IN EVERY GENERATION, PART 3: HALLELUYAH!
Dvar Torah For Day Eight Pesach/Yiskor 5770.
Everyone, say Halleluyah! Don’t be shy, all it means is, “Praise God!” What… you don’t believe in God, or you’re not sure you do? You don’t like overt, maybe over the top, expressions of piety? You think that shouting Halleluyah is sanctimonious, posturing, self promoting, religiously preening, hypocritical? You think that you dare not shout Halleluyah when you’re a nothing, a humble nobody? Huh, look who thinks he or she is a nobody! Come on, get out of your comfort zone, stop rationalizing, live a little. Your life may not be perfect, you may even be quite unhappy right now, you may be a confirmed atheist, you may not be feeling well, you may think that this little exercise is leading us right down the path to being a…Baptist church…but so what? Stretch your vocal chords and your spirit, move your body and shout Halleluyah! Let me hear you! Halleluyah!
How ironic that a word like Halleluyah, an authentically Jewish word that comes from, and is found all over, our Bible, should be so uncomfortable for Jews to say with passion and gusto. Some of this is the result of our overall discomfort with emotion laden spiritual expression. Yet, I think that we are also uncomfortable with shouting Halleluyah because we have bought the myth that it is something that Christians do, not us. How untrue this is. Please look with me at a famous passage from the Mishnah, Judaism’s oral tradition, Tractate Pesahim, 10:5; this is a passage we have been studying together since the Shabbat preceding Pesach.
Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’”
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God Halleluyah (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”
As we have been learning throughout Pesach, this teaching of Rabban Gamliel is found in its entirely in the Passover Haggadah. In the first two parts of the passage, he reminds us to talk about the ancient Passover sacrifice with its accompanying matzah and bitter herbs, so that we relive that great feast at the seder, even if we can no longer perform it ourselves. Further, our teacher asks us to place ourselves at the scene of that very first seder when, as slaves about to become free, we offered that very first paschal sacrifice in grateful preparation for liberation. Then, notice that Rabban Gamliel concludes with one more instruction. Because we owe God a huge debt of gratitude and praise for transforming us into free people, we should chant before God the Halleluyah psalms of the Hallel prayer, also known as the Egyptian Hallel because it thanks God for redeeming us from there. (In fact, Hallel is sung in two segments as part of the seder service according to the traditional Haggadah.)
I imagine Rabban Gamliel as a Baptist preacher shouting “Halleluyah, praise the Lord!” to his congregants in the pews. He jumps up and down, with sweat streaming from his beet red face as the faithful get riled up, catch the spirit, fall down, start writhing on the floor and speaking in tongues. For all we know, the context of his teaching was something akin to this: he wanted his fellow Jews not only to practice the rituals of the seder as if they were in that exact moment of liberation from Egypt. He also wanted them to feel the exhiliaration of that moment, to scream and shout Halleluyah as they charged Egypt’s gates en masse and walked out into freedom. However, it is just as likely that Rabban Gamliel exhorted us to sing the Halleluyah psalms of the Hallel because he was copying what our ancient ancestors did during the Passover sacrifice in the Holy Temple. An earlier passage of the Mishnah, Pesahim 5:7, teaches us that the Jewish pilgrims would eat the Passover in three shifts, all of which would sing the Hallel prayer as the Temple priests distributed pieces of the sacrificial meat to them. The Talmud, Tractate Pesahim 117a explains that the Egyptian Hallel goes back in time as far as the crossing of the Red Sea itself. As the Israelites embarked on their dangerous journey to freedom, the prophets among them taught them to sing Hallel as a way of asking God to protect them from trouble. After they were finally saved from Pharaoh, those prophets taught them to sing Hallel again in thanks to God for redeeming them. Thus, Rabban Gamliel’s spontaneous exhortation to his fellow Jews was actually a well thought out pedagogic strategy for –once again- helping us to relive the Passover Temple service, and by extension, that terrifying moment at the Red Sea when we were caught in that transitional space between shedding our skin of slavery and dressing ourselves in the robes of freedom.
I am drawn to the Talmud’s twofold understanding of Hallel: we chant it as we walk through breath holding, heart stopping danger; we chant it after we live through that danger. It accompanies us on both parts of our life journeys because –as the Talmud points out- its most important word-Halleuyah- compounds a command to praise (Hallelu) with a straightforward reference to God –known here by God’s Hebrew name, Yah. We are not asked or encouraged, we are commanded, to carry an attitude of praise with us wherever we are and through whatever we experience. A view of life that is suffused with praise does not usually come naturally: we have to inculcate it within ourselves through the hard work of waking each day –no matter how we feel, no matter what a day brings us- and recognizing that day as one more precious opportunity to breathe, to live, to be in this mixture of madness and magnificence that is our world, the world created by God, the never ending source of all life in all of its complexity, mystery, and imperfection. A Halleluyah perspective on the world sees God’s creative power and compassionate presence in everything: danger and redemption, sadness and joy, life and death. A Halleluyah perspective praises God for life as it is, because it is holy and worthwhile simply by virtue of being life!
In a moment, when we chant Yizkor, we will actually be reciting an extended Halleluyah. Yes, we will be remembering our loved ones who have died, some naturally in their time, and others tragically and before their time. But we will also be remembering their precious legacies, feeling their palpable, endless presence, and praising God for the people they were and the people they have helped us to become. For the love that they gave us and allowed us to give them, we say Halleluyah! For the complex, imperfect but loving relationships that we had with them, we say, Halleluyah! For our ability to remember them without the varnish of false piety, we say Halleluyah! For their having lived in our world, in God’s world, we say Halleluyah!
Saturday, April 10, 2010
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Passover Sermons 5770
IN EVERY GENERATION, PART 2: A DOSE OF SPIRITUAL MEDICINE
Second Dvar Torah for Pesach (Day 1), 5770.
My wife likes to joke that I treat food as if it were medicine. I guess that early on in my parents’ home, I internalized the idea that you don’t consume foods like green tea, blueberries, and tofu because they taste good, a debatable point at best for some, or even because they’re healthier for you than very tasty cheese fries, a point that is irrelevant for others. You eat them because they’re loaded with, well you name it: phytochemicals, antioxidants, micronutrients, essential fatty acids such as Omega 3 and Omega 6, high density lipoproteins, and polyunsaturated fats. Certainly, there is more than ample evidence that much of our chemically treated, commercially prepared food supply is potentially quite toxic; we have more than ample information that a balanced diet of high fiber, low fat foods consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables is quite good for you, and can also be quite tasty. However, I think that I have taken this basic, scientifically grounded wisdom a bit far. Imagine the scene. As a regular green tea drinker, I look at green tea as the magical preventative and powerful cure all for whatever may or does ail me: a sure shot antoxidant weapon in my internal arsenal against oxidized chemicals in the body that scientists have labeled, significantly enough, free radicals! Now, from time to time I engage in the quintessential American ritual: I eat a ton of junk, most of which I really like. If I wind up feeling sick to my stomach, do I resolve not to eat like that again? No, of course not, I’m an American, and that kind of resolution is, frankly, un-American, the kind of behavior you would expect of, well, a free radical! I simply boil a pot of water, pour it over my favorite green tea, and poof!, all is well with Rabbi Dan-i-el! I might as well become a marketer for the green tea industry. My ad line? “GREEN TEA—THE WONDER DRINK BURSTING WITH ANTIOXIDANT GOODNESS!"
We all know that no food is a wonder drug with magical medicinal powers, even though we may allow ourselves to be duped by the natural foods industry into wanting to believe this. However, as we move from seder to seder –a culinary experience filled with rich spiritual symbolism- we certainly can understand the power of food as spiritual medicine that deepens our sense of personal meaning and our connection to God and values. Consider the teaching that you will find in the synagogue announcements in front of you. We began learning this teaching this past Shabbat. It comes from the Mishnah, and it is quoted in full in the Haggadah:
Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’"
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God Halleluyah (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”
Note the three foods that one is supposed to talk about during the obligatory telling of the Exodus story at the seder: the Passover offering, the matzah, and the bitter herbs. As I mentioned on Shabbat, Exodus 12:8 mentions God’s commandment to the Israelites and their descendants to eat these three foods together as part of the feast commemorating the Exodus. Our teacher, Rabban Gamliel, transforms this commandment –which by his time was obsolete, given the prior destruction of the Temple- into a commandment fulfilled through words, based upon Exodus 12:27: we are to tell our curious children that the Pesach offering recalls how God pasach, passed over our houses during the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn. Of course, we know that, even without the Passover offering, we still do more than talk about this three food concoction: we continue to eat matzah and bitter herbs at the seder, even though we no longer eat roasted lamb. Therefore, for the Mishnah and Haggadah, seder food is about memory.
But is it about more than memory of things past, and perhaps also a kind of culinary medicine directed at our spiritual health? One Talmudic commentator seems to think so. Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, also known by his acronym, the MaHarSHa, was a sixteenth century teacher who lived in Poland. He was one of the rare Talmudists who wrote as extensively about the aggadah, the non-legal narratives and moral teachings of the Talmud, as about the Talmud’s legal arguments, the Halakhah. Eidels wrote the following intriguing explanation –recast in a contemporary idiom by me- for why we talk about these three foods, and eat at least two of them, at the seder.
