Culture 5: From Degradation to Praise: Physical Slavery

March 24, 2016

Rabbi Mark H. Levin, DHL

The Babylonian Talmud quotes Rav and Samuel, the two most prominent Rabbis of the generation after Judah the Prince, regarding the meaning of the Talmud's statement for the first night of Passover, "He commences with shame and concludes with praise." We seem to have a formula, if we can decide what degradation and praise mean, of how to do the job of telling the story of the Exodus at the seder. Rabbis Rav and Samuel provide answers:

Rav said, "Aforetimes our father were idolaters," while Samuel said, "We were slaves."

Very succinct! They are referring to biblical quotations they believe demonstrate beginning with degradation. Their solution precisely hits the target! Each Rabbi addresses a type of slavery, and therefore both passages are included in the seder. Let's take a look.

Shmuel said that we should begin with the passage, "We were slaves," regarding physical servitude.  The Mishnah previously gave us a section of Torah to read, beginning with Deuteronomy 26:5, a testimony to Jewish history. It's the passage that was recited by a Jew who brought first fruits to the Temple as an offering, assumedly already familiar to every Jew who brought a First Fruits offering.  What do Shmuel and Rav's passages add to the recitation? They give different answers typifying the two types of slavery. Shmuel says to tell the story of our physical bondage in Egypt. He takes his answer from Deuteronomy 6: 20-23:

When, in time to come, your children ask you, "What mean the decrees, laws, and the rules that the Lord our God has enjoined upon you?" you shall say to your children, "We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord brought us out from Egypt with a mighty hand. The Lord wrought before our eyes  marvelous and destructive signs and portents in Egypt, against Pharaoh and all his household; and us He brought out from there, that He might take us and give us the land that He had promised on oath to our fathers.

The Torah section in itself takes us from our degradation, physically enslaved to taskmasters in Egypt, to God's redemption and our possession of the land of Israel. But by the time Rav and Shmuel were commenting on the seder service, the Jewish people had been dispossessed from the land for over 200 years. We were no longer slaves, but God's promise of an independent existence in our own land had been reversed. The passage either mocks Jewish existence, or is quite simply incomplete.

Here's the formulation as it appears at our seders:

Our ancestors were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, but God brought us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not brought our ancestors out of Egypt, we, and our children, and our children's children would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.

So even if we were all wise and clevera nd old and learned in the Torah, it would still be our dutyto tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt. The more one talks about the Exodus, the more praiseworthy it is.

(A Feast of History, trans. Chaim Raphael, p. 28)

Only the first sentence actually quotes the Torah section. There follows a series of assertions:

1.    If the Holy One, blessed be He, had not brought our ancestors out of Egypt, we, and our children, and our children's children would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.

2.    So even if we were all wise and clever and old and learned in the Torah, it would still be our duty to tell the story of the Exodus from Egypt.

3.    The more one talks about the Exodus, the more praiseworthy it is.

The first sentence tells us that we owe our physical freedom to God, because had God not executed the Exodus, we'd still be in Egypt.

The second sentence is even more curious: something is going on that does not have to do with the knowledge of the story of the Exodus.  Even if we were "wise," "clever," "old," and "learned," all qualities that support the accumulation of knowledge, we'd still have to tell the story. Why? Perhaps it's to teach our children; but then, what if there are no children present? It would still be incumbent. No, there must be something else.

Perhaps it's that the story portrays the essence of the meaning of Jew, and therefore must be restated every year in order to inculcate the effects of the story within each of us. Indeed, no matter our learning status, or the fact that we remind ourselves of the story multiple times daily in prayer, still, the ritual recitation of the entire story is commanded to each and every Jew annually.

Therefore, the third sentence: the greater the story telling, the more time we spend, the more angles from which we come at the story, the more praiseworthy. It's as though the ancient Rabbis comprehended our modern brain knowledge, that the more humans repeat a thought the more pathways and synapses are created in the brain to ingrain the thought and perpetuate the idea. The story must not only be known factually, but emotionally as well. Like etchings of history, the Exodus must be incised into the Jewish brain and personality.

Next week: we are spiritually slaves.

