Anyone who has ever jumped off the high-dive at their local pool knows the rush.  From the moment you step off the board, everything changes.  Where once you were standing on a solid surface, the next moment you’re floating through space.  Where you were once in complete control of yourself, you suddenly find yourself at the mercy of the earth, its powerful gravity hurling you downward.  The air around you had been calm and warm just a moment ago, now it blows by you, fast and cold

The Jewish mystical tradition reminds us that all transitions are like this.  When we move from one state to another, there is always an in-between stage in which we are in neither.  And it is in this in-between stage that we can often most fully experience the power and intensity of life.  Between diving board and water, we soar through the air, vulnerable yet free in the windy, weightless abyss.  Similarly, growing from childhood to adulthood demands that we pass through the dark-ages of adolescence. Religious converts usually go through a period of no-religion en route from one tradition to the next.  And whenever I open a new program on my computer, that little hourglass always pops up for at least an instant, telling me to stop typing – to stop doing anything on my computer – and to simply sit and wait.  To be in transition. 

Sit and wait.  That’s difficult for us in these fast times.  In our age of instant messaging, quick fixes, and mega-speed, transitions have become nothing but inconvenient hassles, and we don’t like them at all.  We want to go from point A to point B, omitting the journey in between. 

Imagine what would happen if we could figure out how to hold on to those transitional moments – if we could somehow make the time between diving board and water last not just one or two seconds, but for an entire hour. Or a day. Or a week.  Imagine what would happen if that moment of calm, weightless vulnerability, became one we could embrace, experiencing it fully and over time, letting it go only when we are good and ready to do so.

A couple of weeks ago, the members of Temple Beth El and I had an opportunity to do just that.  Having served my congregation for almost seven years now, it has come time for me to move on, and late last month we came to our farewell weekend.  Rather than allowing our seven years to end with a quick wave and a “See ya’,” the Temple and I took some our time in that in-between zone.  Together, we spent two evenings remembering the past and dreaming of our future.  During a worship service one night, and at a banquet the next, we spent hours remembering all that we had experienced together – the good times, and the difficult ones, the triumphs and the failures – and we also looked ahead and imagined what the future might bring. 

Needless to say, this is a time of quiet concern for the members of Temple Beth El.  For better or for worse, they have come to know me during our years together.  The future, however, isn’t nearly as clear.  What will it bring? Whom will it bring? What kind of rabbi will our new rabbi be?  Those concerns and others weighed on Temple members during the previous rabbinic transition, and now, on the eve of a new change, the insecurities have returned.

So there we were, Temple Beth El and its rabbi, pausing together in the in-between.  And there, for a time, we remained.  We didn’t try to hurry along too fast; we didn’t seek a way to eliminate the gap between rabbis; we didn’t just try to just plow ahead and get on with things.  Instead, we remembered – we reminisced, we tried to understand past events, and we took every opportunity we could to poke fun at one another.

I think it helped.  Having reached a moment of significant transition in the life of our congregation, and having paused there for a time to look around and understand, we gained some of the perspective and strength we need to move on.  Without that pause, we would have denied ourselves the many insights that memory and dreams can provide us, and we would have become vulnerable to the kind of infection that festering amnesia can cause.

It is the New Year.  As we move from 2003 to 2004, let us pause for a moment – away from those meaningless resolutions and top-whatever-of-the-year lists – and use this time to remember what was, and to dream of what good the future might bring.  Let us embrace this moment of change, for moments such as these can often be the greatest of all.  And here in this magnificent, terrifying abyss of transition, let us allow past and future to carry us where they may.  Only then, when we land in 2004, can we begin to chart a future that can make this New Year a happy one for us all.