I hope everyone had the chance to celebrate Israel’s 75th birthday this past Wednesday, Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel’s independence day.
One of the features of Yom Ha’Atzmaut is called the מטס the flyover. Israeli helicopters, warplanes, and more, fly over the country and citizens watch as they fly by.
This year, something was different about the flyover. Israelis who looked up to the sky saw a warplane with a colorful decoration in honor of the celebration, a plane that also had the markings of the German Luftwaffe.
This was the first year a foreign nation participated in this major Independence Day event. And beyond that, Germany is purchasing Arrow 3 anti-ballistic missile systems from Israel.
General Ingo Gerhartz is the head of the German air force. He said, how meaningful is it that Israel is now supplying systems for Germany to defend itself.
The flyover happens once a year. It is a special occasion, a moment when despite ongoing political disputes, threats from Hamas and Iran, and shifting alliances in the middle east, all Israelis come together to celebrate.
These types of unique moments almost stand outside of time whether for Israelis or for us. There are moments, like Shabbat, just as one example, moments when we allow other concerns to fade into the background and we are happy to be alive, to hopefully be surrounded by friends, family, and community members.
Our Torah reading this week focuses on one such time, Yom Kippur.
Yom Kippur was the only time the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies and stood close to the Ark of the Covenant. It was, and is, a time when Jewish communities across the world gather for prayer, to hear Kol Nidre when the holiday starts, and to hear the final shofar blast when it ends.
Our ancestors ask, how can our ancestors, including the High Priest, stand before God when all of them, when all of us, have sinned in some way or another?
Rabbi Ephraim of Luntschitz explains Yom Kippur is a day ‘beyond time’. On this day, God transforms us into angels, and we exist in the heavenly realm during this day, a realm not bound by time.
Transformed as we are into angels, we, and the High Priest, can now approach God for atonement.
When Yom Kippur ends – we’re right back to work. We’ve worked hard to evolve our ethical and spiritual selves, and the day after it is time to put our new self into the mix of life and all the opportunities and challenges it presents.
Whether it’s Shabbat, a holiday like Yom Kippur, one of the main goals of these days is to allow us to stand outside of time for a short while. Time is relentless and, often, unforgiving.
When our ancestors were farmers and traders in the Holy Land, Shabbat and holidays enabled them to pause from the grind of manual labor.
For us today, these days may be more difficult for us to completely shut down.
Still, it’s worthwhile trying to imagine what it would be like to exist as angel, where there is not firm past, present, or future, everything then is an eternal present – one continuous moment in which all of existence somehow comes into unity, into harmony, meaning that any wickedness in the universe is balanced by good and there is only light, and lightness. There’s nothing to do, since everything’s been done, but, at the same time, there’s everything to give since nothing holds us back.
It’s difficult to put a world beyond time into words, so I hope you’ll accept my attempt to set the scene. This is what our ancestors hoped we could feel on Shabbat, on other holy days of the year.
This Shabbat let’s imagine ourselves in that dimension, try to feel what that existence would be like.
Thinking about the flyover in Israel this past week, I think transformation into angels would be a lot like flying in one of those airplanes – free to move about in space, untethered by time and fully free to express who we are and what we aspire to be and to become. And, yes, in the Bible, angels do have wings.
