The holidays are early this year. Elul, the final month of the Jewish calendar, began on the evening of August 11. With it we entered into our yearly practice of introspection toward teshuvah, a life of forgiveness and the promise to make ourselves better partners in our relationships with God and with others.
During the early part of the summer I had the opportunity to visit with my parents on the Cape. No matter your travel route, there is no avoiding the Bourne or the Sagamore bridges that connect Cape Cod to the rest of Massachusetts. I like to gaze at the canal and admire the sailboats in the water as we cross the bridge. It reminds me of the awe and wonder of the world from God’s perspective on high, which is something that we rarely have the opportunity to see, considering we spend most of our time on the ground, underneath a canopy of trees, looking upward.
One of the songs that comes to my mind from my perch on the bridge is the words that Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav wrote several centuries ago, words of inspiration for those who are troubled by their lives and need something to help them cross an uncertain threshold. He wrote:
Kol ha-olam kulo, gesher tzar meod,
v-haikar lo lefacheid klal.
The whole world is a very narrow bridge,
And the essence is to not at all be afraid.
As I write these words, how profound they become when we apply them to the bridges that we create in the course of our own lives, and the lack of work we have done on a daily basis to maintain and ensure their durability.
When you think about the technology and the wisdom that goes into building a physical bridge, it is an amazing thing. Even when ancient peoples strung rope bridges across cliff faces, they had to take into account the strength of the materials and the weight that was transported between the two points. Writing for the Salantar Foundation (June 7, 2010), June Silny begins her own observations with similar sentiments:
“Bridges are part of our everyday life. Engineers, through the science of precise calculations and the study of environmental conditions design a structure to allow crossing over an obstacle. They design and create bridges. We usually walk or drive over them without even noticing their intricate structure. As bridges provide safety and stability to withstand any weather condition, they also provide support for every person and all vehicles that use it.”
A bridge that is familiar to most of us is the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge along I-93 that spans a piece of Boston Harbor. The water is hardly visible below, but the towers that shoot upward are certainly an engineering feat to be admired. I have a profound respect for engineers whose knowledge of the forces of nature as they apply to various building materials enable us to go from here to there and from there to here in relative ease, without fear of falling. I have recently learned that the word engineer is connected to the Latin word for ingenuity. Ingenuity is what defines a person’s innate character, their talent, or their nature. In the case of our beloved Leonard Zakim, z’l (may his memory be for a blessing), building bridges in the world of heated human relations was no easy task, either.
The bridges of the past are in such disrepair that there is a great fear that they will crumble, taking lives with them. In some cases, bridges have been closed for repair. Many, however, are closed permanently, because we are bankrupt. Not just monetarily bankrupt. We are also bankrupt in relation to our building spirit, because we, too, have been worn down in our efforts to build bridges of understanding between warring nations and people with religious differences. It is a war we battle, but with little success. It is also an internal battle, being able to bridge the fears that have been caused by global warming and industrial accidents that are destroying the world in which we live. Progress is inevitably slow.
The world indeed has become a narrow bridge for many of us who wish to see it (and us) change for the better. One thing we have to help us cross from one side to the other in relative safety is our spiritual heritage. Judaism provides us with many practices and endeavors that give us the courage, the strength, and the determination to face each day with confidence. No matter how stormy things may seem to be below us, we must trust the bridges that we build in life will do their job, especially when we maintain them on a religious basis.
Crossing thresholds both in time and in space can be a scary proposition when we do not trust the ground that we stand on as being firm. We need to secure not only ourselves, but also the bridges that we build so that we may never become separated from our sources of security. God is one of those sources that has become distant to many of us in our search for spirituality in other places.
Coming back to God can be difficult when we do not trust our Hebrew, when the prayers do not speak to us, when the English does not reflect our mood, when words are unable to express how we truly feel. Let this be the time when we overcome our fears of crossing the narrow bridges in life. Let us learn to trust what is truly in our hearts, and build upon the connections to God, to our inner selves, and to others as a way of strengthening who we are and what we wish to become in the year ahead.
