Theme

OUR 2017/18 THEME: CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

Selecting a Topic

Liminality in Judaism

Each year we select a topic for the following year. All six labs participate in this process as we all work with the same topic. Lab participants are invited to submit their suggestions and it is subjected to a vote. It is often a difficult choice, but the best topics offer many directions for exploration.

This year's topic grew out of the prior year's topic of boundaries and otherness. Several of us began to explore the idea of crossing boundaries, particularly the significance of being on the threshold of something new and unfamiliar. That took us into liminality, a word that means threshold and describes a place of transformation, growth and often difficulty.

The write-up on the proposal becomes our starting point for exploration. Usually that starting point begins with questions. It's a Jewish thing, a process of inquiry.

Our Starting Point

What does it mean to stand at a threshold? What lies ahead? What has brought us to this point? How do we navigate crossing a threshold to arrive at a new place? To become a new person?

Thresholds are places of beginnings and of change. They are a point of transition into something new and a letting go of something familiar. The word “liminal” means threshold and was originally an anthropological term related to rites of passage. It presents us with a passage between two points, representing a change in how we live, our identity and our world. As we navigate that transition it often leads to transformation and growth.

In Judaism, there are many rituals that mark our entrance to or exit from a liminal moment; the mezuzah, Havdalah and lighting the Shabbat candles are just a few. The liminal time of dusk and dawn is referred to in Hebrew as “Bein Hashmashot” - literally “Between the suns". During the evening service we say a prayer about rolling light away from darkness and darkness away from light. Every day we recognize the liminal times of dawn and dusk just before saying the Shema prayer in the evening service. It is an auspicious time, that crossing of the threshold, into the next chapter.

Our holidays celebrate liminal space, the passage from one point to another and the preparation we must do to make that passage. It is the in-between that we focus upon, whether it is preparing to receive the Law as we count the Omer or spending forty years in the desert to form a people.

Liminality in People

People can be liminal as they span multiple worlds; immigrants, gender identity, children of mixed ethnicity or religious background, people on the margins, neither here nor there. As artists we step into liminal space when we create, leaving the familiar for the unknown, perhaps finding transformation in the process.

This topic presents us with opportunities to explore passages, growth and transformation, how that is reflected in Jewish rituals and holidays, the significance of thresholds, those on the margins and the artistic process.

2017-18 Meeting Dates