ORLANDO
JUNE 12, 2016
How we think about the world matters. The first two stories in the Bible are telling.
First, God creates human beings from a single creature, to teach that no one's ancestry is preferred over another person's. We are all created equal in God's eyes.
The next story, Cain and Abel, teaches that we are our BROTHERS' keepers. And for the last 3,000 years we have debated who are our BROTHERS.
In the Cain and Abel story, there are OTHERS who will kill Abel. Cain is his BROTHER'S keeper, but the OTHERS can kill him with impunity. Ever since, we have debated who is the OTHER, and who is our BROTHER.
Deuteronomy expands the definition of BROTHER to our kin. Talmud states, "All of Israel is responsible for one another." There are those today in Israel who have left the definition right there. If you are not Jewish, you are the OTHER.
But history continues to expand the definition of BROTHER. Now we are faced with this question: are all humanity to be considered equally our responsibility, just as God in Genesis teaches that we are all equally the divine image.
Orlando, ISIS, Islamaphobes, homophobes -- all these and more teach us that the debate not only continues as a raging river, but its ferocity engulfs lives. This is not the Middle Ages. We have progressed.
But do we accept our role, difficult as it is, with the world fighting constantly to define one group or another as OTHER, to stand up and demand: no, we will not hate. We will not succumb. Though you insist on defining me as OTHER, though you insist I define your OTHER as my OTHER, though you try to kill me, I will live insisting that God created us in God's own image, and with all the courage God implanted in my soul, stand up and say in response to your hate, "You are still my BROTHER, and I am my BROTHER'S keeper."
Rabbi Mark H. Levin, DHL
Don't Bother Me With Facts-My Mind's Made Up
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Friday, May 6, 2016
Parashat Kedoshim
We are out of sync!
Reform Jewish congregations in the U.S. that follow the Israeli calendar of
Torah readings are reading and are studying Parashat Kedoshim this week. The
rest of the diaspora is a week behind, reading Parashat Aharei Mot.
Kedoshim contains the famous commandment, "You
shall love your neighbor as yourself." Most often people take this "Golden Rule"
out of its context. Verses 17 and 18 of Leviticus 19 read:
You shall not hate your kinsfolk (lit: brother) in your heart. Reprove
your kinsman but incur no guilt because of him. You shall not take vengeance or
bear a grudge against your countrymen. Love
your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.
These commandments go
together: If someone in your social circle (brother) does something you object
to, and you don't tell him/her the truth of your reaction, you may come to
resent that person. Therefore you must "surely reprove your kinsman,"
tell him/her that you disagree with his/her conduct. If you do not, you will
bear a grudge or even seek vengeance, which will result in hatred. All of which
is covered by the general and inclusive commandment, "Love your neighbor as yourself," meant to avoid negative
social interactions and teach us how to live in community.
The Rabbis recognized
that no one can "love his neighbor as himself." Therefore, Hillel reformulated the statement to
be more realistic: "What is hateful to you do not do to your
neighbor." Understanding Hillel's statement, only those actions which we
find negative are excluded in our conduct toward others. If I love swimming, I
don't have to force my neighbor to go swimming just because I want to "love my neighbor as myself." But,
if I find your constant unsolicited advice to me to be a burden, I should (1)
tell you, (2) not hold a grudge or take revenge, and (3) refrain from doing to
you what you have done to me. That will keep me from hating those in my social
circle (my kinsfolk), and enable me to avoid negative emotions toward those
closest to me.
In Jewish tradition, "Love your neighbor" addresses
relations with other Jews. What about relations with non-Jews? Genesis 5:1
speaks to that issue:
This is the book of the
generations of Adam; on the day of God's creating Adam, He made him in His
likeness.
A midrash teaches
that God took different colored clay from earth's four corners to create
humanity, so that no one person could claim superior ancestry.
In Midrash Sifra (the
halakhic midrash on Leviticus) 4:12, we read:
This is the book of the generations of Adam: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Rabbi Akiba
says, "This is a great general
principle in the Torah." Ben Azzai says, "This is the book of the
generations of Adam..." is an even greater principle.
In the Jerusalem Talmud,
relating to the mitzvah in Leviticus, "You shall not seek vengeance or
bear a grudge," the midrash says, "If one hand cuts the other, would
it enter into your mind that the second hand should [take revenge and] cut the
first hand in retaliation?" The meaning is clear, as it says in Midrash
Rabba to Genesis (24:7) "Hence, you must not say, 'Since I have been put
to shame, let my neighbor be put to shame.'" R. Tanhuma said, "If you
do so, know whom you put to shame, [for] In
the likeness of God made He him."
Through simple,
quotable language, like "Love your
neighbor as yourself," and "This
is the book of the generations of Adam; on the day of God's creating Adam, He
made him in His likeness," our sages laid out for us the complexity of
human relations, and how to deal with both our community and strangers. Obviously,
in this election cycle and in our daily lives hatred has become a constant
theme. The Torah makes clear the result of such hatred. It's never justified
because in the end, just as one hand cutting the other, we will all end up wounded
and bleeding.
God willing, we will
see that the result of hatred is destruction, and turn from these ways and
live.
What was the cause of
the destruction of the Second Temple? Baseless hatred! As Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. wrote, "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish
together as fools." Ken yehi ratzon – May it be God's will.
Shabbat shalom.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Essential Seder Elements and Their
Meaning
April 10th, 2016
Rabbi Mark H. Levin, DHL
1.
Candle
lighting
a.
Meaning: Establishes the start of the holy
time.
2.
Kiddush:
a.
Weekday
b.
Erev Shabbat
c.
Havdalah
i. YKNHZ
d.
Meaning:
Establishes holy time in which we model stories and behaviors that bring on the
messianic future
3.
Karpas –
Parsley
a.
Meaning: an hors d'oerves to establish that
this is a special meal. Lean to the left as free people
4.
Ha Lachma
Anya
a.
Let all
who are hungry come eat
b.
By this
time next year may we be free
c.
Meaning: in Aramaic, the language of the
people: "By this time next year may we all be free," the same
statement with which we conclude the seder with wording slightly altered.
5.
Questions
a.
Four sons
– four children
b.
Meaning: in order to tell the story we must
ask questions. In order to pass the story of freedom to the next generation, we
must keep the children interested.
6.
From Degradation to Praise
a.
Avadim Hayeenu – We were slaves
b.
Me't'hilah – At the beginning
c.
Meaning:
we were physical slaves and we were spiritual slaves. Discuss why both apply
today.
7.
Arame oved avi – My wandering father was
Aramean / An Aramean tried to kill my father
a.
Meaning:
A history of the Jewish people. Two interpretations of the words: first: Laban
tried to kill my ancestor Jacob; second: my ancestor, Jacob, wandered.
8.
Dayenu
a.
Meaning: God did wonders for us, even when we
were ungrateful, God continued to do kindnesses for us and never rejected us.
9.
Rabban Gamaliel –
a.
Pesah,
b.
Matzah
c.
Maror
d.
Meaning:
what's the basic minimum to tell the story of the Exodus to fulfill our
obligation: explain the meaning of the Passover sacrifice (without eating it),
the unleavened bread, and the bitter herbs.
10. B'chol
dor vador -- We are obligated to see ourselves as if we personally came out of
Egypt
a.
Meaning:
the point of this this evening is for each of us individually to experience the
Exodus from Egypt so that we will never forget the root experience of the
Jewish people.
11. Praise:
a.
Psalm 113
b.
Psalm 114
c.
Meaning:
the seder takes from degradation to praise: these are psalms of praise, and
psalm 114 is explicit about the Exodus.
12. Redemption
prayer
a.
Cf. Prayer after shema
b.
Cf. Seventh prayer of the Tefilah/Amidah
c.
Meaning:
the Exodus occurred for God for God to make us God's people. This is the
process of Redemption, which we celebrate with the seder.
13. The meal:
a.
2nd cup
b.
Wash
c.
Matzah
i. Blessing
for Bread (matzah is a form of bread)
ii. Blessing
for Matzah
d.
Maror
e.
Hillel sandwich: Numbers 9:11
f.
Meaning:
we wash and eat as if we were priests celebrating the sacrifice that ties the
Jewish people to God.
14.
EAT
15.
Birkhat
Hamazon – Prayer after meals
a.
3rd cup
of wine
b.
Meaning: thanks God for 4 things: sustaining life, food and Torah
sustaining bodies and souls, rebuilding Jerusalem, and God's goodness.
16.
Pour out
your wrath and Hallel
a.
Open the
door for Elijah
b.
Psalms 115 – 118
c.
Pour
out your love
d.
Meaning: the remaining psalms of praise,
115-118, and asking God to either punish our enemies or reward our friends.
17.
Egyptian
Hallel
a.
Possible
fourth cup
b.
Meaning: Psalm 136: the Egyptian Hallel,
praising God for creation and the Exodus.
18.
Birkhat
HaShir
a.
Fourth
Cup or fifth cup
b.
Meaning: the blessing that always follows the
psalms of Hallel
Thursday, March 24, 2016
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.
Monday, March 21, 2016
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?
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?
Thursday, March 17, 2016
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.
Wednesday, March 9, 2016
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.
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