The 8-day Jewish holiday of Passover is almost over. I’ve spent much of this time reflecting…and mulling over what to write below. Of course, everything is tinged these days with the coronavirus. Although it may be cliché, this article will be too, a little. I’ve heard many people from the Jewish world talk about the “plague” of the coronavirus. (For those unfamiliar with the Exodus story, there are 10 Plagues that fall on the Egyptians. Watch the movie Prince of Egypt). One rabbi even asserted that the coronavirus is NOT a plague, ostensibly differentiating something that is man-made from the divine miracles of old. I didn’t buy his argument. I think the metaphor is worth playing with. But that’s not my focus here. Rather, I’m interested in the liminality, which I’ll define below, that characterizes both Passover and our current time period.
One of the well-known parts of the Exodus story is when Moses sees the burning bush and speaks to G-d for the first time. He is told, “remove your shoes from your feet, for the place you stand is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5). Standing barefoot in the shadow of the numinous might be a logical response of humility and connection. This gesture is also a great instance of what Thomas Moore calls temenos, ancient Greek for marking a special place or precinct for the sacred. Perhaps taking off one’s shoes is one way to mark a threshold.
There is another meaning to this famous phrase, however. I recently shared this passage with the 8th graders I’m teaching (by Zoom, of course); they were struck by the multiple meanings of words in the Hebrew lexicon (oftentimes because the Hebrew from the Torah is missing vowels, leaving the exact translation open to interpretation). As I’ve learned from Rabbi Zelig Golden of Wilderness Torah, the phrase “remove your shoes” also means “remove your locks” and “from your feet” can alternately be translated as “from your habits”. So G-d might be telling Moses to “remove your locks from your habits”.
This is exactly what Moses must do.
Moses had already spent the last few decades in the desert of Midian, far from the Egypt of his upbringing. The habits he developed as an adopted child of Egyptian royalty had long been exchanged for the rhythms of sheepherding, raising a family, and learning the wise indigenous ways of his father-in-law Yitro. But the self that he had become during this time period was no longer sufficient for the leader he would need to be. Although his robe and staff may have continued from his sheepherding days, he would ultimately have to transform himself prior to his eventual triumph in liberating his fellow slaves.
Not only would Moses have to continually “take off the locks from his habits” as he led the mixed multitudes in the exodus from Egypt (perhaps what he was doing on Mount Sinai for forty days), but throughout their wandering in the desert these people must do the same. For forty years, people who were socialized into slavery and complicity must re-learn freedom, including its particular encumbrances. Many in exile complained to Moses about not having access to the luxuries they did as slaves. These people did not make it. They needed to be liberated not only physically but psychologically, prior to entering the Promised Land. Their descendants who were born free would get to start a new society free of shackles.
Every Passover, I try to use the journey from Mitzrayim – Egypt – to Freedom to process my own mitzrayim, translated as: “narrow places,” “constraints,” “tightness”. I look throughout the eight days for any last chametz (leavening) to slough off. In order to be truly light; to be free. The eight days of Passover might be thought of as what Victor Turner called a “liminal space,” which C. Michael Smith (Jung and Shamanism in Dialogue) defined as a “space/time pod in which the individual is ritually unbound from the binding power of social norms and conventions”. The concept of liminality is perhaps Turner’s greatest contribution to the study of liberatory pedagogy.
We might imagine that what Moses endured as he was transformed from shepherd to prophet was, as Smith explained liminality, an experience where “previous cognitive and psychological structures are deconstructed and reconstructed as they come into contact with the powerful transformative energies of the sacred”. The liminal space of the desert is a necessary vacuum in which transformation might occur. This has been experienced viscerally by those who join Wilderness Torah at Passover in the Desert during the holiday – an event which was sadly not possible this year.
Which brings me back to the coronavirus – or rather the surprising confluence of impacts on our society as a result of being unprepared for the virus (I’d rather not collapse all of the dynamics occurring right now with the pandemic itself). This confluence is resulting in, as I wrote about just a few weeks ago – and you’ll surely recognize, a palpable slowing down and spaciousness for many of us. [ I would imagine that there is some other tone of liminal space for healthcare workers and service employees, not to mention those who become ill – albeit much more intense and a lot less pleasant than day-drinking or universal home-schooling. Therefore, a cautionary note: my writing here might not apply to every individual. Rather, I am interested in looking at the broad strokes.] The point of a liminal space is that it is markedly different from the “old normal”. It is also not yet the “new normal”. It is betwixt and between.
We have yet to see how we show up on the other side.
Liminal space is often used in the context of initiation processes. Perhaps we are being initiated into a new way of being. Of course, this depends on to what extent our society is able to integrate the lessons from this time – a demand that initiatory processes always impose. Regardless, there is work to be done. For those of us who are God-wrestlers (the original meaning of “Israel”), this is an opportunity to clear one’s home of crumbs that do not belong. And for all of us trying to survive amidst the pandemic epoch, there is a possibility of getting down to the essence of what this time is trying to teach us.
Passover will soon be over. While I’ve spent the last week avoiding pizza and donuts, I will soon be able to eat those things once again. Savoring leavened foods after Passover will be better than it was before, for going without accentuates the pleasure of having. Yet it is my responsibility to remember the “bread of affliction” that I ate this week, the cracker whose fragility mimics the real fragility of our freedoms. Eventually, post-coronavirus, we will begin to go to restaurants again, to get our hair done, and to hug our friends. It will be an incredible joy. Until we become complacent again, with the “new normal” just becoming normal. We’ll have to intentionally expend effort to remember what it was like in quarantine – or mitzrayim, those tight places of constriction that limit us. To really be able to savor the joy of our most taken-for-granted luxuries. Baruch haShem/insh’Allah/G-d-willing, the sacrifices being made now will be worth the promise on the other side.
Community Alchemist 