In Praise of Beinonim: Cultivating the Middle

Kol Nidre, 5786 | Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue

When my sister and I were little, Grandma Ruth made us books on our birthdays. They were collages, and they rhymed. They were a little strange - for example she would cut out photos of our heads and glue them onto the bodies of people in magazines. While I really enjoyed getting to see my head on a boy’s body, the overall effect was a little creepy. The books didn’t really make sense, but they were filled with love, and with her spirit. I recently made a book in this genre for my niece, when she turned three, and mine was similarly…a little strange. In order to get it done, I had to give myself permission for it to be imperfect, and a little off-the-wall.

Once she saw it, my sister said that Grandma Ruth’s books gave her some core memories of noticing that something could be weird, imperfect, and wonderful all at once, and that that opened up many possibilities for her in her life. 

So I’m curious: who gave you permission to be weird? Who gave you permission to be unconventional, or not follow the rules? Who gave you permission to not be perfect? To be good enough, to do a good enough job?

The Gemara teaches, in Massechet Rosh Hashana: 

Rabbi Kruspedai said that Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Three books are opened on Rosh HaShana before the Holy Blessed One: One of rishaim gmurim, completely wicked people, and one of tzadikim gmurim, completely righteous people, v’echad shel beinonim - and one of people in the middle.  The completely righteous people are immediately written and sealed for life; the completely wicked people are immediately written and sealed for death; and the people in the middle are suspended between, from Rosh HaShana until Yom Kippur. If they merit, they are written for life; if they do not merit, they are written for death.

The three books are a central image of the Yamim Noraim. 

In this conversation, I invite you to think of being written and sealed for life as being a part of mutual thriving, and being written and sealed for death as being a part of mutual destruction. That is not the only way to interpret those ideas, but tonight I want to wrestle less with the concept of our fate being written down in a book, and more with the idea that humans fall into three categories.

On the surface, the text seems to say that there are some people who are all good, some who are all bad, and some who are neither all good nor all bad. The poles - the people who are all good and those who are all bad - are as they are. The people who are in the middle, in contrast, are somehow in process - there is something as yet undetermined about them. When I imagine this spectrum, the poles feel pretty distant - to be all good or all bad is extreme; most of us are people in the middle.

Maybe you, like me, start to get a little itchy around the collar with this talk of people who are tzaddikim gmurim or rishaim gmurim, all righteous or all wicked. I certainly don’t know anyone who is completely righteous, and while I can think of a few people who seem all the way wicked, who seem truly terrible, I also don’t believe that anyone is irredeemable. 

The text about the three books is classically interpreted within an ecosystem of other texts, in which I think the sages are trying to do two things: one, affirm that what we do matters, and two, build a world in which people are judged favorably, a world that is more forgiving than not. They want to both strengthen the power and the stakes of being beinoni, in the middle, and soften the possibility of being judged as wicked.

Classically, the tradition interprets a tzaddik, a righteous person, as someone whose good deeds outweigh their bad deeds; a rasha, a wicked person, is someone whose bad deeds outweigh their good deeds; and a beinoni, someone in the middle, has a balanced scale. This interpretation raises the stakes of being in the middle, as it suggests that a small action can tip the balance. And indeed, elsewhere in the Talmud, Rabbi Elazar b’Rabbi Shimon says that not only can the performance of one mitzvah tip a single individual’s balance, so that they become praiseworthy, but the performance of one mitzvah can tip the entire world’s balance, because we are judged collectively, by the sum of our actions. 

Imagine that, lighting Shabbes candles Friday night could tip the entire balance of the world. Feeding a single hungry person could tip the entire balance of the world. That’s a world where being beinonim, being in the middle, is fertile ground: it is a place of power and generativity, a place that requires accountability and creativity, a place where action really matters. Rambam, the Medieval commentator, changes one word in the text: The beinonim, the people in the middle, are suspended from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur. Instead of if they merit, they are written and sealed in the Book of Life, and if they do not merit, they are written and sealed in the Book of Death, he writes, if they make teshuva, they are sealed in the Book of Life, and if they do not, they are sealed in the Book of Death. Teshuva is what we do b’makom beinoni, in the middle, in the messy, high stakes, fertile ground where our actions matter. 

