Gates

My favorite childhood stories describe protagonists passing through a barrier into an alternate reality. Alice falls through a rabbit hole into a subterranean Wonderland. Max escapes into a jungle and dances with the delightful Wild Things. Milo takes a toy car ride through the Phantom Tollbooth. One of the first Hebrew stories I read was Shai Agnon’s “Story of the Goat,” whose cloven-footed character commutes between an East European shtetl and the Land of Israel via a secret passageway in an unknown cave. Stories like these provide a portal for children to remove themselves from the doldrums of everyday life and experience a colorful world of excitement and thrills, where annoying parents and siblings, frightening people and realities could be ignored or overcome.

In the cycle of the Jewish calendar, Rosh Hashanah is the gateway between the worlds of time past and time future. The Earth pauses on its axis, looks backwards and glances forward, soaks in the moment before continuing on its rounds. As in Alice in Wonderland, Rosh Hashanah extends a rabbit hole before us, and it provides us with the mysterious drinks and cakes to right-size ourselves so we can pass through. It gives us tools and time to ask ourselves what kind of person we’ve been up to now, and what kind of person we want to be moving forward. It leads us to think about the world we have and dream about the world we want to live in; it demands that we work on our characters so that we can emerge from this passageway anew, ready to dedicate ourselves to building the world as we think it ought to be, in all its color, justice and beauty.

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What got me thinking of gates was a trip that Adele and I took last summer to the charming Cotswold region in England, embarking on a grand walking tour from Oxford to Bath. We were “rambling,” in British parlance, tasting a bit of the hobo’s life, strolling through gently sloping fields, forested paths, peaceful streams. We were able to embark on this adventure thanks to a network of ancient trails that were used, presumably, mostly by farmers to take their wares (and little piggies) to market.

The right of passage on these trails was enshrined in British law in 2000, through the CROW Act, Countryside Rights of Way, also known as the “Right to Roam” Act, the authors of this legislation punning (I assume) on the expression “as the crow flies,” since these paths, no matter how meandering, shave considerable time by foot off of the more rectilinear main roads. The CROW Act permits walking on paths in use “since time immemorial,” defined as 1189 under the rule of Henry II. Many of these footways date back to the Roman era, while others are traceable to kings or queens. These routes still cut through farms, even veering diagonally right across fields of standing grain; hiker’s shoes rapidly accumulate dried stalks and mud. (More stalks than mud last year, with prolonged drought and record heat from climate change.)

These vigorous strolls, averaging about 12 miles a day, between 6 and 8 hours at a stretch, presented visions of quiet beauty and contentment, as if we had stepped into a series of 19^th Century British landscape paintings. We walked along canals with endless rows of brightly colored house boats, visited centuries-old country churches with sparsely filled graveyards (including Winston Churchill’s tomb), admired gregarious cows and sheep bunching and munching together under leafy trees in the unrelenting midday sun. We ambled through groves of kindly bowered trees, where we often found loads of ripe blackberries waiting to be plucked and popped into our mouths. On hot afternoons, gently nudged in our ribs by roaming horses, we scampered up hills so we could make it in good time to the next town and unwind with a proper afternoon tea. Bed and breakfasts were ample in the picturesque old country towns, some featuring Roman ruins, farmers markets, thatched roofs.

Among the most memorable features of this walkathon were the gates, standing between field and field, public road and private farm, or merely one section of a trail to the next. These gates serve to keep the livestock in more than people out, although they do give one pause. They require varying levels of athleticism and coordination. We had to pass through or over at least a dozen of these every day, and every time we approached one, my heart beat a little faster, wondering: Am I on the right trail? Are we really allowed entry? Is an angry steer or farmer in ambush behind the wall?

A 19th-century British rural poet named John Clare captured the sweet delay that comes upon broaching yet another country gate:

He lolls upon each resting stile

To see the fields so sweetly smile

To see the wheat grow green and long

And list the weeders’ toiling song.

The word “stile” here as a synonym for gate (as in “turnstile”) comes from Anglo Saxon stigel, related to the German word steigen, to mount, climb—a device for ascending and descending over an obstacle, like a step or ladder. “Stile” captures the size of these gates and the movement they require of human passersby, often just a few steps on either side of a wall, or opening a latch and shutting it when past. A stile is a gate that is meant to be crossed, whereas a gate can be either a stile or a door barring public access.

“Gate” often evokes a structure meant to keep people out. Old city gates are massive, imposing edifices hopeless to even try to pry open, often encircled by a moat, its door folding down into a bridge allowing ingress and egress. If you were not allowed in, the only means of entering the city was by an army supplied with battering rams; it was easier to knock down the city walls than to storm the iron gates. When Judges 16 says of Samson, “At midnight he got up, grasped the doors of the town gate together with the two gateposts, and pulled them out along with the bar. He placed them on his shoulders and carried them off to the top of the hill that is near Hebron,” with Hebron situated across the country from the location of the gates in Gaza, we get a good sense of Samson’s gargantuan strength.

The British gates that Adele and I broached are much more humble, quaint and charming, more like stepstools than vault doors. They offer just a wee passageway between plots of land. They are simultaneously inviting and forbidding; they form part of the property’s exterior, allowing people onto the grounds though discouraging mass access. They summon at best a psychological barrier, a sign as flimsy and ineffective as “Keep off the grass,” enticing the adventuresome to ramble on. Although in this age of cars and paved roads, few venture on these off-the-beaten paths, those who brave them recognize themselves in each other.

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Gates are structures ripe for metaphorical use. We find ones of imposing bulk fronting places of ultimate religious significance: The Gates of Heaven, Gates of Hell, Gates of Eden. Returning to literal gates, we sense their powerful dual purpose, in both time and space: they block off the past and the path behind, while they open up the future and a new vista. In the process, they mark a present moment that is fraught with significance, in between these cardinal coordinates.

