Another Doorway Within: Never Finished, Never Lost

50Shenasayim, “two years” (שנתים), is the sign [whose initials spell “on the left the lamp you shall kindle, on the right the mezuzah”]: “so that the mezuzah will be on the right and the Chanukah lamp on the left.”¹ The Midrash on Ki Savo reads the verse above, on guarding the doorposts of Wisdom's entrances, this way: “A person should always go in the distance of two doorways, and then pray.”² That is, he should know that there is always another doorway further in than the one he has passed, both toward good and holiness and toward the opposite. “Do not trust in yourself.”³ For both he should pray, that Hashem open the doorways for him. This is “the straight way before a man.” But “its end” is “the ways of death”:⁴ one who thinks he is already finished, whether in holiness or, Heaven forbid, in the opposite, so that he says, “It is hopeless,” is on the ways of death. This is the meaning of “Hashem has chastened me sorely, but He has not given me over to death”:⁵ may I never come to those ways of death, but always cry out, “Open for me the gates of righteousness …,”⁶ knowing that my fate is not yet sealed, and that I am not yet finished in holiness. And this is “To You, Hashem, I call”:⁷ I pray for this. “And to Adnus (אדני), my Lord, I plead”: the Name Adnus, spelled out in full, has the value 671, and 671 written in letters, תרעא, spells tar'a, the Aramaic word for “gate.”⁸ For this I plead: that I be privileged to enter Your gates.⁹