The Olympic spirit and the Book of Deuteronomy: "They shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow faint." (Isaiah 40)

The opening ceremonies of the Tokyo Olympics are all done.  The parade of nations, lighting of the torch, and the games are officially open.  I’ve always loved the Olympics games, the way so many countries gather in one place for sport, to meet and greet, to show that as a species we can be competitive without being in life and death conflict, that at least for a few weeks people can put aside politics, ideology, and historical baggage to do something fun and inspiring together.  

This morning I heard a news story about a unique Olympic team, a team of 29 refugees, who are competing on behalf of 80 million refugees worldwide.  This team includes a woman, a judo competitor, who escaped from war ravaged Syria and made it to the Netherlands where she started a new life, continued training, and eventually brought over her husband and family.  

 

In spite of all this inspiration, and all the perspiration about whether there should be a games this year or not, with the looming Covid crisis with the Delta surge here and abroad, the games still represent an ideal, a hoped for state of relationships between countries and people.  The Games are neither convenient nor cheap to put on, even without a worldwide Covid problem, and terrorism and politics have impacted the games, just a few examples, in Munich in 1972, and in the Moscow games in 1980, and the LA games in 1984.  

 

So the Games, and the vision they offer, are fragile, and they represent nothing less than a risk that’s taken every couple of years, a risk to the country that commits to put them on, a risk for the athletes who dedicated their lives to try and get a spot on the national teams, a risk to the fans to attend – remember Atlanta 1996, we’re just a few days shy from 25 years since that bombing attack.

 

But I hope we can agree that the Games are a worthwhile risk, the same way God, and Moses, believe that leading our ancestors over the Jordan to a new life in the Promised Land is a worthwhile risk.  The entire Book we’re reading now through the end of summer asks the question of whether the special relationship between God and our people can survive us crossing the Jordan and living settled amongst the many people of the land, and whether, once we’re building farms, planting crops, and tending flocks we will have the same closeness to the Invisible God of the universe we did when we depended on the manna falling from the sky or the miraculous water coming up from the desert ground.  

 

It’s a big risk, especially because so many times since we went  free from Egypt we’ve challenged and rebelled, and returned, and then challenged again.

 

And so we can only see the lessons of these summer Torah readings as God having faith in us, giving us the spiritual and legal tools to keep the fire of our faith and connection burning from one generation to the next.

This way of thinking suggests a question we need to ask ourselves, a question that Olympic athletes undoubtedly ask themselves every day of training, and every day of competition, while others – God, coaches, family, friends, fans may have faith in us, do we have faith in ourselves?  

 

This Shabbat, the first after Tisha B’av is called Shabbat Nachamu, The Shabbat of comfort, and the message is while we may lose faith in ourselves, or struggle, or fall, while hope may be elusive, there is nothing more inspiring at an Olympics, or in life, than the person who gets pushed, or falls, or falls behind, and who nonetheless finds a way to finish the race, and that by opening our heart to reaching out the invisible and ever present Source of Strength in the universe, we may begin to find the will and to rise, as the prophet Isaiah tells us with words that, in my view, speak to our ultimate source of will whether on the playing field or on the pathways of life, “Adonai, God of the Universe, the Creator, never grows faint or weary…God gives strength to the weary, fresh vigor to the spent…Those who trust in Ehyeh, the Source of Being, shall renew their strength as eagles grow new feathers, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall walk and not grow faint.”

Balak: In search of control

 We all would like to feel a sense of control, of knowing what will happen to us.

 

We design elaborate plans when we’re working on a project, or say, for example, writing a Dvar Torah, and we may feel we’ve covered all the points, all the concerns, all the possibilities for the project we’re developing or the message we’re writing, and still they go off in directions we did not expect and by the end what we envisioned is no longer what originally planned.

 

As an example, when I was in college and started singing a capella music with the Jewish group on my campus my voice teacher told me that even with good technique, and breathing, and knowing the music, occasionally a sound will come out like a voice breaking, and he said, go with it, don’t judge yourself by that result, maybe someone who heard it thought it sounded interesting!

 

The bottom line is however much we try to control outcomes, we may often find the facts of the matter may have changed or our perspective may have been too narrow or ill-defined in the first place.  

 

My teacher for Tai Chi Chih explained it to me this way.  He said, don’t try to do the moves, just let the happen.  

