Embracing the ambiguity of transition

Welcome to Madlik. My name is Geoffrey Stern, and at Madlik, we light a spark or shed some light on a Jewish text or tradition. Along with Rabbi Adam Mintz, we host Madlik Disruptive Torah on your favorite podcast platform. And now on YouTube and Substack, we also publish a source sheet on Sefaria, and a link is included in the show notes. If you like what you hear, feel free to give us a few stars and a nice review. This week’s Parasha is Beha’alotcha. The Israelites celebrate their first Passover, we are told, at twilight. One cannot help but acknowledge that a lot of Jewish ritual is dependent on time, or to use the Talmudic phrase, taluyot bizman. Watching Shabbat and holiday observance, one could be forgiven for thinking that Judaism has a fixation on the liminal moments of twilight and, to a lesser extent, dawn. We will explore this fascination with twilight as an embrace of the ambiguity and disorientation experienced during this daily transition. So welcome to the Twilight Zone.

Adam Mintz [2:01 – 2:04]: Rabbi, okay, I’m looking forward. This is a great topic.

Geoffrey Stern [2:04 – 2:09]: You know, I don’t know how we get these topics, but we stumble into them and we have some fun.

Adam Mintz [2:09 – 2:10]: They’re amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [2:10 – 2:41]: We have some fun. So, you know, most people, I think if you ask them about twilight time outside of the context of a particular few minutes of shkia or one of these technical terms that are used for the setting of the sun and the onset of the Sabbath, or the coming out of the stars and the end of the Sabbath, they might refer to a Mishnah in Pirkei Avot. And there it says in Pirkei Avot 5:6, it says 10 things were created on the eve of the Sabbath at twilight, Erev Shabbat Ben Hashmashot. That’s the word used in Mishnaic Hebrew.

And these are the mouth of the earth which swallowed up Korach, the mouth of the well, the mouth of the donkey, the rainbow, all of the 10, I would say, miracles that occurred in the Bible. And I have always, Rabbi, taken this to mean that the rabbis didn’t feel comfortable with miracles. So they said, you know, it must be written into the code, it must be coded into the software of the universe. And that was done at this twilight time.

But frankly, I think, and today I’m going to argue that it goes beyond just having a problem with miracles. The twilight time was the place of safek. It was the place of uncertainty. And that coursed over the uncertainty that comes with not knowing what’s ahead to the uncertainty of philosophical arguments, uncertainty regarding philosophy and theology, and certainty about halakha. And we are going to see that if there was one moment of the day associated with safek, which is the Hebrew word for uncertainty, it is twilight. So let us dive right into the parsha of that.

It is mentioned in the biblical Hebrew and it says God spoke in Numbers 9:13 to Moses in the wilderness of Sinai on the first new moon of the second year following the exodus from the land of Egypt. So already there is a fixation, Rabbi, in Judaism, on time; it’s the new moon, it’s the second year. We are very calendar-oriented and I would say time-oriented.

Let the Israelite people offer the Passover sacrifice at its set time. You shall offer it on the 14th day of this month at twilight, Bein Ha’arbayim. At its set time, you shall offer it in accordance with all of its rules and ways. So again, Rabbi, you can’t help but notice that when we are talking about mishpat and laws, there are a lot of laws and rules in Judaism that have to do with dates and with times. You just can’t get away from it.

Adam Mintz [5:22 – 5:24]: So let’s look at the term.

Geoffrey Stern [5:26 – 5:26]: Because.

Adam Mintz [5:26 – 5:40]: The word arbayim is a familiar word. That’s the word erev, meaning evening. So bein ha’arbayim means between the evenings, which they translate as being twilight.

Geoffrey Stern [5:40 – 6:05]: And I said in the intro that we had a fixation on twilight. And Rabbi, really? I think twilight can be in the morning and at night; it’s both dusk and sunrise. It’s that moment where I think that you get a transition from day to night. But I think you are right. In the biblical Hebrew, it comes across more for the twilight that we get at sunset.

Adam Mintz [6:05 – 6:19]: And that’s why the Rabbinic Hebrew uses bein hashmashot from the word shemesh, because the word Ben Hashmashot applies equally to the morning and the evening, while bein ha’arbayim really only applies to the evening.

Geoffrey Stern [6:19 – 7:27]: I absolutely agree. I love it. And the only thing that I would add in thinking about this is maybe the reason where both the biblical Hebrew word focuses more on sunset and our tradition focuses more on the importance of sunset is actually we start and end the day at sunset. The morning dawn might have an impact on when you can start to pray, when you can put on your tzitzit, things like that. But at the end of the day, or the beginning of the day, I should say it begins at sunset.

And so it is only natural that we Jews should be focused more on twilight because it’s the beginning of our day. Midnight has no significance for us. The calendar doesn’t change when the clock strikes 12. It changes when the sun sets. And I don’t know how many cultures and traditions and religions are like that, but certainly in Judaism that already adds to the baggage inherent in twilight and sunset right now.

Adam Mintz [7:27 – 7:37]: Islam also works, you know, days from the evening. I just wonder whether they also have a category called bein hashashot. That would be interesting comparative religion someday.

Geoffrey Stern [7:37 – 8:08]: Yeah, absolutely. And those listeners who know a lot about Islam, guys, send us a note. Put a note on Substack. Let us start a discussion. In any case, this is not the first time that Passover is associated with being done at twilight. I think that’s kind of unique. Also, whereas Shabbat, you kind of wait for the twilight transition to be over, and then, you know, it’s Shabbat here somehow. Even in Exodus 22:6, it says, you shall keep watch over it until the 14th day of this month, talking about the paschal lamb, and all the assembled congregation of the Israelites shall slaughter it at twilight, Bein Ha’arbayim.

And here is where in Targum Onkelos, the Aramaic translation, he translates it as Ben Shimshaya, Ben Hashmashot. So we do get these two terms that you referenced before; they are identical. Slightly different nuances, but they are certainly identical to what that rabbi told me when he wouldn’t speak to me. It was Ben Hashmashot. It’s universally understood as it’s that transition time.

Now, Ibn Ezra, on his commentary on that Exodus verse, says, bein ha’arbayim is a difficult phrase. He quotes Rashi, who actually starts thinking in terms of the midday sun. We’ve mentioned this before, Rabbi. The Jewish or the Halachic hour is not 60 minutes. The day is divided up into 12 equal parts. So in the summer, the hours are longer. In the winter, they’re shorter.

And Rashi somehow believes that once you get into the second half, the second half of the game, so to speak, of the day, already you’re starting to talk about twilight. Ibn Ezra, and I would argue most of Jewish tradition, does not agree. And what Ibn Ezra says is that there is no question that when we are talking at dusk, you shall eat the flesh of the Passover sacrifice. He is talking about when the sun starts to go down on the horizon. That, he says, is the first part of dusk. The second is when the sun is no longer visible, but there is that ambient light.

Those are the two parts of twilight. Not the first time that the Ibn Ezra quotes the Sadducees, the Tzedukim, who say that they divide the evening dusk into three parts. So of course, the idea is it was so important to Judaism that it was kind of like an Eskimo giving different words for snow. We started to slice and dice what the dusk was, and that there were just disagreements between different factions. I just find that kind of fascinating.

Yeah. So let’s just explain it. The two parts of this dusk: one is when the sun’s on the horizon, that’s before sunset, but after sunset, where it’s still light. And we all know that, right? For a while after sunset, it’s still light. That’s the second half. So actually, the two parts of this dusk period are divided by sunset. They’re the two sides of sunset.

Yes, absolutely. And there’s a magic to it. There’s a magic to when that sun goes down below the horizon and there’s still light. There’s magic in the morning when you don’t see the sun yet. But there is an aura, I would think, in many, many religions and cultures. There is this idea of this beauty of the twilight moment. But I made an argument in the beginning that for our rabbis there was certainly an issue and an association between twilight and Safek, or uncertainty.

If we go to the Talmud in Shabbat 34b, it says the sages taught in a Baraita, which is like a Mishnah, which discusses the range of problems that arise with regard to the twilight period. Twilight is a period of uncertainty, Ben Hashemashot Safek. And there’s uncertainty whether it is day and night, or is it completely day, and there’s uncertainty whether it’s completely night. And that is the first moment. They don’t know whether it’s day and they don’t know whether it’s night.

Besides this Passover law, Rabbi, which is kind of fascinating to me, and maybe we won’t touch upon, there’s really nothing that is done during twilight. Things are done at day and things are done at night. And you’re kind of waiting for the end of Shabbat or you’re waiting for the sun to set and the beginning of Shabbat.

Well, actually, but that. That period, what you call that liminal space, that’s the reason we had 25 hours of Shabbat, because we’re strict at the beginning and we’re strict at the end. That period on Friday between sunset and nightfall, since it’s a Safek, since it’s an uncertainty, we consider it as Shabbat. And on Saturday night, we also consider it as Shabbat.

And I think that fits right in with where the rabbis go now. And it says, therefore, the sages impose the stringency of both days upon it. So if we’re talking about, oh, I don’t know, as you say, Shabbat, or it’s a fast day of Yom Kippur.

So I want to tell you. So let me give you the example. This year, this summer, Tisha B’Av, the fast of Tisha B’Av is Saturday night and Sunday. Yom Kippur can never fall out on a Friday or Sunday. We protect Shabbat. Yom Kippur, the calendar is rigged in a way that Yom Kippur never falls out on Friday or Sunday, but Tisha B’Av can fall out on Sunday. So that liminal space, Geoffrey, between sunset and nightfall is a weird space. It’s both Shabbat that you can’t violate Shabbat, but you’re not allowed to eat during that period because it might also be Tisha B’Av. So, as the Gemara says, it has the chumrot, the stringencies of both days.

Yeah, it’s fascinating. I have a memory also going back to the yeshiva. There’s a tradition that you have three meals on Shabbat, and the third meal is called Shalosh Seudot, Shalosh Sudat. And I have memories of sitting in the yeshiva in a classroom, and, you know, you’ve been eating all day, so basically you want to break bread, and you might even use matzah during the year just to have two challot, so to speak, and you start singing.

Then the light outside starts to go down. But in researching tonight, I saw a ruling that says that you’re not allowed to eat before Havdalah. Therefore, some of the legal authorities say you can’t stretch your third meal too far because if it gets into that twilight zone, you might be eating at the end of Shabbat. And I definitely, God bless the Hasidim, they were times where they broke the rules because they felt very strongly that the twilight time was so magical, so spiritually powerful, that it would stretch on and stretch on and you would be singing, and it was powerful.

We’ll get a little sense of that in another tradition, hopefully later, where there is this sense of the forbidden. As you say, sometimes you want to be more stringent, but sometimes you can’t be stringent. Let’s finish with the rabbis, because this becomes kind of interesting about how you measure the twilight. It says the definition of twilight is uncertain. And what is twilight? From when the sun sets, as long as the eastern face of the sky is reddened by the light of the sun, if the lower segment of the sky has lost its color, the upper segment has not lost its color. That is the twilight period.

It goes on, and then it does something fascinating. The rabbis try to define the length of time of twilight. Rabbi Nehemia says the duration of the twilight period is the time it takes for a person to walk half a mil after the sun sets. Rabbi Yossi says it does not last for a quantifiable period of time. Rather, it is like the blink of an eye. This night enters and that day leaves, and it is impossible to calculate it due to its brevity.

I love the fact that they’re measuring things in ways that transcend time and space. Assuming that it takes you and me about the same time to walk half a mil as it did 2,000 years ago, we can get a sense of time. We can calibrate our watches. And then the other, a k’heref ayin, the blink of an eye, is a Talmudic phrase that is just so special, meaning something can come instantly. I love all of the words that are so descriptive and have such feeling about them.

That’s great. Choref ayin is a great word. But you know, Geoffrey, of course, that different people wait a different amount of time after sunset on Saturday night to end Shabbat. I’m sure in the yeshiva they waited a long time after sunset. The Modern Orthodox wait a shorter time. And you know what that’s based on? It’s exactly what you said. It talks about how long it takes to walk a mil, how long it takes to walk this distance. And that, of course, depends on the person. There’s a huge debate about how long it takes to walk, and therefore there’s a debate about when Shabbat is over.

So I didn’t tell you, Rabbi, but we had the week off last week, and I decided to rebroadcast an earlier episode that we did called Rashi, Women, and Wine. In it, I talked about Rashi’s daughters and the fact that they all married the Tosafot, who argued with Rashi.

And I believe what you were referring to is some people follow Rashi’s determination of when Shabbat begins and when it’s out. And some people follow the Rabbeinu Tam. So here, this is a segue from Rashi’s grandson. Yes, absolutely. These have strong impacts, I will say. Besides the stringencies, when things are, for instance, forbidden only from the rabbis d’Rabbanan, then we permit them on Bain Ha’shmashot. You can do things that maybe the rabbis would say you can’t do on Shabbat, but you can do them in this twilight moment.

