וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזֻז֥וֹת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ {ס}
inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6.9)
Our parashat hashavua this week is ki tetze, “if you go out”. We go out of many realities: from sleep to waking, from a safe space to the uncertainty of the Outside, and from our own sense of self to connect to others. The act of going out is fraught with danger, according to our ancestors, because to transition from place to place is to be, for one brief moment, in neither place.
This liminal space is the moment between. The humble mezuzah, meant to be a response to the command to “write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (in our shema which we recite daily), has become symbolic of this sense we have of the uncertainty of transition and our need for protection and guidance to successfully cross the threshold that we confront – whether real or abstract.
The mezuzah reminds us of who we are in the moment of transition from one space to another. The Hasidism say that it tells us to be the same outside as in, inside as out – that whoever you truly are must be guarded in moments of uncertainty. Remember who you are and what you live for; remember all that you’ve learned and bring it to bear when confronted with the stresses of change.
“If you go out” of certainty you will be traveling in the land of all that is unknown, and that can be frightening. But if you do not go out it may be that you are not truly fulfilling your human potential, to be HaShem’s partner in creating and recreating and tending and tilling the beautiful garden our world often is, and always can be.
Nothing out there is certain. If you go out, remember to touch your mezuzah on the way. Let it remind you that you are precious and necessary. And let it remind you that you are not alone.
…it could all go in a minute. It WILL all go in a minute.
This life is a brief stop, whether I die tomorrow or in fifty years.
I would love not to know this, to have the innocent certainty that,
when loved ones set out on a journey, they will return unharmed,
that I can go out to sea in my boat,
play in the waves and not be swallowed up.
But I am more grateful now than I ever was in my innocence.
In the end it is all a gift, is it not?
The brief entwinement of body and soul,
the breath of G*d that gives and sustains human life,
creates such a colorful, sparkling trail as it arcs through time.
It is so ephemeral, and yet it affects everything.
As we say when we open our eyes every morning:
“modeh ani l’fanekha – I give thanks to you,
G*d of Life which is eternal,
for returning my soul to me today.
Great is your faithfulness.”
– Margaret Holub , “A Cosmology of Mourning”, Lifecycles, Vol. 1.
In the first week of Elul the Jewish community begins to contemplate the meaning of the month, including its name. אלול can be understood as the acronym for אני לדודן ודודי לי – ani l’dodi v’dodi li, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” This famous verse from the love poem in our Tanakh Shir haShirim, the Song of Songs, is understood to hint at the most sought after sense of relationship with HaShem: that of lover and beloved. Four words, four weeks: this week’s word is l’dodi, to my beloved. On this Shabbat of preparation for the most intense of our holy days, the Days of Awe, may you rest in the sure knowledge that if you go out there, beyond your comfort zone and your certainties, you are loved and lovable, and you are one of us.
Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone 