During Elul, a month of preparation before the coming High Holy Days, we hear the call of the Shofar as a reminder: awaken! We hope this Shofar Blast of weekly messages from the clergy will help your Elul preparations.
Some people say that transitions are part of life, but they are mistaken. Transitions are life. In a profound sense, they are what give life meaning. In the poem by Rabbi Alvin Fine, life is constantly in motion: “Birth is a beginning, and death a destination. And life is a journey….” Within the journey that we call life, certain moments stand out. They are markers on the way, and they have special capacity to give direction or meaning to our journey. These are the moments of transition. They actually make life worth living. Without them, life has no meaning, it is directionless, there is nothing to look forward to, nothing to mark our progress. Without transitions, we may exist, but we don’t truly live.
Someone who is considered a guru in the area of managing transitions, William Bridges, describes transitions as comprising three stages. The first stage is letting go. This involves no longer seeing the world in terms of what was previously the everyday reality; fare-welling the past without forgetting or rejecting the past. In this stage, transition is less about taking on the new, than it is about giving up the old. That makes it very risky, as well as painful. We all know how difficult it can be to let go of old habits, traditions, preferences, and positions. But, according to Bridges, this is the first step in transitioning from one life situation to another. There is a misunderstanding that is sometimes expressed about letting go, that we are betraying the past, or not giving our history its full due – that we are dishonoring the past by letting it go. On the contrary, the past will always remain a part of us; it formed us, and we honor it best by acknowledging the strength and confidence it has given us to move on.
Bridges calls the second stage the “neutral zone.” Anthropologists might refer to it as the liminal phase, an interval of time during which the transition has not yet been confirmed. It is a most difficult, generally lengthy, and often uncomfortable period of in-between-ness, when we are no longer able to rely on the stability of past practice and yet our future direction is not yet clear. This is the unknown. And now more than any other time in our calendar, we embrace and prepare for the unknown. Judaism tells us that preparing for the unknown is what we must face before the new year. This is reflected in the tradition of the daily recitation of Psalm 27 during the month of Elul. The theme of this psalm is trust in God—trust that the power given to us by God to know right from wrong and good from bad that allows us to make good choices does not leave us just because we don’t know what is around the corner. The psalmist expresses fear and doubts about the unknown, but ultimately ends the psalm with a message of hope: “One thing I ask of God; one thing do I seek: to dwell in the house of God forever… Look to God for hope; be strong and of good courage. Look to God for confidence.” In this way, the text mirrors the work we are called to do at this time of the year. We are called to reflect upon the challenges of our lives and resolve to seek the attributes of love, hope, repair, and belief in the future that were implanted in us all.
How do we do that? Well, the Psalmist says, “One thing I seek … to sit in God’s house all the days of my life, to gaze on God’s pleasantness.” This can be an instruction for practice during the days of Elul. It can be a good thing to sit for a few minutes each day with a sense of being “in God’s house.” While Elul leads us to explore the ways in which we have gone astray in the past year, Psalm 27 also invites us to bring a sense of that which is pleasant and good in our lives into our contemplation so that we might have an idea of what will be good and pleasant in the future.
And that leads us to the third stage of transition: the period of new beginnings. When our future begins to take on a design or pattern of meaning, we can start to see where it is taking us. When we enter that stage of renewal, the journey no longer feels like we are wandering through the wilderness. It is a homecoming. Life’s journey once again takes on the character of, as Alvin Fines says, “a sacred pilgrimage.”
This is our period of transition. The past year is coming to a close. A new year will soon begin. We are honoring and at the same time letting go of the past; preparing ourselves for the unknown future that awaits us; and knowing that God has given us the power to see it through.
Shanah Tovah!
Rabbi Scott Nagel The Sophia and Nathan Gumenick Senior Rabbi Congregation Beth Ahabah