I wanted to come back to this question, Safek, of things that are unsure, which is a very strong concept in the Talmud. There’s even a phrase called “Sfek Sfeka,” where you have the translation is a compound uncertainty where, to put it into the language we’re talking now, you don’t know whether the sun has set yet and you don’t know whether it’s Friday. So now you’re talking about one Safek on top of another Safek. The rabbis literally thrived on questions of uncertainty. I think part of it had to do with this transcending the calendar. It talks to the fact that we start every with a moment of gray, a moment that’s neither here nor there. I think it had to have an effect.

If we’re talking practical halacha, you talked about Tisha B’Av. I will quote from our favorite mohel cantor, Philip Sherman, Zichrono Livracha, who talks about a baby born on Monday will have his bris the following Monday. Eight days later, a baby born on Monday, after it’s dark, will have his bris the following Tuesday. No big deal, you know, because it’s a Safek of whether it’s the eighth day or the ninth day, you push it out. A baby born Friday evening after sunset, but before it’s dark is called a twilight baby. I had never heard that phrase before.

Adam Mintz [21:15 – 21:20]: Geoffrey only can if Philip Sherman used that phrase. But it’s a good phrase.

Geoffrey Stern [21:20 – 22:26]: So he. He made it up. But I think it fits. There is a perfect example of when, because of the doubt, we don’t. We leave something, we don’t do something. There is a wonderful tradition since we started talking about twilight and Pesach, of making matzah after the time on Erev Pesach, that you’re no longer allowed to eat chametz. You’re no longer allowed to own chametz; you’re certainly not allowed to do anything with it. So that is the elongated twilight, if you will. There’s a mitzvah to make the matzah at that moment that you will use at the seder. Rabbi, it’s kind of like walking on the wild side. There is this sense of the uncertainty of the twilight period, the uncertain period that adds to its holiness, that adds to its mystery, that adds to its magic. I think there’s certainly something there.

Adam Mintz [22:27 – 22:51]: There’s no question about it. The mystery is a good term. The Bain Ha’shmashot is a mysterious period that actually, Geoffrey, goes back to the first source you quoted. The things that are mysterious, like the earth that opened up to devour Korah, all the things that don’t make sense in nature, they’re mystery. They’re created in this mysterious time.

Geoffrey Stern [22:52 – 23:23]: I think that’s the new read that we have on that Pirkei Avot. And that’s what I was trying to say, but you formulated it much better. I always thought that was coming out against miracles. In fact, what it’s doing is celebrating the mysteries, the things that we don’t understand, and celebrating them, truly celebrating them and making them special. There is no question. Now, we talked about the fact that the emphasis is clearly on the evening, the Bain Ha’arbayim. But dawn also has its moment.

I’m going to quote from a rabbi who has a website for people whose gender is not totally defined or post-gender. He has an article called “The Holiness of Twilight” by Reuben Zelman. He’s clearly a scholar. Let me read a little bit of it. He says, in Halacha, there is no morning. There is alot hashachar, the rising of the sun, the point at which the sunlight peaks on the horizon. There’s netz hachama, peaking of heat, the moment when the top of the sun can be seen. And Mishik Yakar, from when he will recognize the moment when a person can recognize someone else.

I always love that part of the morning. When do you know it’s morning? When you can recognize another human being, and it says specifically not their closest friend at a distance of a few feet. These distinctions, he continues, are incredible and precious. To collapse them into the binary of day and night misses the juiciness and the beauty of the spaces in between and the specificity that they each carry. The same is true for evening, which famously includes Bain Ha’shmashot, twilight, a period of time that sits between two days as both and neither, and has been carved out as a holy, liminal in-between place for Rabbi Reuben Zalman’s teaching and the twilight people’s prayer.

So he quotes a bunch of stuff. And then he taught me something, Rabbi. There is, in Mishnah Avot, a saying that says Rabbi Shimon said, be careful with the reading of Shema and the prayer. And when you pray, do not make your prayer something automatic, “Al ta’aseh tefilat keva”. I always thought that meant don’t do it by rote. Make every prayer as if you’ve never prayed before. But this Rabbi quotes from the Talmud in Shabbat 35B. It brings the opinion; he says, with regard to this keva. Rabbi Chiya Bar Abba said, Rabbi Yochanan said it is a mitzvah to pray with the reddening of the sun. Rabbi Zeira said, what is the verse that alludes to this? Let them fear you with the sun and before the moon, generations after generations.