 

In this week’s parsha, Balak, the King of Mo’av, seeks to curse the Israelites after hearing about how they defeated the Amorites.  In order to take hold of his fate, he summons Balaam the magician to act on his behalf.  Balaam turns down the offer to curse the people after God tells him not to do it, but then Balaam goes along with Balak and his people, ostensibly to perform the curses against the Israelites.

 

Now Balaam gets himself in trouble for the same reason.  As Balaam rides his donkey on the way, the donkey sees an angel of God with sword in hand and so walks off the road.  Frustrated when the donkey lies down in front of the angel that Balaam himself cannot see, Balaam beats the donkey three times until the donkey speaks to him and  God opens Balaam’s eyes to see the angel in front of them.

 

Balak here wants to control the outcome and steer his fate, but he only has one way in mind to do so.

 

Balaam similarly wants to take control of the donkey who has seemed to get out of hand.

 

In the end, God frustrates both Balak and Balaam.

 

Instead of cursing the people, Balak stands on the heights and proclaims blessings instead of curses, among the blessings he says the familiar words we heard at the start of the service this morning, “Ma tovu ohalecha Ya’akov mishkenotecha Yisrael…” How good are your tents O Jacob, your dwelling places, Israel.”

 

In both situations Balak and Balaam try to direct the flow of action and outcome and the more they strain, the tighter their grip on their vision and expectations, the further they get away from their goals.

 

God humbles them both.

 

Balak and Balaam are well-spoken and clever, but Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch explains they both become unhinged by passion and greed, so they become unworthy of their gifts, and God then intervenes…

 

The lesson then of the story of Balak and Balaam is the only way to achieve righteous goals is with sincerity, purity of purpose, and the humility to continually re-evaluate all these elements to make sure we’re pursuing more than what feels right or good for us in the moment.

 

When we are watching the search and rescue effort after the collapse of a building, or a tide of evil pushing back when an army re-deploys from a conflict zone, or when we leave extra early but end up sitting in traffic anyway, we may begin to ask whether any effort is worthwhile when forces beyond our control appear to stifle us at every turn.

 

The faith we pray and practice here can help us navigate the jagged, unpredictable, and undulating surface of our lives.  For thousands of years, these prayers, that have changed but a little, remind us there is so much more to know than we can possibly register with our senses.  They remind us the goal for us as individuals, and as a people, is to move beyond the animal spirit of survival and to enable us all to feel God’s Presence within and around us.  All the prayers, all the Torah learning, all the art and symbolism point toward this goal, and no other.  There is no higher goal than living a life that transforms, the lesson of a story like Balak and Balaam into a goal in and of itself, the goal that more control, more knowledge, may give us a feeling of comfort and stability, but the message that ties all Torah stories together is that God does not want us to always feel safe, comfortable, and reassured that we can direct the course of events, because that is God’s job!

 

No, instead, the Rabbis of the Talmud teach us the most important lesson of humility, an’ve’tanut, that we must lamed leshoncha lomar ani lo yo’de’ah, we must teach ourselves to day I don’t know, or like Rashi, and other great explainers of Torah and Talmud write in their commentaries, Lo yadati peyrrusho, I don’t know what this means.

 

These thoughts are helpful to us since we will strive to fulfill our visions, even if we’re jousting at windmills, God appreciates our efforts as long as we remember that we’re mortal, and fallible, and and the better striving, the real striving for us, is contributing to the sanctification of life and community and love which are ongoing projects for the Jewish people and so by definition open to our efforts but beyond our complete control because they’re really God’s projects!

 

And how sweet, and wonderful, and challenging and compelling it is for us to be a part of these projects that don’t result in skyscrapers, longer lasting lightbulbs, or better public transit but rather result in a sense that we are family, one family, one people, dreaming together. 

The Red Heifer Ritual, Juneteenth, and Shabbat: Journeys of Liberation

 Shabbat Shalom!

 

This Shabbat is the first official Shabbat we’re back in the sanctuary, an open door to everyone, we’re back to reading seven Torah aliyot, so many of us have received the vaccination that the average number of new cases per 100,000 residents in Montgomery county over the past week is under 1.

 

During these times, we are hearing, we’re getting back to normal.  But we could only be returning to normal if we are the same today as we were fifteen months ago.  The past months and it’s impact on us cannot be undone so that we re-enter life picking up from the spot we exited our timeline back then.  

 

We cannot go back.