It is a project of fascism and authoritarianism to emphasize the poles: to create populations of rishaim gmurim, people so wicked they are hardly considered human anymore, and similarly to lionize individuals as wholly righteous, whether as perfect leaders or martyrs for a cause. These strategies help establish the authoritarian narrative which justifies extreme cruelty, extreme inequality, and extreme repression - and we’ve seen so much of them in the past few weeks, let alone the past several months. These strategies also diminish the significance of individual action; are meant to make each of us feel less powerful and less motivated to act.

Part of our resistance work is to cultivate the middle. By insisting that no one is completely wicked, we insist that no one is disposable. By insisting that no one is completely righteous, we make a case for equality. We also resist the reduction of what we know to be true, and valuable, and worth fighting for into ideology. We preserve disagreement and discourse, and our strategy comes to be grounded in principles, rather than absolute rights and wrongs. And we insist that what we do matters: we boost the power of the middle, because it is the place where we get to make a difference.

Just as it is a political practice, cultivating the middle is a necessary personal practice during impossible times. Living with the demands of late-stage capitalism; living with the fear for our own well-being as the federal government moves us towards a police state; living with both rage and sorrow at the violence our neighbors are targeted with - these are impossible times, and we have to find a way to be forgiving and gentle with ourselves. This is where our early teachers can be so helpful - the ones who gave us permission to do things differently, or not quite right, or in any way imperfectly. Who modeled the creativity that emerges when we feel free to be in process.

And. As we live within tremendous contradictions, inside systems that make us complicit in destruction of the planet, violence against our neighbors, and sabotage of our own well-being, accepting that we are in process, doing the best we can, incorporating failure, and forgiving ourselves is difficult, and causes us anguish. When people and planet are dying, good enough is not good enough.

Moreover, there is so much pop psychology and cultural messaging that tells us that being in the middle is an opportunity for settling, for letting ourselves off the hook. We are encouraged to do whatever makes us, as individuals, feel better in the moment. We feel entitled to do that, regardless of the consequences for others or the ecosystem in which we live. This, too, can be profoundly disempowering.

The balance we are seeking is not between good deeds and bad, not between mitzvot and transgressions, but between a rigorous, principled, framework for living in impossible times, and a culture in which we know we are in process, and we get to fail and learn and grow and do our best and forgive each other.

We are seeking a balance in which the poles of righteousness and wickedness give us accountability and purpose, and in which the value of inhabiting makom beinoni, the space in the middle, gives us the forgiveness, gentleness, and the motivation to not settle, but to continue to move, change, and grow.

The question I want you to take home with you tonight, maybe talk about on your walk home, is this: What helps you find this balance? How do you navigate the challenge of wanting to be good, be righteous, be successful, have high standards and expectations for yourself; and at the same time cultivate your tolerance for and celebration of being in process, doing the best you can, letting yourself be good enough?

At the beginning of our service, just before Hadar chanted Kol Nidre, she offered up these words:

With the consent of the Almighty and the consent of this congregation

עַל דַּֽעַת הַמָּקוֹם וְעַל דַּֽעַת הַקָּהָל

In a convocation of the heavenly court, and a convocation of the earthly court, 

. בִּישִׁיבָה שֶׁל מַֽעְלָה וּבִישִׁיבָה שֶׁל מַֽטָּה

we hereby grant permission to pray with transgressors. 

אָֽנוּ מַתִּירִין לְהִתְפַּלֵּל עִם הָעֲבַרְיָנִים:

Avaryanim, transgressors, are understood in the tradition to mean community members who were excommunicated. Tonight, we welcome them - or maybe it is ourselves - back. Tonight, not only do we welcome in those we might have shut out, and the parts of ourselves we might have shut out, we claim that our fast and our prayer are incomplete without them. The arvaryanim are not rishaim gmurim, wholly wicked people - they are people who have transgressed, and have made teshuva. And Rabbi Abahu teaches that in a place where baalei teshuva stand, where those who are deeply in a process of teshuva stand, not even the fully righteous stand. The Book of Mutual Thriving is a story of people in process. A story of people trying to get closer to righteousness, knowing that teshuva is what enables us to get there - which is to say, failure, mistakes, and conflict give us the opportunity for repair, growth, and accountability. The Book of Mutual Thriving is probably being written by a grandma, in rhyme, for somebody’s third birthday - strange, messy, surprising, and creative. It gives us permission to be strange, messy, surprising, and creative. It invites into a fertile ground of generativity, where we invite each other to grow and change. It affirms for us that what we do matters, even as it reminds us to be gentle and forgiving with ourselves and each other. May we call each other into this fertile ground, and write each other into the book.

Gmar hatima tova.