The many lessons of the season

 The many lessons of the season.

 

Pesah celebrates freedom.  Of course, the freedom we celebrate is literal: we express our gratitude for not being slaves. Had we not been liberated from the grip of Pharaoh we would have long ago ceased to exist. The Jewish people would have succumbed to the planned genocide.   

 

Besides relishing our freedom and existence the import of G-d leading the people Israel from slavery was that we developed an empathy for anyone afflicted.  Lesson: Torah directs us to be an “or la-goyim” an emblematic light to show how people are supposed to behave as protectors of one another.

 

Countless times the Torah and our prayers recount the great liberation as an ongoing reminder of this history-changing event.  Along with being empathic we are also directed to not venerate the man Moses as the liberator but G-d.  

Lesson: there is a caring G-d who is involved in our lives and deeply cares for our wellbeing.

 

Pesah is also a reminder of a broken-spirited human being.  In the midrash we read, Rabbi Abba bar Yudan said: “Everything that God disqualified in animals, He endorsed in people. For animals, He disqualified the blind or broken or maimed, but in humanity He endorsed the broken, downtrodden heart.” 

 

How many of those who were enslaved lived with the ongoing physical as well as psychic pain of having been abused?  We live in a community where everyone matters.  All are scarred.  All are wounded, not by the master’s whip but by verbal abuse, as victims of fraud and deceit, manipulated by those who wanted to impose their power over us. Pesach also teaches:   All the broken are cherished by God.  And we are all broken.

 

The table where we sit also seeks to teach us a mighty lesson.  It is not only the acceptance of all types of character that the story of the four sons tells but we are also prompted to ask, who is absent?  Who is so alienated from our family that they cannot sit with us?  Or whom have we cut out of our lives?  Who lives in the margins of our community that we cannot even conceive of inviting them to our table?    Maybe the undrained cup of Elijah is more than a request for deliverance, maybe it is also a recognition that we have missing parts of our relationships.  Lesson: Do not ignore the empty chair.

 

Pesah is not about flying frogs or getting to the meal more swiftly, it is about becoming aware of the signs and symbols that surround us that can make our lives more meaningful, endowed with a greater quality.  Even the great Moses had to be cajoled by G-d to remove himself away from the simple life of a shepherd with few responsibilities to become the champion of the Jewish nation.  “In every generation…” begins the narrative.  But we could easily change that to read, “In every generation people do their utmost to escape the real truth of their life – that they are endowed with unique gifts that once realized can make their entire life purposeful and meaningful.”  Most people want more by doing less.  And yet the simple truth that we all know is that our life takes on meaning only when we act upon our gifts, which means doing, sharing, and giving.  Think of all the accomplishments you would want remembered when you die.  Not the salary or vacation home.  Certainly not an accumulation of wealth.  Are the aspects that we will be remembered for not all basically the same? They incorporate the things we did for others, not for ourselves.  Think of the memories we hold for those who have died: they are invariably about their contributions, not about what they accumulated.  Lesson: Life is about what we give, not what we take.

 

Thought: Saul Levinsky interpreted the meaning of the Star of David.  “While the first triangle points one way, the second triangle insists on pointing in the opposite direction.”  

Perhaps Pesah’s lesson is to conceive of life differently.

Passover and Chaos

Man lives in fear of chaos. So much do we direct the consequences of unsystematic and erratic behavior that we have structured our world in the hope that chaos can be obliterated and our lives trouble-free. In mathematics, we have a base ten, an artificial ordering the space: calendrically, monthly and yearly systems replete with checks and balances; money and possessions to create rewards for behavior and talent; perceived steady rhythms of the heart and blood pressure as indicators of health; balanced books; consistent sleeping patterns; cars that look and function alike; basic world governments, etc.. When one of these artifices breaks down, our world begins to crumble. The car emitting colored smoke, the heart developing an irregular beat, an eclipse --all these invoke great fear and agitation in humanity. It breaks down our sense of order.

The Exodus from Egypt and accompanying plagues is an event rife with chaotic occurrences.  Natural forces go berserk as the Nile turns bloody and flies infest every available space.  For Egypt, the world turns upside down.   The order and steady predictable patterns are turned on their head.  One plague makes it impossible to tell when the sun rises – it is eternal blackness.  The most frightening of them all is when the Destroyer stalks through the night, ruthlessly slaying the first born of each household.  Terror is rampant and at its apogee.

The mind cannot fathom the depth of anguish at the universe losing its balance.  Imagine.  One slight dislocation in a day, say, a beehive in the attic, is enough to instill fear and anxiety.  Here is a world, magnified to encompass an entire civilization that is haywire.

Sages throughout the millennia have been perplexed by the events of the Biblical narrative.  “Why is it,” they wonder, “that God was no merciful in freeing the slaves?”  More lives could have been spared while God thwarted the plans of the evil ones. Further, why do we consistently retell the story?  Would it not be better, more wholesome, to forget the terrible past?