The fear that gates arouse derives from our ignorance of what lurks behind them. As described by the Rosh HaShanah liturgy, the unknown in store for us behind the gates gives us pause: life or death, success or penury, contentment or sorrow. From one perspective, Rosh Hashanah imposes a mammoth gate behind which crouch the uncertainties of existence, waiting to pounce on us or retreat, a fate hinging entirely on the merits of our deeds and prayers. Depending on our casts and fortunes, though, a different gate might emerge—a gentle step stile that halts our progress, causing us to reflect over the landscapes of our lives and our loved ones, past and present, and look forward with resolve and anticipation to our ramblings through the coming year. Perhaps this year’s gate will be as sweet as the one in this song from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline (Act 2, Scene 3):

Hark, hark! the lark at heaven’s gate sings, 

And Phoebus ‘gins arise, 

His steeds to water at those springs 

On chaliced flowers that lies; 

And winking Mary-buds begin 

To ope their golden eyes: 

With every thing that pretty is, 

My lady sweet, arise: 

Arise, arise!

Which gate will we face this year?

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Rosh Hashanah is emblematic of all of the gates we must cross at the most important points in our life. At our dawn, we emerge from the gate of birth, at which time the angel Lailah touches the baby’s lip causing it to forget all the Torah it had learned in the womb. At sunset, God sends the Angel of Death to usher us through the gate that leads to our eternal residence. From people who have had near-death experiences, we know that that journey to the next world often feels like a passage down a long tunnel. In between, we traverse many gates that feel like moments of major transition: the first day of school and graduation from college; our first real job; standing under the chuppah; the death of a parent, when a gate closes behind us.

Aside from these gates that most people pass through, other moments in life present personal gates that feel like a turning point, a dividing line between before and after. For some, it may be a moment of great success, as an athlete, an author, in business; for others, perhaps a tragic loss of hearing, of a limb in warfare, of a home in bankruptcy. Receiving a beloved pet, meeting a close friend, taking a favorite class, a cherished vacation—so many occasions may prove in retrospect to be pivotal gates on the course in one’s life.

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The episode in the Bible that most dramatically depicts a gate-crossing, in literal and metaphorical senses, is Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28. Fleeing from the wrath of his brother Esau and heading toward his uncle’s house in Paddan-Aram, outside of the land of Israel, Jacob rests on the way at nightfall. In his dream, angels are ascending and descending a ladder or ramp; Rashi notes that they ascend first, in the opposite order that we might expect, since angels are thought to dwell above us. His explanation is that the angels accompanying Jacob within the land Israel are not allowed to exit the land; they climb to Heaven in order for angels outside the land to take their shift.

I would suggest another possibility: that the angels are crossing a gate, a ladder stile, to be precise, consisting of ladders on both sides of the wall. They assist Jacob’s crossing at the most pivotal moment of transition, into maturity, marked by a relationship with God and with Rachel and Leah. Indeed, it is here that he encounters God for the first time, as God seems to be standing above him, perhaps at the top of the wall. God makes an introduction—“I am the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac”—and promises Jacob blessings and protection. When Jacob awakes, astonished, he proclaims, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the abode of God, and that is the gateway of Heaven.” In Jewish tradition, this becomes the site of the Temple, the place where Israel’s prayers ascended to the Gates of Mercy. At Rosh Hashanah, we too stand at that place, at the bottom of that stile, hoping for our prayers to wing upward toward those gates.

While gates aren’t mentioned often in the High Holiday liturgy, they do appear in a couple of important places. In the piyyut “Ve-chol ma’aminim,” And All Believe, recited in the Musaf service of Rosh Hashanah, we find this line:

הַפּוֹתֵֽחַ שַׁעַר לְדוֹפְקֵי בִתְשׁוּבָה: וְכֹל מַאֲמִינִים שֶׁהוּא פְּתוּחָה יָדוֹ

Who opens the gate to those who knock in repentance. And all believe that God’s hand is open.

Our efforts to achieve repentance are conceived as knocking on Heaven’s gate, demanding that God hear our pleas and respond favorably.

In the Ne’ilah service at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, we ask not only that our prayers ascend to God through the gate, but that we ourselves are allowed entrance:

פְּתַח לָֽנוּ שַֽׁעַר. בְּעֵת נְעִֽילַת שַֽׁעַר. כִּי פָנָה יוֹם

הַיּוֹם יִפְנֶה. הַשֶּׁמֶשׁ יָבֹא וְיִפְנֶה. נָבֽוֹאָה שְׁעָרֶֽיךָ

Open for us the gate [of prayer] at the time of closing the gate, for the day has declined.

The day declines, the sun goes down and declines, let us [yet] enter Your gates.

The gate is closing; our time for achieving forgiveness is slowly shutting. We ask God to keep the gate open a little more, to give us one last chance to repent and change before we move on.

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As we look ahead, we must wonder: Will the gate we are crossing lead us to a better year than the one we just left? What can we do to help make it so?

What friend or relative can we reach out to in their time of need? Whom have we harmed, who harmed us, and can we find a way to mend our torn relationships? How can we take the blessings that have been given to us, whether financial resources or spiritual capacities, and use them in turn to help others?

The needs are great, the time is short. Will this be the year we choose to face a major challenge threatening our world—attacks on democracy in the US, Israel’s unprecedented crisis, climate change—and try to make a difference? Judaism teaches that we are all responsible, individually and collectively; we all must pray and act as one. On the High Holidays, our prayers are heard when we knock on Heaven’s gate together. Petach lanu sha’ar—Open the gate for us.

It’s time to start rambling.