Over

Dear friends,

In My Big Fat Greek Wedding you may remember the father who likes to show how everything goes back to the Greeks. My teacher, Rabbi Neiburg loves to that with the Hebrew language, showing (often unconvincingly, but always joyfully) how words in English trace back to Hebrew. I thought of him this morning when contemplating the word “over,” as in “It’s over!” “It’s never over!” “Is this over?” And other such exclamations and questions.

We are Hebrews, Ivrim, and Abraham is called Ha’Ivri, The Hebrew. Rashi explains: Ivri, who came from over the river. The root of the word, עבר, means to pass, like Abraham and Sarah, and later Moses and the rest of us crossed the desert and the Jordan river to come into Israel. To be a Hebrew, a Jew means to be one who crossed over, one who came from over yonder, an immigrant in either body or mind. Ivri and Over are pretty close, much like we use it today when we say to pass over, go over, move over.

But there are other ways to understand what “Hebrew” means. Avar also means the past. In that sense, an Ivri is one who lives in the past. Jews definitely like to pasture in ancient fields. Even when we pray for renewal we sing “renew our days like those of old.” Over and past are definitely close.

There are two understandings of this word, so central to our collective self-definition, which relate to God. During the High Holidays we praised God who “Ma’avir ashmoteynu midey shana”, passes away our misdeeds every year, or in other words, forgives. An Ivri in that sense is a forgiver. Forgiveness lies at the root of Hebrew-ness, like we might say in English: “I’m over it.” On the flip side we find divine wrath, from the very same root, called Evra. From this angle, a Hebrew could be one who sees injustice or negative behavior and is enraged. Perhaps these two contradictory notions are actually part of the same system. If we express the rage, or the outrage we can then, perhaps, forgive. And that process is something embedded in being a Hebrew.

My instinct this week brings me back to Rashi, with a slight adjustment. It is not that Abraham “came from over there," but that he was in many regards a crosser-over as a permanent state of mind. He is, like us, over, a person living in transition. This world, we are told, is a hallway. From where and to where we are not sure. When Abraham is called Ivri for the first time in the Torah we know he was coming from Ur-Kasdim, the place where light appears as a bunch of demons. He had not yet found his footing in Canaan, which we know will one day be called Yisrael, where humans wrestle God.

This time of limbo that we are in will end. But it is a Hebrew time, a time of transition, a heightened version of the rest of our lives, which will lead to another version of itself. When will it be over? Will we ever properly rest? That is a question we will discuss this evening with Rabbi Ponet.

I hope you’ll join us at 6pm this evening. I think we can all use some coming together, some music, some joined Hebrew-ness.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha