Page 38 - HaMizrachi # 23 Sukkot Simchat Torah 2020 USA

HOLIDAY READING

Rabbi Ari Kahn

Liminality

ne of the qualities of our post- As Moshe prepares to take his leave from wall according to halacha, and that is
modern world is the constant the nation, they stand poised to cross the enough to make a sukkah “kosher.”
Ostate of flux. Things move threshold into a completely new real-
rapidly. People and ideas change. Old ity as a nation in its own land. Moshe’s Perhaps the sukkah is the antithesis of
accepted concepts are challenged, speech begins with what we may call the postmodern state of liminality: We
rejected, transformed and reinterpreted. spiritual geopolitics: G-d created clearly are commanded to create boundaries,
It is a world in which boundaries have defined borders for the nations of the to mark off both physical and philo-
disappeared. Social scientists might world, affording each its own space – sophical borders. There are absolutes,
describe our postmodern existence as a but this overarching division reflects and we are commanded to acknowledge
and respect them. Common wisdom
state of constant liminality: we are con- something particular to the descendants understands that children need rules in
sciously, constantly, on the threshold of of Ya’akov. In Bereishit (Chapter 46), the order to thrive and to make sense of the
a new reality. 1 Torah tells us the sum total of Ya’akov’s
family that migrated to Egypt during world around them; this is no less true
What does all this have to do with our the great famine was 70. Corresponding of adults. We need borders and bound-
religious experience or the experience to this number, Jewish tradition refers aries. Not everything is negotiable,
of the holidays? In ”Transforming to the totality of humankind as “the 70 subject to subjective reinterpretation.
Worship,” author Timothy L. Carson nations of the world,” all descended from Things need firmness. The postmodern
describes Ya’akov’s vision of the ladder Noah after the flood. The peoples of the rejection of historical fact in favor of
ascending to Heaven (p. 61): “Jacob’s world were divided – linguistically, cul- subjective narrative flies in the face of
dream floats somewhere in the sacred turally and geographically – when they truth, and of Torah.
axis between heaven and earth.” While misused their unity to rebel against G-d As Jews, we live in a world of abso-
much of Carson’s analysis would be for- in the aftermath of the great deluge. lutes, yet we are commanded by the
eign to the traditional Jew, his obser- same Torah that creates the boundar-
vation of the liminality of the scene in In contrast, Moshe refers to the Jewish ies never to forget that we are part of a
people as Ya’akov and the foundational
which Ya’akov, in a dream state, observes experience of Jewish nationhood is larger world. We have Torah-mandated
a passage from earth to heaven and back depicted in a desolate wilderness, a responsibility for those within the camp,
again, is an important insight. What place without borders, in which they are as well as for those who remain beyond
Carson fails to observe is the decidedly surrounded by G-d alone. The Torah the philosophical and physical borders
non-liminal conclusion of the scene. describes the Jews being “encompassed,” we construct.
We as readers, and Ya’akov himself, take which the commentaries understand as
away a decidedly different sort of mes- the Divine protection afforded by the
sage from the vision, recasting the vision Clouds of Glory. 1 Liminality is a term used to describe the
psychological process of transitioning across
into what can only be described as a pre- boundaries and borders.
liminal state of consciousness. The sukkah is a modest structure,
with no real boundaries. The walls
Indeed, Ya’akov lives in a prelimi- may be made of wood, fabric, or even
nal state. The Land promised to him bits of string. The sukkah is a halachic
never quite becomes his; only in the construct, a philosophical construct if
future will his descendants inherit and you will. Therefore, the walls need not
inhabit it. He understands that his task is be real barriers of brick and mortar. A Rabbi Ari Kahn is Director of the Overseas
to lay the groundwork, but he personally set of strings tied three handbreadths Student Program at Bar-Ilan University, where
will not cross the threshold. apart is enough to create a theoretical he is a senior lecturer in Jewish Studies.

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