And Another Perspective on Pesach

G.K. Chesterton observed that when people lose their faith in God they will not believe in nothing, they will believe in everything.

 

We change.  The world changes.  Stock prices rise and plummet.  Fashions  come in a go out of style.  Attitudes seem to shift with the breeze.  I remember my father’s advice to me when I was young to keep track of my old ties.  “Sooner or later,” he told me, “they all come back into style!”  He was right. I wish I kept those old skinny ties.

 

The changes in human relationships I know less fickle and styles of neckties. We marry and our spouse, we discover later, is not the person we thought they were. Or they've changed their personality through time. Constancy is not a virtue of humanity. We are not static beings. Many people claim as a reason for forming a relationship that they need someone to depend upon.  That is parasitism, not love.  And sooner or later the illusion be will be seen for what it is, an illusion as their real self emerges.  When expectations have been shattered do we treat to the island of solitude, divorce or personal change?

Others invest heavily in business ventures to escape the necessity of change. Money does not change the way people do. Sure, we have to deal with inflation, recessions and depressions but cash always has value. Still others turn toward vanity – a nice way of saying narcissism. We smooth away our wrinkles with new formulas, attend spas, take mud baths, get face lifts, botox, hair weaves and transplants.  There are two problems with investments in our self: we cannot win the war against time. Ultimately we lose that game. Secondly, we would lose even if we win. As George Bernard Shaw put it, “There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your hearts desire. The other is to get it.” When all we ever wanted is ours, what comes next?

 

Something must and will replace a nonexistent and in active faith in God. There is a supermarket quality to the immeasurable face and pseudo-faiths available for public consumption - prophets, soothsayers, messiahs, imams, swamis, gurus, mahatma's, marahishis and other gods. They offer ecstasy and happiness and salvation from the vicissitudes of change. With a joy of these sects one can effectively block off the world by stepping out of it. In short, people will always need to believe in something, if not God.

Pesach is traditionally thought of as a family time. Relatives, whom we do not pay very close attention to throughout the year, are invited to sit at our tables. We celebrate Passover as a joyous reunion of loved ones. We try hard to make the Seder meaningful by being informed, involved and innovative.  But there is more. Passover describes the transition of liberation of enslaved people to that of an indentured people. Free from Pharaoh we come under the dominion of God.  Enslavement or liberation?

Had we been freed from bondage, as the Dayyenu song goes but would not have a covenantal relationship with haKadosh Baruch Hu, we will have lived and died.  That is all.  The transitory elements of life will have occupied the main areas of our existence. Too much time spent on acquiring wealth of possessions, too much energy to go to wardrobes or jobs, too much free time as the curtain rushes to close. Meaning and constancy comes from only one source. All other things will change from generation to generation. Only God is eternal.  If we are to understand a single message from the Pesach liturgy it should be this: liberation came to forefathers, why not us to? Among your guest list for this Passover make sure to include an invitation to the Holy One this year.

Another perspective on Pesach

The cycle of the year is upon us and we are made conscious of another great passage of time with the arrival of Pesach.  Matzah, four cups, family, seder, song- it all comes back.

Surveys have revealed that Pastor, aside from the high holidays, is the most universally excepted Jewish holiday. Otherwise unconcerned Jews take part in the seder. Of all three festivals during the course of the year, Sukkot, Pesach and Shavuot, this is the most widely known and practiced.

There is something most compelling about the festival of freedom. Not many Jews would readily admit to liking Pesach for its peculiar culinary delights.  We make do.  For many, the festival wreaks havoc on the stomach. It’s pretty difficult to enjoy the tasty delight with Marc the other holidays. Fried matzah is exciting only for so long.

If it’s not food then it must be something else. On Pesach, the book of Song of Songs is read.  Song of Songs speaks of unrestrained love; One man’s passion for a woman is depicted in wonderful and revealing words reminiscent of a Shakespearean sonnet.  And true to form the book also tells of a woman’s deep and abiding love. Song of songs tales of a love passion that we all experience during our lives.  The sentiment and words resonate.

 

That love is emphasized and accentuated on Pesach for it mimics the same unqualified love that exists between God and Israel. It is the love that causes a man to fiercely defend the one he loves, the bond which makes the Almighty become a “Man of War” for His people and it is the law for one's own family and extended personal relations.

The rabbis wisely assigned various rules in the Passover Seder to different family members. The four questions are asked by the youngest, a leader is appointed, all search for the Afikomen, and each participant reads different segments from the Haggadda.  The narrative is pointedly arranged to involve everyone.

 

The underlying idea during the holidays is for the family to reunite. Oll the bonds are renewed, recent events recounted, moldy jokes resurface and are retold. The seder particularly is the time of great love. That is why it is such a widely embraced holiday. Deep emotions surface during the festival. The seder and the following days give us the opportunity to express our deepest, most profound love.

 

Pesach comes at the end of winter.  The dark days of cold come to an end and spring rapidly approaches. Emotions run high as the first buds make their appearance and crocuses pop their heads out of the ground. It is appropriate that the Song of Songs be sung at this time. It is a good opportunity to let that old spark be rekindled and say again, “I love you.”

The Messages of Pesach

Isaac Bashevis Singer received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1978 and startled the Stockholm audience by addressing them in Yiddish.  He said, Loshon fun golus, ohn a land, ohn grenitzen, nish gshtitzt fun kein shum meluchoh… (“a language of exile, a people without a land, without frontiers, without a government, a language with possesses no words for weapons, ammunition, military exercises, war tactics; a language despised by gentiles and emancipated Jews….searches for an enteral truth, the essence of being…to find an answer to suffering, to reveal love in the abyss of cruelty and injustice.”).

 

Why do we constantly and consistently remember the Exodus from Egypt in every service and dedicate an entire eight days festival to its remembrance?  Zacher l’tziat mitzraim, we cry in every service!  Why?

 

Is it to remember that we have an obligation to open the gates of freedom for the enslaved and oppressed?  If we learn this lesson from Pesach it is well.  There is much pain in the world, too much suffering.  There are an infinite number of tears shed from cruelty and meanness in our world. Every day on the news we hear of atrocities committed across the globe and in our backyard of Columbia, South Carolina.  If anything, we should be moved to make a difference; to shout scream and decry the senseless wounds inflicted on the innocent and guilty alike.  Our redemption from slavery ought to bring out empathy for the downtrodden. And in case we are not emotionally moved, God forbid, we are emphatically told, to “unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords, the yoke to let the oppressed go free…”.   Recognize the words?  We repeat them each Yom Kippur.  This is the Divine Command, the mitzvah, that we are directed to follow on the holiest day of the year.

 

Perhaps we retell the Passover story each year (as well mentioning it every day) to remind us that we are not “it.” Our lives are infinitesimal blips in the pages of history.  We will not be remembered beyond three generations, if fortunate.  But God and the Promise are enduring.  Great grandchildren will learn the same lessons we are being taught today and we were taught as youngsters.  Will humanity have grown any wiser?  And God will still be there.

 

We did not redeem ourselves from slavery.  We did not bring about the ten plagues.  Manna did not fall accidently for forty years.  We did not create the air that we breathe or the gravitational forces that keep our solar system in careful balance.  We pride ourselves on sending an unmanned vehicle to Mars while knowing full well that solar systems, far more vast than the ones we know, exist outside our limited vision.  Maybe Pesach is all about remembering that we are temporary tenants on God’s earth.

 

Perhaps Pesach is to remind us of a higher law, a justice that we were given and expanded through the millennia to ensure that we could infuse the world with righteousness that does not depend on someone’s idea of morality but comes from God.  I have spent the better part of this year immersed in study of Talmud.  In it I found myself swept up in the Godly and relentless pursuit of a justice where conversations with scholars Akiva, Maimonides and Louis Jacobs continue to ask, “What is Torah telling me?”  “What is God telling that I have avoided all these years?”  The quest for real justice does not reside in anyone’s opinion.  We all have opinions (as did Stalin, Pol Pot, the Proud Boys, Hitler…) but what is real righteousness?

 

Maybe Pesach is trying to delve deeply into our souls and remind us that we are supposed to return to our ancient prayers, learn them, understand them and direct them to heaven. After all the seder is not a playtime, or entertainment; it is reaching inward and outward to make our souls connect with the Holy One, blessed be He.  It is prayer.

 

May it be God’s will that our hearts open up to the nuances and lessons of Pesach that are invitations to personal change.