ON SUNS, MOONS, RAINBOWS, AND TWILIGHT.
Each day as evening falls, our tradition calls upon us to offer a blessing, a prayer of gratitude to the One who speaks evening into being, who rolls light away from darkness and darkness from light. Poetic in itself, our prayer book offers a beautiful poem about this hour, this time which is not daytime and not yet evening. Bein hashamashot—between the two suns—our rabbis called it, and our Shabbat prayer book offers this:
This is an hour of change, and within it, we stand quietly on the border of light. What lies before us? Shall we draw back … or cross over?
It is a question for each of us about transition and change, and perhaps more deeply about freedom and liberation. When do we step forward, and when do we hold back?
In the early hours of June 28, 1969, New York City police officers raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in Greenwich Village, forcibly dragging patrons and employees out of the bar. In what is now known as the Stonewall Uprising, angry patrons and neighborhood residents fought back, sparking six days of sometimes violent protests and “officially” birthing the Gay Pride movement. While the first Pride march was held in New York in 1970, the one-year anniversary of Stonewall, Pride Month was not formalized until 1999.
This is an hour of change, and within it, we stand quietly on the border of light. What lies before us? Shall we draw back … or cross over?
Each year, on Pride Shabbat, I feel honored to offer these words written by Rabbi Reuben Zellman, and this year is no different:
As the sun sinks and the colors of the day turn, we offer a blessing for the twilight, for twilight is neither day nor night, but in-between. We are all twilight people. We can never be fully labeled or defined. We are many identities and loves, many genders and none. We are in between roles, at the intersection of histories, or between place and place. We are crisscrossed paths of memory and destination, streaks of light and swirled together. We are neither day nor night. We are both, neither, and all.
May the sacred in-between of this evening suspend our certainties, soften our judgments, and widen our vision. May this in-between light illuminate our way to the God who transcends all categories and definitions. May the in-between people who have come to pray be lifted up into this twilight. We cannot always define; we can always say a blessing. Blessed are You, God of all, who brings on the twilight.
Happy Pride! May we all know the joy of living as our fullest, truest selves.
—Rabbi Sari Laufer