So he translates keva, Rabbi, to mean when it’s 100% day or when it’s a 100% night, and with no uncertainty. No uncertainty says the only time to pray is when it is transient. And what does that transience of twilight bring in this regard? It brings fear of God. Fear can mean trembling; you can also say fear is what you were talking about before, the awe of the divine. But he takes this to mean don’t pray in the middle of the day; don’t pray in the middle of the morning or the evening. Get up and pray at dawn and say Ma’ariv at twilight. I just love that.

Adam Mintz [26:44 – 26:46]: That’s great. That’s amazing.

Geoffrey Stern [26:46 – 26:53]: And I had never even thought about that. This is a bona fide translation, or I should say interpretation from the Talmud.

Adam Mintz [26:53 – 26:58]: Talmud, yeah, I think it’s not. It’s not a translation, it’s an interpretation.

Geoffrey Stern [26:58 – 29:25]: Absolutely, absolutely. But I think keva, once you hear it, it makes you think. It definitely makes you think.

So I didn’t want to. The Talmud in Shabbat continues with its discussions. Since there are so many people who say, when is Shabbat over? When you see three stars, I thought I would also quote that, so we just put that in our little toolbox. On Shabbat 35B, where the conversation continues, it says, with regard to the period of twilight, Rabbi Yehuda said that Shmuel said, when one can see one star in the evening sky, it is still day. Two stars twilight, three stars night. Then they describe how big the stars are, so forth and so on. But that’s where that tradition comes from, from. Of doing the stars. Interesting. He has three gradations here, similar to the Karaites and what we were talking about before.

So I think that if there’s any real takeaway that I wanted to leave everyone with, it is this: If you look up twilight in Wikipedia, for instance, you’ll see the Christian practice, a vigil which gets held at a few times in the dark. In Islam, as you said, Rabbi, it might be the start of the day, but I think only in Judaism is it this liminal moment.

The word liminal comes from threshold, a doorway, a moment of passing. It’s this analogy, the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage. And I think that’s what I took away. It fits into our parasha in terms of the Passover Seder. You’re going through a rite of passage; the doorpost, that liminal thing, has the blood on it. I really do think that for the rabbis, it was this belief in Safek, in uncertainty, the awe that uncertainty brings. That was a profound tool for both feeling that which is transcendent, but also embracing uncertainty. And I just love it. Wanted to hear your comments. And then I am going to finish with my story of the yeshiva.

Adam Mintz [29:25 – 29:26]: Finish with your story. Take it away.

Geoffrey Stern [29:27 – 31:13]: So anyway, I studied in the yeshiva with Rav Shlomo Wolbe, who was considered in his own right, one of the great Mussarniks. But when I told him that I had applied and been accepted into Columbia University, he gave me an envelope and he said, you need to visit Rab Yitzhak Hutner.

So I went to Brooklyn, to Chaim Berlin, and Rav Hutner’s office had a door that had one of these (magnetic) buzzers on it. I was told before I went in that when you leave, do not show your back to Rabbi Hutner. Walk out backwards, because if you turn your back to him, he’s not going to buzz you out. So I knew that I was dealing with somebody who had gravitas. I went to him. I gave him the envelope. If there is anyone listening who has the archives of Rabbi Hutner and can find that letter, I’d love to know what Rabbi Shlomo Wolbe wrote. My sense is he wrote, Rabbi Hutner, you’re our last chance for saving this kid’s soul. You got to save him.

And I can tell you, Rab Hutner did not bite the bait. He looked at me and he said, as I said in the intro, you are Bain Hashmashot You are in the Twilight Zone. When you go to Columbia, you can come back and then I will talk to you. So I went to Columbia, and I went to talk to him, and he still would not talk to me. So, Rabbi, you know what I’m taking from that? I am taking from that I got a blessing from Rav Hutner that I am to live in the Twilight Zone. In that magical moment of Ben Hasmashot. I am still here, still thriving. And I take that not as him turning me away, but as him recognizing me for the path, the unique path that I was following.

Adam Mintz [31:14 – 31:29]: That’s a fantastic story. Okay. Please God, for many more years to come. Thank you so much, everybody. Great topic. Enjoy discussing the Pesach and Shabbat Shalom. We will see you all next week.

Geoffrey Stern [31:29 – 31:31]: Shabbat Shalom.