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.
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