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.

Purim: the Real Story

Winter has neared its end. We have stayed indoors a good while longer than we would have wished. Days have been short, too short.  While nights plunged us into an abyss, which even the sun cannot seem to dispel, we celebrate this time of Purim, the arrival of hope. Yes, many of the trees are still bare but before long we will find ourselves out of doors celebrating with the emergence of animal and plant life.  An occasional cold wind may still blow but it’s harsh force has been taken away.

Purim tells the story of the release from the grip of a tyrant. Haman wanted to exterminate the Jews. He was bent, even to his own personal detriment, on the destruction of that, "certain people." It’s a frightening and realistic story, one that we have heard far too often.

 

The story of Esther also reveals a light, flippant side. We drink. More than we should. Synagogue decorum disappears. We smile, laugh and make fun of the whole story and ourselves by dressing up in costume, holding beauty pageants, parades shouting and banging our feet, hands and gragers whatever we hear the wicked name mentioned.

But the laughter is not all full-hearted, unrelieved joy. It is more through the laughter; one that comes not from the heart but from a dark foreboding. For such a bloody story, full of intrigue and ending in death, a wholesome purging laughter is not possible.

 

God seemingly has no role as we read the scroll of Esther. The Holy One’s name does not appear a single time. Instead, we find Queen Vashti being ordered to disrobe before the king and his cronies. She was to appear before him attired only in her crown. Naturally, Vashti she refuses and is deposed. A contest then ensues for the next royal consort.

 

From among all the eligible women in the kingdom, Esther is chosen. For months she prepares herself, preening, perfuming, bathing for the day when she will bed the king Achashverosh. All the while we are perplexed: the king is not Jewish.  Doesn't anyone object? Where are the voices of dissent? There are none.  Is she the sacrifice the Jewish people are willing to surrender for the sake of peace?

 

We read how Esther gathers her courage to confront King with her identity and the plot to kill her and the Jewish people. Is it a dangerous moment for her because she has been a Marrano, a hidden Jew, until now. No one, including Haman, suspects that Esther is Jewish. In fact, he lusts after Esther and tries to seduce her.  Overcoming her fears, Esther confronts the king and saves her people.  Then the bloodletting commences.  Beginning with Haman, he is impaled. His sons are likewise put to death along with all the enemies wanting to wipe out the Jewish people.   Seventy-five thousand in all!

 No wonder God is absent from the bloody and bawdy tale of Esther. Purim is a holiday of excess; too much laughter, too much drinking, too many tall tales, too much blood and too many innuendos. The absence of God is dangerous. So the rabbis decreed the 14^th of Adar as a day of listening to the Megilla being read once in the evening again in the morning, giving gifts to our friends into the needy (mishloach manot) and fasting before the holiday commences.

 

More: In preparing for Purim we read on the preceding Shabbat a special section called Shabbat Zachor, the Shabbat of Memory.  In the last aliya we recall the story of the evil Amalek, whose sole desire was to destroy the Jews in the time of Moses, as Haman would later imitate in his day. We recall the evil that has menaced us in the past. The story is not simply about Amalek and Haman; it’s about every despot who has taken it upon himself to read the earth of us.

Such ideas are not lightly dismissed. They make us introspective. As the Torah itself states, “The Lord will be at war with Amalek throughout all time.”  How well we have learned this in the past century!

Purim

There is one distinct tradition that states that Purim will still be observed after the messiah arrives.  While all other holidays will be erased and forgotten the one remaining holiday is one of the least important and most bizarre.  Imagine that; In the whole world there will be only one holiday remaining – one of hamentaschen, masks and Jim Beam.

How is it that the sages arrive at such a radical idea?  A hint comes from our holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur (whose actual full name is Yom ha-Kippurim). Translated from the original name, Yom ha-Kippurim literally means “the day that is like Yom [Ki]ppur” or “the Day that is like Purim.”  The day that is like Purim??  The fact is that we fast on one day and feast on the other.  We drink and raucously laugh on one while observing an austere day of atonement on the other.  These are not insignificant differences.