 

To illustrate this point, some of us may remember the film version of Tom Clancy’s gripping story The Hunt for Red October, about Ramius, a Russian submarine commander, who as captain of an advanced new nuclear submarine, conspires with his officers to defect to the United States and hand over the apocalypse machine  The key scene in this film is a private meal Ramius takes with his officers, who, feeling nervous about their plan, begins to say we should go back, and then Ramius interrupts them saying, there is no going back, because Ramius informed a Russian admiral of their plans.

 

I will try to say it as he did, “There will be no going back.”

 

The wisdom of today’s Torah reading corroborates this point of view.  The ritual of the parah adumah, the red heifer, underlines the way the Torah, and our entire tradition, teaches us that moving from impurity to purity is a visible and tangible.  

 

The effort to find an appropriate red heifer, to prepare all the materials necessary, expresses how monumental and fundamental is this transformation.  When it is complete, the person who undergoes these rites is no longer the person who came forward to receive them in the first place.

 

Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch emphasizes the ritual of the red heifer is, quote, the “clearest public proclamation of ritual purity, and [this ritual, which is referred to as a ‘fundamental statute of the Torah’] is indeed the fundamental concept of moral freedom of will on which the entire Torah is based.”(Commentary p. 584)

 

The red heifer ritual is public, it is visible to all, and it is tangible, full of color and solemn pageantry.

 

In our own way, we’ve been living through an extended modern-day version of the red heifer ritual during the pandemic.  Many of us have had to alter the basic contours of our lives, our families, our work, our socializing, our communicating and gathering with others, nearly everything.  Our keeping with the needed rules and regulations, doing things in ways that are so different from what we knew, mirrors the mysterious spectacle of the red heifer, since in both cases, the pathogen, whether a spiritual one or a biological one, is itself invisible.

 

But what does Hirsch mean when he argues this ritual that we read in detail today is the fundamental concept of moral freedom of will on which the entire Torah is based.  

 

He argues, if we cannot purify ourselves from contact with a dead body, which is the purpose of the ritual, something that cannot be avoided, then he says it would be impossible for us to observe the Torah as such.  

 

In other words, there has to be a clear, structured way for us to transform ourselves and restore ourselves to being able to gather together with the rest of the community, with the rest of our people.

 

But what the ritual of the red heifer does not do is remove the mixed emotions that are likely to fill the hearts of those who go through it.  The ritual purifies a soul, but it cannot purge the sense of grief of loss the individual feels over the death of the loved one for whom the individual impurified themselves to tend with love and gentleness to their final arrangements. 

 

Stepping forward into this new world, it is important for us to keep in mind not only the people who we’ve lost to Covid19 but also other losses we’ve experienced, at minimum, the dislocation we feel from the changes we’ve had to make to our lives.

 

But the point of Rabbi Hirsch’s observation goes beyond the ongoing conversation we have about what we’ve lost, what we’ve learned and what we now hope for.

 

He is explaining to us that our spiritual journey is about a choice we have to make.  The people must choose to perform the red heifer ritual or face living in a world in which they can neither participate in nor appreciate the blessings the Torah offers.  That decision is in our hands as much then as it is today.

 

No doubt, God is gracious and compassionate, but as Rabbi Hanina teaches in the Talmud, everything is in the hands of heaven except the fear of heaven.  The relationship must involve both parties meeting each other at a common border. 

 

Joining in with the community in prayer, to make the minyan as we’re doing today, is a critical step in creating the moral universe the Torah and our later tradition challenges us to create.  Gathering for prayer re-emphasizes for all of us the values we strive to live by, the hopes of peace we reach for, and helps wake us up from our lives that especially over the past year I’ve heard described many times as a blurry hamster wheel of time best represented not by the Hunt for Red October but by another film, Groundhog Day.

 

And what better symbolic example of making real our hopes for creating a world of justice and tolerance today than the adoption of Juneteenth just a few days ago as a federal holiday.  Today, the 155^th anniversary of the time slavery was abolished in Texas, is a similar experience to the mysterious ritual of the red heifer, one that makes official a moment of recognition and transformation, like Passover, the holiday for which we read the red heifer ritual as a preparation every year, like Passover Juneteenth is a reminder of avdut l’cherut, the transformation from slavery to freedom, physical and spiritual liberation from the shackles of the past, and an expanding lens of hope for the future.

 

I cannot think of a time when on one Shabbat I’ve felt blessed to stand at the intersection of so many spiritual pathways from restriction to freedom, from despair to hope.  The ritual of the red heifer releases the impure to rejoin the community and fully participate again.  Juneteenth tells a story of celebration and liberation that rings through the years from aftermath of the Civil War and through the 400 years since the first slaves were brought to our shores.  And then there is Shabbat itself, an oasis of time when we let go of the week that’s passed, permit ourselves not to think of the week to come, and glory in this present, holy day, a day that is for deep breaths, for appreciating what we often take for granted, a day that is celebrated zecher litziat Mitzrayim, in memory of our own liberation from slavery in Egypt.

