PARASHAT RE’EH On the Threshold 31st August 2024

Written by Rabbi Nicola Feuchtwang — 2 September 2024

“I would like each of you to tell us all about a ‘spiritual’ experience you have had”

 

Even the question probably makes us a bit uncomfortable.  It isn’t what we usually talk about in public in polite society in this country.  Even most rabbis prefer talking about texts and practical matters, rather than their spiritual lives.

But in January of this year, together with over 20 fellow student rabbis and cantors from Leo Baeck College and the Hebrew Union College of North America, I spent four days in Oxfordshire at a retreat generously endowed by the Tisch family fellowship, and masterminded by the wonderful Rabbi Professor Larry Hoffman, (whom some of you met at Alyth’s last weekend away).  It was he who asked us that question, inviting us to consider those moments in our lives when something happens beyond what seems to be happening…

We had already had a couple of days to study, chat, and reflect together, and there was a degree of trust in the group, but it was still challenging to share anything so personal.  A few of us spoke about prayer or music, but interestingly, the spiritual moments some people talked about were far from positive – being in the presence of the suffering of others, a near death experience, a difficult birth, …

 

I found myself talking about a Shabbat afternoon in Jerusalem, at the end of August nearly 50 years ago.  I had failed some of my second-year exams at medical school and if I failed the re-sits I would have to leave the course. The next day I would be flying home for my results.  I sat quietly with friends as the sun set. I remember the sensation of holding my breath, wishing the moment would last but knowing that it would not.  I felt I was on the edge of a precipice, knowing that my time out in Israel had been a privilege which was about to end, that life might be about to change direction quite drastically,…. Then, from somewhere, came the conviction:  It’s going to be alright.  Even if it isn’t ‘alright’ in the way I want it to be, it will be OK.  What is meant to happen will happen.  I have to accept it – but not just passively, I have to work with it.

I, and my fellow students, realised that it is often in those very difficult moments, as we pause on the threshold of change in our lives, that if only we allow ourselves to do so, we have an opportunity to experience an inner transformation too.

 

So here we are on the last day of August, the last Shabbat of the summer holidays, before the start of the new school term, before the busy-ness, the noise, the traffic; the evenings drawing in and the temperatures dropping. We hold our breath literally or metaphorically in dread of events in the Middle East.  And we have just announced the new moon of Ellul – which means that we are little over a month from Rosh HaShanah.  There is work to be done in our lives and in our selves. Maybe not a precipice but certainly a threshold…

 

Ellul: The name of this new month has given rise to any number of midrashim.  The best known, which you have probably heard before, is that the letters spelling it    (aleph-lamed-vav-lamed  א-ל-ו-ל) might be an acronym for the phrase from Song of Songs  ani l’dodi v dodi li – (I am my Beloved’s and my Beloved is mine) – to be interpreted as a suggestion that this feeling of being on the threshold, of not knowing what the future holds, is also an opportunity for the greatest intimacy between human and Divine…

Alternatively, (and I spoke about this a couple of years ago) if we read the word Ellul backwards we get lulei (lamed-vav-lamed-aleph ל-ו-ל-א):  “if not….” “if it doesn’t happen…”.  On any threshold, there is always more than one way for events to unfold.

I recently came across another thought-provoking suggestion, cited by Rabbi Dalia Marx in her new book From Time to Time.  There is at least one more bible verse whose initial letters spell out the name Ellul (א-ל-ו-ל), and which can link us back to today’s Torah reading.  We find it, of all places, in the book of Esther, read at Purim, which you might think is the antithesis of the High Holyday season of self-examination.

 

At the very end of the Purim story, when Haman has been vanquished, the Jewish people have not only escaped destruction but actually wreaked some rather nasty revenge, how do the people mark their relief and transformation ‘from grief and mourning..to simcha’?  They use it as an occasion for

Mishloach manot Ish l’re’ehu umatanot la-evyonim…. [1]

Sending portions to each other and gifts to the less fortunate.

 

Whether we are on the threshold of entering the promised land, and planning for a just society (as Jorden taught us with such conviction earlier) , or celebrating escape from danger;  on the threshold of an adult Jewish life like a Bar or Bat Mitzvah, or just enjoying the relative quiet and holding our breath before the start of a new term and a new Jewish year, perhaps the name of the month Ellul can help us to hold these important ideas together:

Ani l’dodi:  every challenge, every change, is an opportunity for a spiritual moment.

Lulei:  if not so, it could be different.

Ish l’re’ehu umatanot la-evyonim:  if we give to each other and make provision for the vulnerable among us, we can make the world a better place.

Shabbat Shalom.

[1]Esther 9:22