Waiting for Elijah

 Opening the door for Elijah was a highlight of our Seder evening, an experience we treasured ever since childhood. That full goblet waited for the prophet, and we couldn’t see him, but somehow the level of the wine seemed to drop. Just a little, didn’t it? Eliyahu hanavi, we sang happily. We dramatized the tradition that told us he was here to announce that the Messiah, son of David, was coming.

This year when we enter the closing days of Passover, when that same tradition predicts that when the long-awaited deliverer does arrive, it will be on one of these days.

And what will happen then? 

The Jerusalem Talmud in the tractate Sanhedrin presents rabbinic teachings about the week when the Son of David will arrive, and what disaster will take place each day of that week. Deluge, earthquake, etc. Nature, too, will do its worst to bring the Messiah.

The Tzemah Tzedek, was asked why David’s song is read on the Seventh day of Pesach, rather than the Song of Deborah, since the women rejoiced more than the men when the Red Sea split. He answered: “The Haftarah is the Song of David because on the final days of Pesach there is a revelation of Mashiach, who is a descendant of David. Thus, it is to honor Mashiach that we recite the Song of David.”

What he will do, that no one else could do, would be to cure this planet of its trouble, its corruption and its wars.  

We need this now. more than ever.

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.

Ode to a Synagogue

Rabbi Akiva was asked, “Since your God loves the needy, why doesn’t He care for them Himself?

The sage responded, “God, the father of rich and poor alike wants his children to help each other. The Lord desires a world of love.”

Our purpose is not merely to survive.  Survival itself is not noteworthy or even worthy of comment.

So what then is our purpose?

We celebrate life, those who preceded us and upon whose shoulders we stand. We celebrate marriages when we sweated under the chairs of the bride and groom. We celebrate the warm friendships on Shabbat morning.  The evening services where we come together to console the bereft at the house of death. We celebrate the countless baby namings and Brit Milahs. We remember the little ones who spilled wine on the carpet who now have children of their own. We relish the Passover Haggaddas whose pages are stained a dark hue. We remember Friday evening dinners. We revel in recalling High Holy Days and our precious relationships.  The loves, the tiffs and the forgiveness.

The Puritans called marriage “the little church within the church.” Every day without letup our synagogue functions as a sacred place where love and forgiveness are continually recycled. Just like marriage. That is what community is.

George Hallas, owner of the Chicago Bears, work well into his 80s.  He was once asked, “George, at your age what are you doing here working?” Halas responded, “It's only work if there's some place else you'd rather be.”

There is no other place we would rather be than standing shoulder to shoulder with devoted members of our sacred community. Our children have played together.  They have learned in the classrooms.  All of us have grown up together and fought for the sake of goodness throughout the years.  After all this, we still say, there is no place we rather be.

There is a reason we call the place where we pray a "Sanctuary."  It is a place of respite from harm, malcontent and soothing our roughest edges.  When we gather later this month to celebrate our freedom from bondage, remember that it is not our survival that brings us together.  We collect ourselves to remember that we must aid one another.  Our task is to bind the wounds of our sisters and brothers.

Invite someone new to your seder.
Focus on the lesson God wants you to learn from the Haggadda's narrative and then be that change.   Pay for someone you do not know to come to the congregational seder.  

Rabbi Akiva was right, “God, the father of rich and poor alike wants his children to help each other. The Lord desires a world of love. This is our charter.

Do Not Pass Over

Frustration takes no effort. It comes easily. People do not have to be taught to be impatient, angry, or bitter. It happens moment-to-moment at stop lights. On the other hand, forbearance does take effort. Kindness often requires restraint and understanding.

Think of all the evil perpetuated throughout history. The last century has seen unprecedented murder. The lesson? Intolerance and evil comes naturally to us.

Pesah has many lessons to teach and one of them is the positive transmittal of love, dedication, and connection to things larger and more expansive than ourselves.

How many times is the idea repeated during these holy days that we have an obligation to reformat the way that we treat one another? From the most basic element that we were once slaves and therefore must have compassion to the underling to the tale of the four children we reemphasize the notion that we are the holders of a great truth that MUST not be forgotten or else we are truly lost. What is that truth?

Radio personality Earl Nightingale once told the story of an angry father yelling at his 12-year old son, “Why don’t you grow up??!”

Struggling to control his tears the boy replied between sobs, “That’s what I’m trying to do!”

One of the biggest tasks assigned to us a Jews is not to destroy. And what greater acts of destruction is there than the destruction of potential? In a moment of frustration which flares into anger we can undo years of good will. A word uttered in anger can lay waste to a career; it can cause a marital rift; it can make a breach in a family that is not repairable.

The power of Passover is seen when the basic cell of humanity, families, come together and look past all the wounds and hurts they have sustained. It is also when we are commanded to invite the stranger into our homes to partake of the Pesah celebration. Their status and education are irrelevant as we were all slaves. It was not just the intelligentsia or rich that was targeted for enslavement or murder. We are “one” on this night. In other words, we expand our small circle of blood relations to encompass a broader love.

Rabban Gamliel instructs us to “feel as if we were redeemed personally:” Why is feeling redeemed so vital? When we were freed we rejoiced. We fell into the arms of one another and wept- whether in the DP camps of Europe or declared independent in 1948 or crossing the Sea of Reeds towards freedom we ignored our differences and swept away ire and disappointments.

Now what if this kind of feeling would be present all our days? Surely, the Messiah would enter when we open our doors at the seder.