So, nu (“nu” is Yiddish for what does this mean)?  

Let me ask the question from a different perspective: How is Yom Kippur not like Purim?

A parable:

An air raid.  Sirens are shrieking.  People run panicked at the sound.  Haifa wakes up and scrambles out of bed.  In one apartment Mr. and Mrs. Lipshitz quickly dress and run to the air raid shelter.  Suddenly, Mrs. Lipshitz stops, and starts back to their home.

“Wait, Milton!” she shouts as she rushes into their bedroom.

Meanwhile her husband is aghast, “Are you nuts Sylvia?  This is a real air raid!”

“I cannot leave without my teeth,” says Mrs. Lipshitz.

“Your teeth??  What do you think the Arabs are going to drop on us?  Gefilte fish?”

 

Moral: Sometimes looking at an argument from a completely different point of view can bring about new understanding.

In case you did not like that one, here’s another possible moral: Never trust a smart-alecky husband.

Or how about this: Purim is just like Yom Kippur, upside down.

Alternative ending: She actually went back for the bonbons.

 

Have you ever noticed (for those of a “certain age”) that the Fuller Brush salesmen look remarkably like the used car salesmen we see today?  I have a theory that the Fuller Brush folks all went to SingSing after the company went bankrupt.  When used car dealerships discovered this untapped talent sitting in cells playing pinochle they retooled them to sell cars.

Thinking about odd behaviors, to those who would question the existence of a Creator, if there is no God why bother to shave?

While I am on the subject of paradoxes, did it ever occur to you that the story of Purim is confusing and extraordinarily difficult to understand?  It does not have a clear beginning, obvious moral or even mention God in the whole megillah!

The story cannot be understood even on the simplest level.  Think about Mordecai, an unemployed layabout who sits by the castle every day, doing what?  Perhaps he had a shoe shop set up near the gates of the city.  That would explain the name Shushan, wouldn’t it?  It’s an old Persian joke that they called the capital city after Mordecai’s shoe emporium.  Back then whenever people passed Mordecai’s place it was a real knee-slapper and folks fell about laughing.  In fact, the two ministerial servants, Bigtan and Teresh were not quislings of the king, they were Mordecai’s marketing firm.  

The chief executive of footwear was Vashti, of course.  She visited Shushan annually for their yearly shoe conventions (all wearing those funny fezzes with the tassels bobbing all around).

So, as we celebrate Yom Kippur, er hat was supposed to be Purim,  at the end of this month together, make sure to put your best foot forward, and don’t forget your dentures.

 

 

Listen More

In heder (now called “Hebrew School”) the rabbi visited various classes.  The teacher wanting to please the head rabbi posed a simple question to one of the students.

“Shmuel, who wrote Psalms?”

Shmuel was very agitated and blurted out, “Teacher, I didn’t do it!”

The rabbi, sensing the boy’s angst said to the teacher,  “Why did you pick on that poor boy?”

The teacher, also a nervous wreck, answered, “I know he would not do such a thing.  I know his parents very well and they are respectable people.”

 

Sometimes it seems like we speak different languages.  We talk across one another, without really listening. Much the same has been mirrored by political leaders, the media and parroted by the public.  The pandemic has made life difficult but the attitudes of not listening and validating one another exacerbates the tension that is felt across America, perhaps the whole world.

 

Over the past few years we have seen and heard much screaming at and about one another; labeling others as inferior, not as smart or intellectually handicapped; refusing to hear the other… Arguing over who is right is most often inconsequential.  Ask yourself: How often have you changed someone’s mind because of your position and argument?  Not often is my guess and experience.

 

Yet we seem to not want to learn the lesson that life has tried to teach us time and again.  That is not to say we should remain silent when a wrong is being committed but most times we grow red in the face over opinions over who you voted for, support or issues of belief.

 

During these long months of insecurity with the pandemic raging we have all witnessed the fighting over diminishing crumbs of what we believe to be right and wrong. In the final analysis, those words will have no lasting positive impact.  That is not to say it will not have an impact, it just may not be a good one.