TRUMPED!
March 21, 2016

I wonder what is behind the overwhelming reception Trump received this evening at the AIPAC Convention. 
American Jews clearly are perpetually afraid, a lifetime of fear, at least since the Holocaust. First it was a possible second Holocaust with Israel, and the slogan "Never Again." Then the Soviet Union and the demise of Soviet Jewry, along with the Arab States threatening Israel. Now it's Iran and terrorists.
Jews, it seems, will cheer for anyone who promises to remove the threat. Bibi's rhetoric led to Rabin's assassination, and he never apologized. It's been forgotten, it seems, by nearly everyone. The path to peace, while the most popular, is destroyed by a small minority with a gun or a bomb. Fear triumphs, and the ground is tilled and fertilized for demagogues.
I am surprised at the callousness of such a large number of Jews at AIPAC. Trump hurls bigoted insults against women, Muslims, the disabled, Hispanics, and others. Had he said the same about Jews, would they still have cheered? And failing to have mentioned Jews, have they no empathy or historical memory of persecution? Is their fear really so very powerful as to overwhelm the smell of crematoria that resulted from murderous rhetoric; does the humane bulwark built by thousands of years of ethics fall flat before the threat of terrorism?
The path forward and the ultimate destination are unclear. But this I know: hatred ultimately consumes all in its path, and the tone of a nation flows from the leader to the body politic. Have we abandoned our roots, the very ground of our being, for a few platitudes to assuage our fears?

Jewish Culture: Part 4

Recounting Jewish History: The Telling

March 18, 2016

Who are you? What does it mean to be you? How do you decide your social groups, your occupation, your associations, your friendships, your marital partner: the context of your life? It's a question you ask and answer nearly every moment of every day, but we are mostly unaware.

Today we define ourselves as individuals, and search in our cultures for a personal identity. But it was not always such; nor is there only a single way. If you go back far enough, humans defined themselves foremost by the groupings in which they lived: religion, nationality, free or slave, merchant or servant. Our ancestors knew themselves first and foremost as Jews.

What does it mean to be a Jew? That question Jews asked more than the modern question,"What does it mean to be a human being?" The seder explains to each Jew who s/he is, and how we got to be this way. What does it mean to be you? It means "You are a Jew." But what does that mean?

As we have seen, the seder takes place in holy time, time both ordained and then marked as holy by the kiddush. What's special about holy time?

Holy times possesses a special intensity. In the rituals of holy time we rehearse and establish for the future the meanings of our lives. Our rituals reflexively explain to us, and thereby establish, what it means to be a Jew, our basic self identification. When you look into the mirror, what do you see? Do you see a human being, or a Jew? Where does your story begin? Does it begin with the exodus from Egypt, in slavery? These questions establish the Foundation Stone at the inner core of each Jew, the personal definition that explains how we formulate and then relate to life's most critical question: who am I and how am I supposed to live? The seder explains, in this intensive and heightened reality, how we are to think of ourselves and therefore behave from this moment on.

Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman explains the difference in separate types of literature. Novels we read alone to ourselves. Poetry we may read alone, or better, aloud; but to ourselves most often. Plays are meant to be read aloud to an audience, and the reader puts on the persona of the character. But when the play concludes, the person returns to his/her previous personality. Liturgy we read aloud, to ourselves and our community, and when the play (re: worship) ends, out intention is to maintain the character we have assumed during the liturgy. Liturgy defines the best within us, urges us to become the person we espouse to be.

Consider how we use a ceremony to define our internal definition of ourselves. Around 187 c.e. Judah the Prince, the principle rabbi of the period, issued the basic set of Jewish laws, known to us as The Mishnah. He wrote, regarding answering the Four Questions in the seder, explaining the seder meal to a child, "And according to the son's intelligence his father instructs him. He commences with shame and concludes with praise; and expounds from 'A wandering Aramean was my father,' (Deuteronomy 26:5) until he completes the whole section."

Let's unpack this short section of a longer mishnah. The Torah commands, "You shall tell to your child on that day, saying ..." (Exodus 13:8) "The day" is the 15th day of Nisan, the first night of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. But what does the verb mean? What is The Telling, haggadah in Hebrew, about precisely? Jews fulfill this command by telling the story of the exodus each year on the first night of Passover. But how do we tell the story? What exactly do we say, and why?

Think about the objective of telling the story. Surely we must obey the divine command to commemorate the day, but what else? Experiencing the exodus shaped the Jewish people. We often refer to the exodus as "the root experience of the Jewish people." It's mentioned in prayer many times daily. How do we transmit this core, generative experience to the next generation, which is the only way to perpetuate the experience. We must explain it to the children in such a way that they imbibe not only the story but the experience itself, to make that story not an historical event but a personal account.

How the seder accomplishes this feat we will explore next week.

JEWISH CULTURE: Part 3

The Origins and Meaning of the Seder

March 9, 2016

Kiddush

Jews celebrate holy time as more significant than both holy people and holy space.

Certainly you have experienced differences in sensing time. Birthdays don't feel the same as school or work days. Funerals and illnesses engender different emotions than family celebrations. We experience time variably, depending on its emotional quality and depth of meaning.