Eidels asks why it is that, of all the Torah’s commandments, these three are singled out with the explicit requirement to publicly ask why we do them, then to explain the reasons? Normally, when I perform a commandment, I say the blessing thanking God for commanding it, but that’s all I do. Here, I have to actually have to experience the meaning of these three commandments. He then explains that consuming the Pesach offering, the matzah and the bitter herbs was a kind of spiritual antidote for our ancestors as they made the hard climb out of physical slavery into physical freedom. As the Haggadah even explains to us, our ancestors’ slavery was not only physical but spiritual as well. They lived with a slave mentality that subjected them to the idolatrous, morally bankrupt consciousness of their masters, the Egyptians. Eating the Passover lamb, an animal revered by the Egyptians, freed them from feeling subject to their gods; eating matzah, the bread of escape that reminded them of their redemption, was a further step in their feeling liberated from the spiritual afflictions placed upon them by their oppressors; eating the bitter herbs helped them recall that slavery is bitter not only to the body, it also embitters and distorts the soul by sullying us with the dangerous impurity of inner passivity and dependence. Thus, the generation of the exodus had to consume these three foods as palpable reminders to digest –literally and symbolically- the spiritual message of freedom and redemption. In our day, the MaHaRSHa teaches, we are doing the same thing when we sit at our seders, speaking about and sampling matzah, bitter herbs, and by extension, the Passover offering.
Rabbi Eidels’ interpretation of Passover, matzah and bitter herbs offers great spiritual insight to us as we transition from seder to seder. We American Jews –and Americans in general- possess unparalleled physical, economic, and political freedom: we are truly blessed. Pharaoh does not hold us back physically. Yet, it is obvious that we too at times find ourselves slaves to the idolatries of the contemporary spiritual Egypt: those negative after images of freedom’s blessings that, if not mastered, will master us and hurt us as we travel in the wide open spaces and market places of our very free and aggressively consumerist culture. One need only walk through an American mall –the richest symbol of American liberty and privilege- with critical lenses fitted to one’s eyes to witness how easily an individual’s prioritization of values can be blunted. Money, material glut, and the confusion of want with need are spiritual stealth bombers that ever so subtly distract us, dull our consciousness and rob us of intellectual independence. In a society like ours that is dependent upon independent thought, courageous moral action, and commitment to community, entanglement in servitude to the world of things will only bring us existential heartache. Worse yet, that kind of narcissistic spiritual enslavement which masks itself as the liberty of luxury can only be used as a very dark tool in the hands of political elites: how they would love to foist a new Egypt, with themselves in the role of Pharoah, upon a public too drunk with the preoccupations with our stuff to ever notice what hit us.
Now we are slaves, next year we will be free. Tonight we will look again, taste and speak of those ingredients in the paschal sacrifice: hopefully that taste of outer and inner freedom will linger in our mouths and stay with us for the rest of the year.
Second Dvar Torah for Pesach (Day 1), 5770.
My wife likes to joke that I treat food as if it were medicine. I guess that early on in my parents’ home, I internalized the idea that you don’t consume foods like green tea, blueberries, and tofu because they taste good, a debatable point at best for some, or even because they’re healthier for you than very tasty cheese fries, a point that is irrelevant for others. You eat them because they’re loaded with, well you name it: phytochemicals, antioxidants, micronutrients, essential fatty acids such as Omega 3 and Omega 6, high density lipoproteins, and polyunsaturated fats. Certainly, there is more than ample evidence that much of our chemically treated, commercially prepared food supply is potentially quite toxic; we have more than ample information that a balanced diet of high fiber, low fat foods consisting mostly of fruits and vegetables is quite good for you, and can also be quite tasty. However, I think that I have taken this basic, scientifically grounded wisdom a bit far. Imagine the scene. As a regular green tea drinker, I look at green tea as the magical preventative and powerful cure all for whatever may or does ail me: a sure shot antoxidant weapon in my internal arsenal against oxidized chemicals in the body that scientists have labeled, significantly enough, free radicals! Now, from time to time I engage in the quintessential American ritual: I eat a ton of junk, most of which I really like. If I wind up feeling sick to my stomach, do I resolve not to eat like that again? No, of course not, I’m an American, and that kind of resolution is, frankly, un-American, the kind of behavior you would expect of, well, a free radical! I simply boil a pot of water, pour it over my favorite green tea, and poof!, all is well with Rabbi Dan-i-el! I might as well become a marketer for the green tea industry. My ad line? “GREEN TEA—THE WONDER DRINK BURSTING WITH ANTIOXIDANT GOODNESS!"
