Every year, the yellow liner peers through the translucent ivory tablecloth embroidered with a chain of floral design. On top sit the timeless Royal Copenhagen white dishes and equally elegant silver flatware, crystal candle holders, the plate Mom painted with the seder symbols decades before paint-your-own-pottery places proliferated, and all the Kiddush cups that the house possesses. Every year.
Every year three (and, briefly, four) generations of the family sit around the dining room table, with the folding table jutting out as a T. No matter who sits where, the table is a constant, but for the place cards that arrange us carefully so as to intermix the generations, keep children engaged, and place the various frog toys near those who will be perfectly distracted by their playfulness. Every year, for as long as I can remember, it’s been like that, even as faces, hair, and heights at the table change.
Every year, themes and stories are retold with flourish. The exodus, of course. And then the family lore: when toddler Ryan loved numbers and called them all out; when brilliant absent-minded Fred drank Elijah’s cup – oh, wait, that was every year; when “Elijah” rang the bell and did a ding-dong ditch or left a note. When I began singing in the wrong key for the crowd – wait, that’s every year, too; when others brought their instruments. When Mom decided her five then young grandchildren should take over seder leadership, and that became an institution, replete with skit, costumes, and typed menu.
Every year before that, it was Dad leading at the table’s head, his haggadah meticulously marked in red and blue pencil, the two-ended kind that you flipped over to use the other color. Every year, until 1994, when he handed off leadership and I accepted reluctantly, realizing he did it with joy and relief, and not because he was throwing in the Pesach towel.
Every year, the food is deliciously predictable: tiny personal seder plates for each person, apple matza pudding, gefilte fish and red horseradish on small plates in the living room before dinner, strawberry shortcake, individual ones made with handmade whipped cream for dessert. Pesach chicken in between.
Every year, until now. Months ago, I emailed the cousins, hopeful. But, uncertainty and life thwarted our return to that table, and I returned to the busy-ness of my days, which was easier than confronting that the night would be different. The year would be different. Maybe something miraculous would occur. Then I rounded the corner into April and smacked face to face into Pesach preparation. Where am I?
Liminal. It comes from the word for threshold or doorway. I first heard the word in a detached, academic kind of way. It was in a rabbinical school class, taught by the professor who opened the door for me to the sacred drama of ritual in a life-changing way. That knowledge built on a base from my other life-changing professor, the one who taught the concepts and arcs of theatre to this undergrad years earlier.
Liminal are the times in between, the times neither here nor there. The moments of transition, abounding in opportunity for scripts to be written with the words and action of sacred drama.
Liminal are the moments defined by their in-betweenness. Like before one officially becomes a mourner, after a death and before a burial. Liminal is when the couple is betrothed but not married. Liminal are the moments when the evening arrives, and when the morning peeks through. And wasn’t it leil shimurim, the guarded evening before the Exodus, when the Angel of Death was coming to Egyptian homes, and our Israelite ancestors marked the doorposts with blood to say, “Don’t come here!”
I was inspired in that rabbinical school class, Rite & Ritual; theatre and prayer came together. Aha! I could mark time in ways old and in ways of my own creation. I could bridge stages of life with performative action and deliberate words, either age-old ones or reinvented and re-engendered.
Still, even as I did, for so many years the word “liminal” was a distant friend that intrigued me, but one I kept at arm’s length and embraced when needed, knowing I could claim it when I wanted to create space and mark time for others. I sat in hospice rooms listening to fading breaths. I met with bereaved families before funerals, awed by the love and story of the one who died. I accompanied students to the mikvah as they entered in one faith and emerged as Jews.
Over time, I brought liminal close like a wise, dear, reliable friend who energized me.
Approaching motherhood, I gathered strong women in my living room to share sage counsel, from their learnings as mothers or children. When my father died suddenly, I traversed the Jell-O-like ether stunned, seeking that which I knew as a professional, and making my own traditions. In the weeks after his burial, as our nanny fought for health, I couldn’t make it to a minyan to say Kaddish as much as I’d wanted, so I stood by the Lake Michigan beach whipped by wind and snow, saying Kaddish next to my minivan while my babies slept. Six and a half years later, wrestling for a new status in separation and divorce, I figured out how to free my soul in my own way, immersing in my beloved lake surrounded by friends who held the sandy, sunny space with words ancient and new.
And then, liminal moved away for a while, as friends do sometimes, back to that professional place. It inspired my thinking on guiding others, imbuing the transitional with meaning – a phone call Shehechyanu after a civil divorce or accompanying a friend to my beloved beach for a mikvah of her own making. Bringing new blessing to deathbed confession, deepening equality of naming daughters, reinventing Yizkor and its remembrance so mourners had space and speech. In each instance, opportunity beckoned and energized.
Until that day when liminal returned home, frankly uninvited, and became angrily personal as I approached seder with the uncertainty of Mom’s fading health. I head to Lake Michigan to talk it out on the beach, uninterrupted pacing and talking of hitbodedut, just me, the waves, and the Divine. I look to the week ahead, to Passover. Questions surround me like a storm of speech boxes in a cartoon: Seder? No seder? How? Who? Can Mom make it to the table? Will this be her last seder? Will my children be sad and cranky with no cousins for a seder skit? Can I be present as both a child and parent? Can I make it fun if I’m crying inside? Or can I just escape my favorite time of the year to avoid deep sadness and mournful longing, that are a kick in the gut and a punch of jealousy in the arm from, well, anyone gathering for a lively seder.
Here I am, betwixt and between as Mom would say, neither here nor there. Usually I could claw my way out of such a ditch, with a stack of research, a spark of creativity, and the ritual I’d create to meet the moment. I long for resolution. I long for a nechemta – a conclusion of comfort – as I wonder, “Where am I?”
Lisa Greene is a rabbi and mother of three. She has served as a rabbi of North Shore Congregation Israel, Glencoe, Illinois since 1999. As a rabbi and as a parent she is attuned to the moment and the journey and seeks to find meaning and sacred time through experiential Jewish learning and ritual, traditional and new. Rabbi Greene is a 2016-17 Rabbis Without Borders Fellow. Her blog, Intersections, can be found at www.ordinaryandsacred.com and she writes for Huffington Post.