Passover 2021: Pulling the boat out of the mud

By now, most of us likely have heard about the EverGiven, a massive Japanese owned container ship that is stuck and blocking the Suez Canal.  The Suez Canal connects the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, and is a vital artery for international shipping.  If only Moses could raise his staff and part the waters again to free the ship and reopen the lane!

 

But on this Erev Pesach, with the first Seder tonight, for the moment, the lens will be both Aaron and his sons and Moses, all at the same time.

 

Moses will be involved though, he’ll be the agent who consecrates Aaron and his sons as kohanim, as the priests who will perform the rituals in the Mishkan, the portable holy place our ancestors will take with them through 40 years in the wilderness.

 

Unlike the splitting of the sea, the consecration of the priests is not a miracle.  It happens with a detailed set of instructions about preparations before the ceremony and what happens during the ceremony.  There are special clothes for the priest candidates to wear, and the holy place is complete and has itself already been consecrated.  

 

The contrast with the scene at the sea could not be more striking.  At the Sea there is fear, confusion and noise, crashing waves, the rumble of approaching chariots, and although Moses has faith, God tells the people to walk forward toward the water even before it parts.  

 

At the Mishkan, there is silence and the comfort of procedure.  There is fear, but a different kind of fear, a holy fear of the candidates hoping they can withstand the restrictions until the holy moment arrives. 

 

There is one element in common in the fear experienced in both locations, the fear of life and death.  At the sea our ancestors see the powerful Egyptian chariots closing in, ready to strike.  At the Mishkan, the priest candidates know that if they trespass in the holy places, they expose themselves to God’s requiting that offence with harshness.  

 

For this reason, the priests receive an ancient form of protection.  During the ceremony, Moses daubs of Aaron and his two sons with the blood of a ram, on their right earlobe, their right thumb, and the big toe of their right foot.

 

 Jacob Milgrom, the great scholar of the Book of Leviticus, explains in the ancient world this ritual daubing, of the extremities, the vulnerable parts of the body, both purified the individual and warded off demonic forces.  Abraham Ibn Ezra observes in this ritual daubing the blood atones for Aaron’s soul, through the spirit of life which it formerly contained, nefesh tachat nefesh, a soul for a soul.  

 

We notice the parallel with the Exodus story we will tell tonight.  The night our ancestors leave Egypt they daub the doorposts and lintels of their homes with lamb’s blood, the doorway that, like the earlobe or big toe, is the outer part, the extremity of the home, the part that faces out to the world, and where the world meets the people who live inside.

 

But there is a key difference here between the daubing of the priest and of the Israelites homes according to the Midrash.  We usually think of our ancestors smearing the blood on the outside facing part of the door, visible to passersby on the street.  Rashi explains, based on the Midrash, this traditional view is incorrect.

 

He explains our ancestors smeared the lamb’s blood on the inside part of the lintel and doorposts, such that anyone outside the home would not know about it at all.  Why does the Midrash suggest the blood is on the inside part of the doorway?...Because God does not need the blood on the outside of the door to know which homes belong to Israelites and which to Egyptians, according to the Midrash, God already knows.  

 

The point of the smearing is then not to identify the homes to the outside world, but rather to serve God’s way of beginning to instruct the soon to be free Israelites in having faith in God’s instruction.  God wants to see the people doing this mitzvah, this instruction, and then God will pass-over and go on with the night’s tasks.

 

While our Seders still happen indoors, just like the first Seder on our night of freedom in Egypt, over the centuries the Seder has evolved to give us the courage to open our doors to those in need and to open our doors with messages we want to communicate to the world.  At the beginning of our Seder we say kol dichfin yatay ve’yachul, all who are hungry let them come and eat.  Would that we could do this again soon, and open up our Seders to welcome people looking for connection into our homes.  Over the years prior to the pandemic, both my wife and I have run into people at the Supermarket shopping for Passover, started up a friendly conversation, asked about their plans, and then invited them to our house if they were looking for a Seder, and the same has happened through the synagogue, or work. 

 

And we open the door to welcome Elijah, Eliyahu Ha’Navi, either traditionally with a defiant message of strength and will against our enemies, or an updated version of hope for spreading love and God’s spirit of compassion to the world.  

 

The Seder, whether the indoors part or the parts where we turn outward to the world, challenges us – asks us to be sensitive, aware, to be courageous, to never give in to injustice, and to live in strength since, as we unfortunately are all too aware, there are Pharaoh type forces today, just in a different form.  We cannot take our Judaism, our Jewish communities for granted, in a metaphorical way, we either all leave Egypt together or we do not leave at all.  If one is still enslaved, we all are.  The Seder is a statement that family is important, our and that our tradition and its teachings are still relevant.  It a statement that justice requires both faith, courage, and often, some level of sacrifice.  

 

And so we return to the Ever Given, stuck in the Suez Canal, try to imagine one of us pulling the chain to move the boat, and then one more, and another, until we’re all pulling together, in the same direction, then, if we could work like that on all our challenges, we could address them united, supporting and strengthening one another, and we could free whatever and whoever is stuck, anytime anywhere – and, in real life, shipping through the canal affects all of us.

 

I’m thinking about rolling up my sleeves and heading over to the canal, anyone care to join me?

 

The Day In-Between: Shabbat Before Passover 2021

When I lived in Jerusalem, and on shorter visits, I always smiled, even chuckled inside as I passed the Great Synagogue.  I think they should have changed the name to a great synagogue, because after all, Bnai Tzedek, and so many others, are great synagogues, too!