 

A person who tries to trust in God while leaving himself a backup plan is like a person who tries to learn how to swim but insists on keeping one foot on the ground.  –Rabbi Yosef Yozel Hurwitz

 

I often refer back to the famous words of King Solomon who, when conflicted by opposing ideas, uttered, “This too shall pass.” And so it has.  And so it will.  Just as surely as you are evidence of God’s providence so will the future be steered by something more powerful than us.

 

Children forever want to grow up so they can be independent and espouse and express their own ideas.  Closer to reality is that we all are still children in need to growing up, knowing that each person carries his or her own truth and we are not likely to change their mind.

 

Consider.  Many people want to know what the Talmud is.  It is the search for equality and balance that can only be achieved when we listen and respect one another.  It deals with such mundane subjects as lost objects, rental agreements, damages, speech, life cycle milestones and oaths.  The goal of the sixty tomes is hearing all sides of each issue.  That does not mean there is always agreement (in fact the opposite is closer to the truth) but it does demand listening and respecting.  

 

That is not difficult is it?   Yes, it is.  It is arduous to sublimate our yetser ha-ra, our egotistical sense of entitlement, and give others space to be heard, validated and witnessed.

 

If we have learned anything from these past months I hope that it is that we have gained a vital lesson about growing morally and spiritually by speaking and demanding less and listening and understanding more.

The Fight Endures, As do We

This is Hanukkah.

We recount the story of Matityahu and his five sons who we called the Maccabees. These untrained, but God inspired, zealots gathered around them a group of like-minded people who took up a struggle against overwhelming odds. Victory came to their hands, although at a high price.

In the struggle of the forces of good and evil, good ultimately wins even when the cause seems hopeless. The war of the Maccabean guerillas against the larger forces of evil is not an ancient event 2500 years old but a contemporary one. We have seen in our own lifetime the martyrdom of millions to a fight against unmitigated evil. The lives of men women and children were devoured in a savage attempt to destroy our people, faith and all that is humane.  In face of degradation and physical torture of six million martyrs, stories of immense strength appear.

 

The great Rabbi Leo Baeck was one of the leaders of the Jewish community in pre-war Germany.  As the head of the Reichsvertretung, the representative body of German Jews, he had the respect and admiration of the Jewish population.  Even through the beginning of the war, he received many invitations to serve as rabbi abroad, turning them all down.  With knowledge of what lay ahead, Baeck declared he would stay there as long as there was a minyan in Germany.  Ultimately, with his people, he was sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp in 1943.

 

At the beginning of the Nazi reign of terror, Dr. Baeck accepted the challenge of fighting for the lives and dignity of his fellow Jews.  He would staunchly remain with them, no matter what the consequences.  Their fate would be his fate; their story, his story.

 

When it meant death to ask one’s mind publicly, Dr. Baeck spoke of life and of determination  to survive. He composed prayer to be recited throughout Germany on Yom Kippur. Knowing full well that Gestapo agents were stationed at services he asked for prayer nonetheless be said everywhere on that holy night:

”Let us despise the slanderous and calumnies directed against us and our faith. We bow our head before God, and remain upright and erect before man…”

 

Good inevitably triumphs over evil. Rabbi Beck was a towering example of justice and faith in the midst of the inferno.

Rabbi Leo Baeck lived before the conflagration and survived the holocaust. The liberating forces found a week but still powerful man in Theresienstadt in 1945.

 

On Hanukkah we begin by lighting a single feeble flame. We continue throughout the next week to add more lights, one after the other, until we have a shining beacon. Isn’t this a wonderful symbol?  We demonstrate on Hanukkah the power of the Jewish spirit. It will not be quenched. It will only grow adding additional lights to causes all to glow with newfound strength. We had inspiration to inspiration until the light of the human soul glows with faith in God.

And has 50,000 Jews came out to greet Simhat Torah in Moscow in 1986, Jews always understand the powerful symbol that moves them. Defying the government, risking their livelihood, knowing informants alert in the crowd, they fought on. Jewish martyrdom is not over but we shall always triumph.

”Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit alone, says the Lord of Hosts.”