 

May these stories and these transformations renew our hearts, strengthen us, challenge us, and enable us to envision not a return to normal, but a journey toward an amazing, meaningful, and holy new reality that God has asked us to help create.

Getting ready for the new normal - The journey forward for our ancestors and us

We welcome Shabbat this week at a time anti-Semitic words and physical violence are again on the rise, and as a Hamas leader in a public statement threatens Israel.  We are also living through a transition time, some parts of our country and the world are opening up more, traffic unfortunately is increasing around the DMV, and still we’re not completely past the Covid 19  yet.  The level of uncertainty is still high, requiring a Plan A, a Plan B, even a Plan C. 

 

And in our Torah portion Behalotcha this week, our ancestors are on the verge of a major shift in their lives.  After 430 years of slavery in Egypt, after nearly a year at Mount Sinai, our ancestors are finally going to start their journey toward the Holy Land.  And let’s keep in mind, at this point the journey was going to be a short and direct one.  God had not condemned the people yet to 40 years of wandering.  Still, Sinai was, compared to Egypt, a peaceful place to live, and the desert was a barren and lawless place.

 

So we can imagine our ancestors felt then like we do now as we begin to think about readjusting our lives, as some of us return to public transit, or to offices for work, as students look ahead to full time in person school in the fall, as houses of worship open up and welcome us in person after more than a year of connecting remotely.  They and we feel ready, excited, hopeful and also a sobering dose of reality that putting ourselves out there again, whether in the street today or the desert back then, means we’re exposed to all the messiness, chaos, and vulnerability of life that we may have been shielded from for a long time.

 

And our Torah portion compels us to think about these forward-looking steps as we compare them top when our ancestors’ previously marched forward into the unknown.

 

In this week’s reading, the Torah explains in the 2^nd month, on the 20^th day of the month, the Israelites started their trek, and this trek proceeded al pi Adonai, when God say to walk, the people walked, when God signaled them to stop and wait for however long, they camped and waited.  

 

They followed God’s command, depended on God to lead them.

 

Earlier, at the Sea, they were looking out and wondering how they would cross the Sea of Reeds, when God said to Moses, “Stop praying, and encourage the people to walk forward…”  

 

In other words, at the Sea God told them to take the initiative.  God would only create the miracle enabling them to cross after they took the first steps on their own.

 

And my question to us for reflection is, in which situation is the will to move forward more difficult to summon up?  Is it more difficult to seize the day, take the initiative with the reassurance of a miracle in short order?  Or, is it more difficult to pick up after a long time of peaceful camping at the holy mountain, and begin a long trek through the wilderness?

 

Please think this over – we don’t have time for a discussion tonight, but I’d like to know your thoughts…

 

For the moment, here are my 2 shekels…I think it’s easier in the excitement of the miraculous moment to leap forward.  It’s kind of like what I imagine skydiving to be, something I do want to do one day.  I imagine it’s more exhilarating being up there on the plane and getting ready to jump, knowing in our heart that the jump is soon to be inevitable and that it’s scarier and more intimidating on the ground, gearing up, and seeing ourselves up there on the plane because when we’re on the ground the jump itself is still not a sure thing.

 

For this reason, for our ancestors and for us, picking up and restarting parts of our lives that have been quieter, less interactive, even dormant over this past year can feel disorienting, even overwhelming.

 

And that is why God insists we carry the Torah with us in the desert, because the Torah is our anchor, our comfort.  And allow me to suggest that on whatever day soon, when we find ourselves returning to an activity or a place that we haven’t done or where we haven’t been in a while, let’s help ourselves through those moments with a little bit of Torah.  Try to think of a story, a sentence, an idea from our Torah that we can repeat to ourselves, or write down on a card and place in our car or wallet.  

 

Mine will be the line from Genesis that Jacob says, God was in this place and I didn’t know it.  This means the places where I know I’ll be, the things I will be doing, may be different or feel different but one thing remains the same, no matter how different they may seem, one thing is constant, there is holiness there, there is blessing, there are opportunities to do a mitzvah…even if this requires us first to sit in soul-crushing Beltway traffic. 

 

 

 

 

 

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.