The portrayal of God’s actions in the Passover story, however, is one that acts within the boundaries of nature.  God does not exceed the self-ordained limits of the universe.  He acts within them.

The vermin, cattle disease, frogs, all lie within the realm of the natural, if bizarre.  The Master of Universe does not snap His celestial fingers and changes the order of the cosmos.  He does nt inexplicably lift the enslaved from the land of enslavement. Instead, He brings “signs.” Topsy-turvy signs.  Boils on the entire populace.  Hail. Locusts.

It’s obvious that the Bible wishes to teach some lessons to Humanity about God, nature and us. The function of “signs” is for direction. The Holy One supplies directives, not a fait accompli.

Order, and the creation of order, is part of the fabric of man.  He cannot dispense with the need to self-impose strict rules and methods in dealing with his inner world and environment.  But order is, and this is crucial, God’s gift.

It is His to give: it is His to take away.  The regular tides of the ocean happen only with the consent of the Eternal. So we retell the story of when God dispossessed us of his bequest to us on Passover. It is a long epic but the stirring one. On the eve of the long tale of how God caused nature to go awry in order to give humanity a sense of who was really in charge. It is an emphatic story wherein we are commanded “that everyone feel as if God redeemed him personally from slavery.”

Passover is the experience of an imminent God, one who dwells with His people.  The festival of unleavened bread is a ceremony of reenactment. The pain and confusion of the people traumatized by God’s wrath is relived through the written word and traditional observances.  The evening follows a carefully ordered service, the impact of which is to make the participant feel like an eyewitness to this age-old event. Passover is the time of understanding and empathy with those who suffer for the price of freedom (and no revolution can happen without losers) connection with the Divine, who elected to let humanity choose between good and evil and the importance of natural order --  our lives would be terror without it. In fact, they were.

Valley of Dried Bones

God lifts up Ezekiel and carries him to the “Valley of the Dry Bones.” There, the prophet gazes about himself and sees a vast human graveyard. As far as the eye can see, remains of dried up bones cover the entire valley.  And God speaks:

"Can these bones live again?”

Ezekiel thinks and responds,

“Oh Lord God, only you know.”

Then, God commands Ezekiel to prophecy over the bones with these words: “Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord: thus says the Lord God to these bones: ‘Behold, I will cause breath to enter you and you shall live. And I will lay sinew upon you, and cover you with skin and place breath in you and you shall live.  And you shall know that I am the Lord’.”

The prophet speaks these words and a tremendous noise is heard.  It rises from all around as the bones reassemble and flesh begins to cover the newly re-formed bodies.  Then, in a second command, the winds of the earth stir and flow in to the lifeless dead.  They come alive, an army of the resurrected.

In this remarkable episode, God, through Ezekiel speaks to the people in exile. These are the ones who lost their homes; these have lost their land. The blackened skies would not always be dark but would ultimately reveal hope. The exile would end and people would return to their ancestral home. There maybe sorrow but there must also be hope.

Awed into silence, Ezekiel hears the voice of God once more. His words are the message to mankind, not just to his community.

"Behold I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves, O my people; and I will bring you to the land of Israel. …And I will put my spirit into you and you shall live…”

Life must be full of hope. God gave Ezekiel the tools to teach this crucial lesson. Israel knew that eventually they would be returned to their homeland. Just as the bones knit together with flesh and sinew and fused with the breath of life, we are meant to understand the underlying message of hope.

The parable of Ezekiel is powerfully relevant.  It is this stirring message that we read every Passover.  We reaffirm the prophet’s words each year as we sit down to recite the narrative of the Haggadah. We are, as Yehudah HaLevi called us, “the people of hope.”  Time has tempted us to squash our will to live as free people, free Jews.  Throughout the long years of persecution and hatred we have survived with an almost burning fervor not to relinquish our heritage. Despite the long history of anti-Semitism we refuse to become pessimists; but instead we are the people of HaTikvah, “The hope.”  We end every service with the Aleynu prayer which contains the words, “Therefore we hope…”.

“Hell,” wrote A.J. Cronig, “is a place where one has ceased to hope.”

Pity those who have lost ability to help. In hope, lies life. Without it, we are but bones.

Thinking About Pesah

According to Kabbalah, the mystic tradition, there are 10 powers that G-d employs in the universe. These 10 are G-d’s attributes.

On erev Pesah, the eve before the festival commences, we have an unusual custom.  Called bedikat hametz, it is the search for vestiges of forgotten bread around our home.  Until this moment we frenetically shop, clean, invite, gather our Haggadot, shine the silver, set the table, and cook.  Then, while the soup is still boiling away on the stove we engage in the final search for leaven.  We do this because the Torah explicitly mandates, “No bread shall be seen in your home.” (Exodus 13)

Here is the ancient tradition:

We scatter ten pieces of bread in our home.  Then uttering a blessing we light a candle, take a plate and feather and then proceed to search through our home to find these ten pieces of hidden bread (in addition to any other leaven hiding in our home).