It happens that, similarly to the large Jerusalem synagogue, our tradition calls the Shabbat right before Pesach Shabbat Ha’Gadol -- for many reasons.  We will hear the word ha’yom ha’gadol, the great day, in tomorrow’s Haftarah, looking toward the hoped-for day in the future when Elijah, Eliyahu Hanavi will announce the coming of the Messiah, a day of redemption and renewal that parallels our liberation from Egypt.

 

And this Shabbat is a transition into Passover.  We officially searched for chametz and so technically we do not eat bread now but we also cannot eat the matzah for Passover yet.  

 

This type of moment is called a liminal period, a time of change, a time of ambiguity.  It’s like the times when we used to be in the airport, waiting for our flight.  We’re not at home, but we’re not at our destination yet.  

 

So many of us this Shabbat are eating Egg Matzah, known in Hebrew as matzah ashirah, enriched matzah.  Similar to the liminal time, it’s not one thing or another, egg matzah is not chametz but it’s also not official Passover matzah.  It’s somewhere in between.

 

As scholar Jacob Milgrom teaches, the same is true of the kohanim, the priests, we will read about in tomorrow’s Torah reading, the priests who will be officially consecrated as priests.  They have to wait, in the limbo of the liminal time, secluded in the court of the Tent of Meeting, in silence, separated from everyone, only accompanied by their fear of breaking any of these taboos that might disqualify them from serving.  

 

While liminal time is fraught with anxiety, uncertainty, and vulnerability, it is also a time for reflection, for stepping off the treadmill of life and checking in with ourselves, and with people we care about.  The collective discomfort gives us permission to check-in on the teshuvah we started seven months ago at Rosh Hashanah, see how we’re doing on the promises and plans we made on empty bellies at Yom Kippur, as we welcome in the spring Jewish New Year on a full stomach.

 

While we may feel anxious or vulnerable in this transitional moment, God asks us to step forward with courage and confidence when we journey out into the new life beyond it.  When our ancestors reach the edge of the Sea of Reeds, and see the waves crashing, they are scared, and God, noticing Moses’ is speaking at length to the people, says, Why are you crying out to me?  Tell the people to move forward.

 

I pray for us that when we move on from Passover this year, we will hear God’s voice and step forward with confidence, with bitahon, with trust that no matter what we face, God travels with us, and though still constrained as we are by the pandemic we are free in so many other ways, how will we celebrate this physical and spiritual freedom this year?  

 

Shabbat Parah: Cleansing Home & Spirit before Passover

 

One result of all the time we are at home during the pandemic is we are also, as George Carlin said so well, around our stuff more often.  It is much more difficult to avoid and ignore papers piling up, and we begin to wonder what’s in those boxes we haven’t opened in years.  Trash and recycling collection companies across the country have been overwhelmed with the amount of materials left on the street during this past year.

 

We feel a need, admittedly some of us more than others, to keep an organized living space and periodically to empty and refresh our spaces, to remove what is unnecessary or unused.  We may even find things we really want or need as we search through our items.

 

In these weeks as we get ready for Passover, we begin a similar journey of spiritual cleansing or purification that parallels the physical cleaning we will do as we remove Chametz before the holiday begins.

 

Both the home organizing and the Passover preparation work help us to feel free of excess physical and spiritual weight that burden our muscles and crowd our spaces, making us feel constricted.  Passover is about the Exodus, and the Hebrew word for Egypt, the place we want to leave, is Mitzrayim, from the root tzar, meaning narrow, or constricted.  

 

To aid us in the spiritual purification, we will study tomorrow morning during the Torah reading the ancient ritual of using the ashes of the red heifer to purify those who came into contact with death.  That there was, once upon a time, such a powerful remedy for the most powerful impurity reminds us to do our own spiritual cleansing at this key transitional time, a transition of two kinds – Passover is both about leaving Egypt and starting a new life, and, it is the beginning of a New Year, when the cycle of the major festivals begins:  Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.  

 

But in this work spiritual self-reflection and renewal, just like anytime we write something, we may not be able to step outside of ourselves to see what really needs editing.  I’ve spoken often about how in high school I resisted showing my writing to my Mom, former English teacher in New York city schools, because I thought the first draft was great.  Needless to say, when God created the world, we all remember what happened with the flood not long afterwards.

 

And it’s likely that something seemingly small or insignificant to us may escape our attention.  Allow me to share an example from the great Rav Yosef Yozel Hurwitz:

 

In the place where he spent the summer, R. Yosef Yozel placed his own mezuzah.  On taking it down at the end of his stay, he looked at the parchment and turned white.  It contained a tear in the letter Aleph, which evidently had come from nailing the mezuzah to the door without sufficient care.  He remarked later, “A person can make the mistake of thinking themselves a tzaddik (meaning, a righteous person), when in truth the person is missing the aleph.”

 

The aleph is especially meaningful as we reflect on where we are spiritually before Passover because the letter aleph is a silent letter.  The aleph represents both the parts of ourselves we want to see grow and evolve, the ones we know about, but also the silent parts of ourselves that we don’t even admit to our consciousness.  The message of this time is if we avoid these aleph things, then we’ll have to try to leave Egypt burdened by their weight, and we can only carry so much.

 

Let’s take this Shabbat as a time to reflect on what we’d like to leave behind in Mitzrayim, the proverbial Egypt, the place of narrowness, the parts of ourselves that make us feel like we’re living in one of those micro apartments in New York or Tokyo where you can touch both walls if you reach out your arms.  

 

After Shabbat, try writing down three things:  behaviors, ways of thinking, frustrations and the like that we’d like to leave in Egypt, in the previous year as we get ready to see new color and growth in nature, a spring of green and possibility even under the shadow of the pandemic.  And when it comes time to burn and dispose of the chametz for Passover, burn or dispose of that paper with the chametz and we can all leave Egypt a little lighter, with a deeper breath of free fresh air.