The End Has Dawned
Dear friends,
Before I say some words about the end times, I'd like to thank all the artists, technicians, designers, curators, activists, prayer leaders, producers and directors of the Kumah Festival. It was a truly special succession of events thanks to you all. Special thanks to Susan and Judy my partners in crime.
And now to the end:
There is no end. And yet there is an end. These contradictory truths are expressed with two Hebrew words, both of which mean “end.” Sof is the type of end that only exists as an idea. "Sof Sof," we say, or "Sof kol sof," the end of all ends, meaning "Finally!" But that only means that our experience of waiting or anticipation is over and we have arrived where we wanted to start from. The truth about Sof is best expressed through one of the great names of God, Eyn Sof, literally “There is no end.”
The other word for end in Hebrew is Ketz. This is closer to the type of end that death offers. Perhaps the best-known phrase using this word is Ketz Hayamim, the end of days. This seems to refer to some imaginary time in the future, but in our lives ketz hayamim is when our days end and we pass on to the next stage.
But even Ketz denotes a beginning. The verb Hikitz, meaning to wake up, is a conjugation of the same root. Hebrew even has the wonderful expression Hikitz Haketz, meaning the end has woken up, or the end has dawned; which could just as well be translated: The end has ended, or the end has come, taken place, materialized, or in a freer translation: It’s over!
This past holiday weekend was the unofficial beginning of Kayitz, the seasonal embodiment of Ketz, known in these parts as summer. We tend to treat it like the end. No more school (Hallelujah!), for most of us a time of a different relationship with work, a kind of nap from our lives, or perhaps an opportunity to wake up to what’s really going on here. The Israeli rocker Shalom Hanoch expressed it as a transition between two states of mind:
“My eyes are open, but I don’t see the sky, don’t see the blue of the sea, the green of the tree,”
עיני פקוחות מבלי לראות את השמיים
מבלי לראות כחול של ים, ירוק של עץ
Which, when the end is in sight can transform into “My eyes are open to see the sky, the blue of the sea, the green of the tree.”
עיני פקוחות בשביל לראות את השמיים
בשביל לראות כחול של ים, ירוק של עץ.
The question is what are we waking up for? What is the purpose of this end?
Psalm 122 offers us the following:
שָׁוְא לָכֶם מַשְׁכִּימֵי קוּם מְאַחֲרֵי שֶׁבֶת אֹכְלֵי לֶחֶם הָעֲצָבִים .
You're wasting you time:
You who wake up early,
Who delay sitting down,
Who eat the bread of anxiousness.
Rashi explains: Wake up early: “to market.” If you’re waking up early to do God’s work, to help the needy, to make beauty, well great. But if you’re up at 5am to make more money you’re wasting your time. And if you delay sitting down to study, to meditate, to calm your body and mind, to have a conversation with a friend, well, you’re wasting your time. And if you are constantly feeding yourself the anxieties of the world, the stress of living, the noise of running around inside and outside your brain, you are wasting your time.
The verse concludes with these words:
כֵּן יִתֵּן לִידִידוֹ שֵׁנָא
You know what She gives Her beloved? Sleep.
God gives Her friends, those who stop to experience Her presence, the gift of rest.
Tomorrow morning, we will meet for a celebration of the end of the busy season and the beginning of sweet, loving, sleepy Kayitz. We’ll be at a community garden in Fort Greene, with a whole group of wonderful musicians who teach at the School for Creative Judaism. We’ll get to see some students lead us in prayer and check out some of their artwork. We’ll eat bagels, chill out, and prepare ourselves for the coming months of end times. Join us to wake up to summer.
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha