Parashat Re'eh 5769--Crossing the Jordan

When you cross the Jordan…

I visited Israel for the first time when I was seventeen years old. I traveled there on a high school study program, living and learning in the land for two months. During that time, my eyes were opened to a distant geography I had learned about in Religious School and at Jewish summer camp. I arrived in IsraelParashat Re'eh, one memory of that trip stood out. and thought, “Now I am home.” As I read this week’s Torah portion,

As we piled onto the tour bus one day, we were told we were going to see the Jordan River. I had images in my mind akin to the James River, which flows gently through the bluffs behind my parents’ home in Missouri, or the Nile, which I imagined to be a winding snake of a desert river. In reality, the Jordan River looked a lot more like a creek. Or maybe an irrigation ditch. Certainly not raging. Certainly not roaring.

“This is the Jordan?” I thought.

I have since learned that human environmental impact has caused the Jordan to shrink. Or, maybe the river’s size at the time of my visit was purely seasonal. The impression lasted, though.

The words “cross the Jordan” are repeated nine times in the Torah, twice in this week’s parashah, all for the same effect. They spell out a definitive boundary.

Here you are homeless. When you cross the Jordan, you will be home.

Here you are in limbo. When you cross the Jordan, you will be free.

Here you want. When you cross the Jordan, you will have.

Here you are hungry. When you cross the Jordan, you will be sustained.

As a teenager, the Jordan loomed large in my imagination as a mighty boundary. It separated the people between what was and all that could be.

It was THE JORDAN.

Funny how, in reality, it was so small. Funny how, in reality, it seemed so inconsequential. Funny how, in reality, I never would have noticed it if my teacher Yossi hadn’t point dramatically and said, “This is the Jordan River your ancestors crossed as they marched into the Promised Land.”

As an adult, I am comforted by the image of the mighty Jordan River shrunk down to size. In our lives, again and again, we are called upon to walk to the edges of our own Jordan Rivers. For our ancestors the Jordan was physical. For us it is emotional and spiritual. We move from brokenness to wholeness, from grief to acceptance, from pain to wellness, from sadness to joy, from fear to peace, from anger to forgiveness. In between these states of being lies the Jordan.

In the weeks leading up to the High Holydays, I find that we talk about our own “Jordan crossings” even more than usual. This is the time to cross over, to move forward. It can be a daunting task, this crossing.

When I first read this week’s Torah portion, I pictured the Jordan as a mighty, definitive, and intimidating boundary. “When you cross the Jordan...” But, my mind was playing tricks on me. The Jordan River may actually be diminutive is size. Maybe it is only in significance and symbolism that it looms so large.

Might the Jordan Rivers of our lives be easier crossed if we shrink them just a little?

This is a secret hidden in this week’s parashah: The boundaries between one state of being and another are often not that mighty. Nor that definitive. In our lives, we don’t cross our Jordans one time; rather, we skip back and forth across them, dancing between two states with regularity. Maybe even with ease.

And so, on this Shabbat, I pray that we are blessed with the wisdom to see that the Jordan that separates us from where we are and from where we want to be is not all that daunting after all. It does not take a long, intricate bridge and many years of wandering to cross over. It is just a few steps. And a leap of faith.