Gathering up the pieces our mind focuses on realizing the Divine energy that inheres in everywhere and us.   Part of the religious journey that calls to us is seeking the holy within.  This powerful act of bedikat hametz symbolizes the deep yearning we have to connect with G-d to fully realize and own our liberation.

Whether we need to awaken our soul to the desperate cries for redemption throughout the world or simply open our soul to the Supernal Being that we want to fill us this quiet mitzvah has the potential to connect us to the potential of what we can become.

May the Holy, blessed be He, be a recognized Presence at your table this Pesah.

JEWTALK

JEWTALK \joo-tok\ n. 1: vocabulary employed by those of Mosaic heritage.  2:  Specific words meant to convey affiliation with religious group.

Here is a short list:

Temple is out.  That is reform.  Synagogue is in.  That is conservative.  Shul is in or out.  could be orthodox or conservative.  Shteibel is also out, micro-Hasidic.

Prayer is out.  Having its roots is the French, prier (to beg) we are now in a more worldly understanding of God and our connection ans to the Deity. Davenning is in.  It carries a resonance that touches the soul.  See also tefilah.

Skullcap has bitten the dust along with prayer shawl (the only people that use that are wannabes who do not know any other names).  The words are kippa or yarmulke; tallit or tallis.

Cholent was killed by cardiologists.  Other decedents are gribinets and veronikas.  May their memory endure as a blessing.

Blintzes.  When will the French finally admit that a crepe is a fancy word for blintze?

Tefillin.  Now is making a comeback after decades of vacillating with phylacteries (really?  Most people cannot even pronounce the word.  Sounds like a communicable disease).

Happy New Year, is repeated twice yearly (am I really getting older at twice the rate?).  Shanah Tovah has an authentic ring to it.  The Yom Kippur analogue, g’mar tov, is lagging way behind.

Krishma sounds suspicious if not downright blasphemous  We think of toga toting zealots with pony tails.  Yet, in years past this was how they referred to kriat shma, or just plain old shma.

Pentateuch sounds like a five-sided tuchas.  Definitely out.  You will not even find this one on Jeopardy!

Tzedakah wins.  Charity loses.  Charity is hierarchical; superiors doling out help to inferiors.  Tzedaka, coming from Hebrew tzedek, means justice.  Prediction: charity will continue to be used until Neil Sedaka makes comeback.

Passover is edging toward Tabernacles and Pentecost (both of which sound more Christian than Jewish).  Pesach and Shavuot are in.

This Pesach

We have grown up in freedom.  We can say what we want to say, act within the boundaries of propriety (sometimes going a bit too far) because we are free.  It is very difficult to imagine what it would be like to live without that gift.  It is hard to imagine what it must be like to live in a totalitarian regime where every move is monitored and for the slightest infraction you can be thrown into prison.  There are dozens of modern-day examples.

Anywhere between 20 and 30 million people are slaves TODAY.  26% of that number involves children.   This number does not take into account more than 200,000,000 children working full time, for pennies.  It is entirely possible that children in Indonesia made the shoes you are wearing.  Children as young as five, are sent down into dank mines because they are able to squeeze into small places.  Some girls are sold or kidnapped as wives.  Remember the 200 captured in Nigeria?

It is stated by our sages, of blessed memory, that the idea of exploitation begins with a disparity in how people are viewed:

“That the master should not eat white bread and the slave eat course bread; that the master should not drink old wine and the slave drink new wine; that the master should not sleep on a feather mattress and the slave on straw….”  -Talmud, Kiddushin 20

Wherever there is inequality – when some deserve better than others - there follows forms of slavery. 

This is the essence of Pesach.  We remember what it means to have been a slave.  We are reminded that God hates slavery.  It is the Holy One who redeems the Children of Israel, our ancestors, from the torment of bondage.  It is He who wreaked havoc on a civilization because the Egyptians behaved uncivilly.

When we feel the power of freedom on Pesach and weep for the cruelly tormented in our time we have performed half the task that Passover demands.  The other half in found in the passage we sing on Yom Kippur from Isaiah:

Is such the fast I desire,
A day for men to starve their bodies???….
⁶ No, this is the fast I desire:
To unlock the fetters of wickedness,
And untie the cords of the yoke
To let the oppressed go free;
To break off every yoke.
⁷ It is to share your bread with the hungry,
And to take the wretched poor into your home;
When you see the naked, to clothe him,
And not to ignore your own kin.

⁸ Then shall your light burst through like the dawn
And your healing spring up quickly;
….⁹ Then, when you call, the Lord will answer;
When you cry, He will say: Here I am.  –JPS trans.

What is the prophet telling us?  The question most often asked is “Where is God when good people suffer?”  Remarkably, Isaiah teaches that the Holy Presence is among us when we continue the mission that He began.  God says, “heneni” when we bring freedom to the oppressed.