The Gate Back Home
Tonight, we begin the Yamim Nora’im, the Days of Awe. On the eve of Rosh HaShanah, I often think of the other bookend of these High Holidays, the concluding Ne’ilah service of Yom Kippur. Ne’ilah means “locking [of the gate]”. Perhaps this referred to the Temple gate in ancient times, closing at the end of the day.
More poignantly, though, the gate represents a unique access to heaven during these ten days. Spiritual awareness heightens, reconciliation beckons, transformation glimmers at the edge of possibility. Remembering now, when the gate is opening, that the moment will come to an end, that the gate will also close, helps me be present to this season of return and repair.
One prominent piyyut (liturgical poem) of the Ne’ilah service opens:
אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה, אֵל נוֹרָא עֲלִילָה,
הַמְצִיא לָנוּ מְחִילָה, בִּשְׁעַת הַנְּעִילָה.
El nora ‘alila, El nora ‘alila,
Ham'tzi lanu mechila, bish‘at hane‘ila.
God of awe and might, God of awe and might
Find for us pardon, in the hour of the locking.
In the past week or so, the Israeli musician Narkis released a new song I’ve been obsessively listening to that incorporates a version of those lines, but personalizes it into the singular. You can read my full translation here (and offer edits if you’re a native Hebrew speaker!), and listen to the song here or here.
At the heart of the song are various forms of estrangement.
There’s a gap between the advice of others and her experience:
Every time I…
Get advice from “geniuses”, they don’t know:
It’s me who is losing you
And only me who pays the price
The so-called geonim, geniuses, are in truth ignorant, because they do not live Narkis’s life. Only she can be the expert on her inner realm.
Then there’s the double estrangement of being distant from God and then forgetting that distance until a crisis provokes memory of the absence:
When it is bad for me here and you are there
Only then do I remember you
But the heart of hearts in this song is the estrangement of Narkis from her own spiritual awareness.
Open for me the gate so I can return to myself
Perhaps I went a bit too,
A bit too far away
Write me in your book of life
Every daughter of yours needs
To go and to return
Perhaps Narkis references Avinu Malkeinu, “our Father, our King”, when she calls herself a daughter. But what does it mean that we each need to go and to return?
Lalechet, to go or walk, is the same word used for Jewish law, halachah. And to return here is lachzor, the same root as our High Holiday prayer book, the machzor, which references the recurring seasonal cycles of the holidays. I might be overinterpreting (almost certainly!), but knowing that Narkis is also an observant Jew, there’s a hint here of tradition as a bulwark against estrangement. Every ritual roots you back in a sense of home.
On the other hand, I think it is more likely that Narkis is simply naming what is true for most of us: it is easy to slip out of really being present to our lives; it is easy to slip out of alignment with our own intentions. We need to continually reawaken, reenter the gate, return to ourselves.
The poet Marie Howe wrote a collection of poetry about one such reawakening, one born of loss as her brother was dying at too young an age.
The Gate
I had no idea that the gate I would step through
to finally enter this world
would be the space my brother’s body made. He was
a little taller than me: a young man
but grown, himself by then,
done at twenty-eight, having folded every sheet,
rinsed every glass he would ever rinse under the cold
and running water.
This is what you have been waiting for, he used to say to me.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This—holding up my cheese and mustard sandwich.
And I’d say, What?
And he’d say, This, sort of looking around.
There are many gates, gates of grief and tears, gates of unexpected grace, gates of ritual and gates of novelty, gates of solitude and gates of deep embrace. These gates open for a while, when we can see again what it truly means to live. Step through, and you just may return home to yourself. In the words of John O’Donohue,
May all that is unforgiven in you,
Be released.
May your fears yield
Their deepest tranquilities.
May all that is unlived in you,
Blossom into a future,
Graced with love.
Shabbat Shalom, and Shana Tova!
Rabbi Jay Levine
P.S. On this day where we mark the 25th anniversary of 9/11, a profound act of destruction that spawned acts of destruction, while entering Rosh HaShanah, a day commemorating creation with the hope of becoming renewed creations ourselves, as well as entering Shabbat, a day oriented towards peace, here is a meditation written by Rabbi Zoë Klein Miles (lightly adapted):
On Shabbat we light two candles, one for
remembering Shabbat and one for observing Shabbat.
Today, we light two candles.
This one for Building One, This one for Building Two,
This one for the Pentagon and this one for Pittsburgh,
This one for the hundreds of firefighters and this one for the hundreds of police…
And these candles for the husband and wife who leapt out of
the tower holding hands,
This one for our luck running out, this one for the New York skyline,
This one for the walking wounded, this one for the critically wounded,
This one for the survivors, this one for the dead,
This candle for Building One, this candle for Building Two.
May the memories of all those who died become blessings.
