By Rabbi Jessica Kessler Marshall, Temple Beth Or
I sat listening as a group of friends shared about their lives: One had an 85-year-old father who had just been diagnosed with cancer. My friend faced the uncertainty of his dad’s surgery and personal guilt that he lived far away, thus burdening his sibling with parental caregiving. Another friend had found her beshert, her soulmate, after years of looking and was thrilled to be marrying him and beginning a life together. Yet, at the same time, she deeply felt the loss of moving across the country to be together and leaving a beloved job and community. And another friend deeply grieved the loss of a family member to suicide and was subsequently profoundly questioning her own faith. I remarked that for each of them, this seemed to be quite a time of transition, and I thought about my own life marked with its own significant transitions.
It is not surprising that the Hebrew language has at least three words for transition. The word ma’avar means to “cross over” or “pass through” (as in a land or city). The very name Ivri, “Hebrew,” comes from this root. Hebrews are those who make transitions, who cross over when the Eternal invites them to journey to a new place or perspective.
A second Hebrew word for transition is shinui, which literally means “change.” We use this word often when describing teshuvah, the process of introspection, repentance, and change that guides the Days of Awe.
The third biblical word for transition is chiluf, which means to “move on” in the way that the grasses sprout anew after the old sprouts have dried up and passed away.
Our transitions are always preceded by time in the midbar, the wilderness, the unknown. These in-between places in our lives are a time when we too, like our ancestors in Egypt, wander in the unknown. While many aspects of our lives are grounded, in other areas we feel lost or do not know where to go next. Mark Nepo, author of “Seven Thousand Ways to Listen,” offers the idea that perhaps being lost is the gateway to deep knowing. “Being lost can be a prelude to a deeper way, because once we admit that we are not sure where life is taking us, then we are ripe for transformation. Then we are shapeable,” he writes. Our first step is to become aware that we are lost. And then we recognize our habitual reaction — fear, worry, retreat, exerting control. Only after that can we choose the next right step that best serves us in this very moment.
As Rabbis Cindy Enger and Jill Zimmerman teach, even when we feel there is no path in the wilderness, sometimes our very wandering is precisely what creates the way through.
Our transitions are often a combination of all three Hebrew words — crossing over, change, and moving on. And while the future way may be hard to discern, only in our walking through the unknown do we create our path. As we find ourselves in our own transitions, within our workplaces, family lives, or our own internal seeking, may we draw close to the knowledge that it is our very wandering that carries us out of the midbar to the Promised Land.