What  does holy mean? We describe God as Ultimate Reality, and the locus of all power. God is, therefore, Absolute Holiness. Although God is wholly other than humanity, of an entirely different existential quality, nonetheless we intuit access to God and say that certain people, places and times make God's presence more available. When we encounter holy people, places or times we gain greater awareness of Ultimate Holiness, the holiness of the Divine.

The Torah proclaims that certain times are intrinsically holier than other times. Whether we participate in intrinsic holiness or cause the holiness  is a matter of debate. But certainly part of human life is experiencing ultimate moments we call holy.

We Jews ritually bookend holy time, designating both the beginning and the end. But not all holy time is the same!

The 3 pilgrimage festivals: Passover (Pesah), the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) and the Feast of Booths (Sukkot) are all called holy by the Torah. We initiate holy times in several ways: candle lighting, a blessing for wine that marks the time and a blessing for the holy day itself. The last we call kiddush, meaning "sanctification: to make holy." The blessing acknowledges the special nature of the time, like the difference between foothills and the Rockies.

Shabbat and the High Holy Days are also sacred times, but of a higher degree of sacrality. Therefore, when Shabbat coincides with Passover Eve it adds sacred to sacred. Just to complicate things, the intermediate days of Sukkot and Pesah, days 2 through 6, are also holy, but to a lesser degree. Therefore sacred times vary in their magnitude of holiness, some more serious with deeper holiness than others, the Chesapeake Bay versus the Atlantic Ocean in depth.

Sometimes sacred times coincide, as this year of 5776 when the first seder is on the Eve of Sabbath. The degrees of holiness will be mentioned in prayers so that we can understand the level of holy time we are experiencing and act accordingly.  We will see how that can be used to enhance the experience of the holy and to fit the different circumstances of our lives.  Just as we dress differently for various holy times, depending upon solemnity and theme, so the time differs depending on the occasion.

During extremely holy times, we dedicate the entire day to our relationship with God and family. Yom Kippur is the Mariana Trench of holiness. On lesser times, we may work some, and combine work with holy thoughts and experiences. Jewish tradition grants myriad opportunities for holiness, and a variety of experiences depending upon the degree of holiness, the intention of the holy time, and the theme of the holiday.  The type of holy time may well set up the experience of that time and its content.

Kiddush recognizes 3 different times for the start of Passover: a weekday evening, the Eve of the Sabbath (Erev Shabbat), and Saturday night after the Sabbath (Motza'ei Shabbat). 

Let's look at the themes of the basic kiddush, the prayer ushering in the holiness of the day.

On any Passover eve, at the seder, we recite these words, without the words in parentheses [  ]:

We praise You, God, Sovereign of Existence! You have called us for service from among the peoples, and have sanctified our lives with commandments. In love You have given us [Sabbaths of rest,] festivals for rejoicing, seasons of celebration, this Festival of Unleavened Bread, the time of our freedom, a commemoration of the Exodus from Egypt. Praised are You, Adonai our God, Who gave us this joyful heritage and Who sanctifies [the Sabbath,] Israel, and the festivals.

What themes appear here?

1.    Chosenness: we are a people special to God. Different Jewish theologies think of chosenness differently. The Reconstructionists historically rejected it outright. Orthodox Jews believe that God has one special people among all humanity, and uniquely gave us God's commandments. Reform Jews most often believe that we are the "choosing people," meaning that we choose to be God's hands and feet in the world. Anyone choosing God is therefore chosen.

2.    God gave us special times for rejoicing, and specifically this holy time of unleavened bread, as the Bible calls the 15th of the first Hebrew month, Nisan. It's a sacred time, and commemorates the exodus from Egypt. Jews mention the exodus most frequently in prayers. It constitutes the root experience of the Jewish people, the time when we became bound to God forever. Passover celebrates the most important event in Jewish history, and that event is mentioned multiple times daily in prayer.

3.    God sanctifies both Israel and the holy times, a people and a time, both of which have been set aside by God and have special access to God: the people through performing God's commandments and the time by celebrating God's appointed times.

When seder occurs on Friday night, the kiddush above not only includes the sabbath commemoration in the parentheses, we also precede the kiddush with the same words as we regularly sing on Friday night before kiddush, taken from Genesis 2:1-3, the creation of the Sabbath in the Torah. Thus we add the sabbath feeling to Passover: rest, study, prayer and family.

When the seder occurs at sabbath's departure, we add the spices of the havdalah, "separation," ceremony. While traditionally we say that future redemption will occur in Nisan, just as this first redemption from slavery occurred in Nisan, we also have the mythos that the messiah will appear on the sabbath. Thus, we let go of the sabbath with reluctance, as the messiah again has failed to come, and we relinquish the "taste of heaven" that shabbat feeds us.

But when the seder follows shabbat, we go from "holy to holy," from sabbath and its messianic expectations to the time of redemption. It's a different set of sensations from a normal sabbath departure.

In a future post we will also see how the art of medieval haggadahs complicated this transition even more.

JEWISH CULTURE: Part 2

The Origins and Meaning of the Seder

March 3, 2016

What components appeared in the original Passover seder?

The Mishnah lists the seder's parts, as they were performed by Jews in the later part of the second century c.e. Here they are:

Mishnah Pesahim chapter 10

1. Don't eat anything until nightfall of the seder night.

2. Every person must have 4 cups of wine.

3. Say the blessing over the wine first (... borei p'ri hagafen), then the blessing for the day (the longer blessing, ending with ... Baruch atah Adonai m'kadesh [haShabbat v']Yisrael v'ha'z'manim.) Drink the wine.

4. Karpas (vegetables), [which formerly was lettuce, now parsley] with a blessing (... borei p'ri ha'adamah), brought with matzah and haroset.

5. Pour the second cup of wine.

6. Son asks questions. There were 3, not 4.

7. "According to the understanding [level] of the son, the father instructs him, beginning with the reading of (Deuteronomy 26:5ff) "A wandering Aramean was my father ... " and reads the entire section.

8. The participants in the seder must explain at least 3 things to complete the seder: Pesah (the Passover offering, no longer sacrificed on the altar, but replaced by a symbol, a bone, after the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 c.e.), matzah (unleavened bread), and maror (bitter herbs).

9. Because of the command in Exodus 13:8, every generation must see him or herself as though s/he personally left Egypt, and explain that to the children.

10. Recite: "Therefore we are bound to give thanks, to praise, to glorify, to honor, to exalt, to extol and to bless him who wrought all of these wonders for our fathers and for us. He brought us out of bondage to freedom, from sorrow to gladness, and from mourning to Festival day, and from darkness to great light, and from servitude to redemption; so let us say before him Hallelujah." This prayer fulfills the obligation in #9 to see ourselves as though we, personally, left Egypt.

11. Recite the psalms called Hallel, to the end of Psalm 114, which celebrates the exodus from Egypt.

12. Recite a prayer for Redemption. The closing blessing is "Blessed are You, Lord, whas has redeemed Israel."

13. Mix the third cup. Bless the wine.

14. Bless the meal (implied are blessings for matzah, maror, and the prayer "hamotzi.")

15. Mix and pour the fourth cup, finish the Hallel psalms (115-118). Before drinking the wine recite the blessing, "Birkat Ha-Shir," which follows the psalms of Hallel.

16. Recite a prayer thanking God that God brought us out of slavery.

17. After the meal, nothing else may be eaten and no partying.

All of the components of the seder, now and later, are answers to logical questions about how to celebrate the "root experience" of the Jewish people, the exodus. How does a people keep alive their most important lesson, "That God brought us out of Egypt." That is the overall problem solved by the Passover seder.

The Passover holiday is designated as a holy time (Leviticus 23:6). How do we set aside sacred time and demarcate it from secular time? Answer: Say a blessing and drink wine. The first blessing is for the wine, and the second blessing demarcates the day.

The first night of Passover is a special time, a "Night of Watching," on which all future redemptions are also slated to occur. (Exodus 12:42) Therefore we must celebrate it, in accordance with a special, elaborate "symposium meal" that the Romans practiced. To make the meal more elaborate, an extra hors d'oeuvre of vegetables was added, necessitating a blessing for that which is grown in the ground.

The lessons must be perpetuated to the next generation, therefore much was done to encourage questions, both to keep the children awake and interested. Hence, the children were encouraged to ask questions, and if they did not, questions were already prepared.

What, then, is the story of the exodus? A section from the fifth book of the Torah, Deuteronomy, was selected to explain the message of the day, fulfilling the command in Exodus 13:8 and other places to "explain to your son on that day."

But is that story sufficient to explain the gathering? Not only the story must be recounted, but the symbols commanded by the Torah must be explained. According to Rabban Gamaliel, the leader of the community at the end of the first century c.e., the biblically commanded foods, Passover offering, matzah and bitter herbs also must be explained. (Numbers 9:11; Leviticus 23:5)

It is the obligation of every Jew to view him/herself as having been a part of the Exodus. Therefore we say that as part of the service. Then we must praise God for God's goodness, primarily by reciting Psalms of praise, but also through prayer.

We thank God that we have been redeemed by God from servitude, and the ceremony ends.

Here we see the basic symbols and the story of Passover portrayed, conveying the central message of Judaism to a new generation and reaffirming it in every Jew: God brought us out of slavery and made us God's own. Every part of the service has a good reason to exist. Yet, as we will see, there will be more questions and additional parts of the service to answer those questions. We will build on what exists, and fully explain the meaning of Jewish existence to ourselves and our guests.