of balance. Each person, he wrote, is controlled by two impulses, physical and spiritual. Some people ignore their physical urges and live solely in the world of the spirit. Others live in only the earthy world and ignore their spiritual lives. The benoni, however, draws on both impulses to create a life of balance. He does not deny his animal appetite, his desire for earthly pleasures. Instead, he sanctifies it with spiritual intent. For the Tanya, the benoni is not a stage through which pass. It is the place most of us, most of the time, live our lives. Here we stand upright between heaven and earth. To be a benoni is to be on a ladder which rests on the ground whose top stretches to clouds (“mutzav artza v’rosho magia hashamayima”) going up and down, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending.

“The sky grew red and then began to pale to dusk. Jacob and the old man sat together shoulder to shoulder. Their manner with each other was not like men who had just met but as men who were being introduced to a friendship that had long existed but which they were just now discovering. In this way, Jacob met Samuel.”

No, these are not biblical characters but the wise baker and customer in Noah Ben Sheah’s thoughtful tale, Jacob’s Journey: Wisdom to Find the Way, Strength to Carry On.”

“’What work do you?’ asked Sam

“’I am baker,’ said Jacob

“Sam laughed. ‘I used to be a baker,’ he said, intrigued by the parallel. ‘But now I am afraid I am getting too old for my work.’

“Have no fear,” said Jacob, for the rabbis taught, “though we are never excused from our work, neither are we expected to finish it.”

“Yes indeed,” said Sam. “But if I don’t bake, what shall I do with my time?”

“When we treat time as a limit,” said Jacob, “then time becomes a wall, a barrier we will die climbing. If however we see our days as a river,” Jacob continued motioning to the waters in front of them, “then we know time as a vehicle and realize we have all been born as passengers.”

In this scene, Samuel is in transition; he is in that in between state. Unsure of his future, he is stuck by an invisible barrier called “time” set before him. But Jacob assures him, the limits of time are our own illusions.

As yizkor approaches we cross through a mezuzah moment of our year. Gathering at this sacred hour, we sense both the limits of time and the fluidity of our days. We feel the barrier before us dividing us from our loved ones. And yet sense a river that flows through us, that connects us, a river that courses from generations past to generations yet to be.

Each of us has set off on a journey, Jacob teaches. But few of us have arrived; we have not attained all of our goals; we have hardly realized all our dreams. We are benoniim, in betweeners, somewhere on the way. As we continue our travels into the coming year, we flow down a river. Today, we will leave this holy rest stop of the Sabbath of Sabbaths. And as we set forth once again we pray, “Be my guide, God. Lead me from here to there in peace. Remove the barriers that block my vision, that prevents me from seeing hamakom, Your place along the way. Then, perhaps when I least expect it, perhaps when I have begun to tire of the journey and ask, “are we there yet,” I will discover, “ma norah hamakom hazeh, there is no place like here.”

Amen.