We all know that no food is a wonder drug with magical medicinal powers, even though we may allow ourselves to be duped by the natural foods industry into wanting to believe this. However, as we move from seder to seder –a culinary experience filled with rich spiritual symbolism- we certainly can understand the power of food as spiritual medicine that deepens our sense of personal meaning and our connection to God and values. Consider the teaching that you will find in the synagogue announcements in front of you. We began learning this teaching this past Shabbat. It comes from the Mishnah, and it is quoted in full in the Haggadah:
Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’"
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God Halleluyah (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”
Note the three foods that one is supposed to talk about during the obligatory telling of the Exodus story at the seder: the Passover offering, the matzah, and the bitter herbs. As I mentioned on Shabbat, Exodus 12:8 mentions God’s commandment to the Israelites and their descendants to eat these three foods together as part of the feast commemorating the Exodus. Our teacher, Rabban Gamliel, transforms this commandment –which by his time was obsolete, given the prior destruction of the Temple- into a commandment fulfilled through words, based upon Exodus 12:27: we are to tell our curious children that the Pesach offering recalls how God pasach, passed over our houses during the slaying of the Egyptian firstborn. Of course, we know that, even without the Passover offering, we still do more than talk about this three food concoction: we continue to eat matzah and bitter herbs at the seder, even though we no longer eat roasted lamb. Therefore, for the Mishnah and Haggadah, seder food is about memory.
But is it about more than memory of things past, and perhaps also a kind of culinary medicine directed at our spiritual health? One Talmudic commentator seems to think so. Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, also known by his acronym, the MaHarSHa, was a sixteenth century teacher who lived in Poland. He was one of the rare Talmudists who wrote as extensively about the aggadah, the non-legal narratives and moral teachings of the Talmud, as about the Talmud’s legal arguments, the Halakhah. Eidels wrote the following intriguing explanation –recast in a contemporary idiom by me- for why we talk about these three foods, and eat at least two of them, at the seder.
Eidels asks why it is that, of all the Torah’s commandments, these three are singled out with the explicit requirement to publicly ask why we do them, then to explain the reasons? Normally, when I perform a commandment, I say the blessing thanking God for commanding it, but that’s all I do. Here, I have to actually have to experience the meaning of these three commandments. He then explains that consuming the Pesach offering, the matzah and the bitter herbs was a kind of spiritual antidote for our ancestors as they made the hard climb out of physical slavery into physical freedom. As the Haggadah even explains to us, our ancestors’ slavery was not only physical but spiritual as well. They lived with a slave mentality that subjected them to the idolatrous, morally bankrupt consciousness of their masters, the Egyptians. Eating the Passover lamb, an animal revered by the Egyptians, freed them from feeling subject to their gods; eating matzah, the bread of escape that reminded them of their redemption, was a further step in their feeling liberated from the spiritual afflictions placed upon them by their oppressors; eating the bitter herbs helped them recall that slavery is bitter not only to the body, it also embitters and distorts the soul by sullying us with the dangerous impurity of inner passivity and dependence. Thus, the generation of the exodus had to consume these three foods as palpable reminders to digest –literally and symbolically- the spiritual message of freedom and redemption. In our day, the MaHaRSHa teaches, we are doing the same thing when we sit at our seders, speaking about and sampling matzah, bitter herbs, and by extension, the Passover offering.
Rabbi Eidels’ interpretation of Passover, matzah and bitter herbs offers great spiritual insight to us as we transition from seder to seder. We American Jews –and Americans in general- possess unparalleled physical, economic, and political freedom: we are truly blessed. Pharaoh does not hold us back physically. Yet, it is obvious that we too at times find ourselves slaves to the idolatries of the contemporary spiritual Egypt: those negative after images of freedom’s blessings that, if not mastered, will master us and hurt us as we travel in the wide open spaces and market places of our very free and aggressively consumerist culture. One need only walk through an American mall –the richest symbol of American liberty and privilege- with critical lenses fitted to one’s eyes to witness how easily an individual’s prioritization of values can be blunted. Money, material glut, and the confusion of want with need are spiritual stealth bombers that ever so subtly distract us, dull our consciousness and rob us of intellectual independence. In a society like ours that is dependent upon independent thought, courageous moral action, and commitment to community, entanglement in servitude to the world of things will only bring us existential heartache. Worse yet, that kind of narcissistic spiritual enslavement which masks itself as the liberty of luxury can only be used as a very dark tool in the hands of political elites: how they would love to foist a new Egypt, with themselves in the role of Pharoah, upon a public too drunk with the preoccupations with our stuff to ever notice what hit us.
Now we are slaves, next year we will be free. Tonight we will look again, taste and speak of those ingredients in the paschal sacrifice: hopefully that taste of outer and inner freedom will linger in our mouths and stay with us for the rest of the year.
Passover Sermons 5770
IN EVERY GENERATION, PART ONE: STANDING IN THE SHOES OF SLAVES.
First Dvar Torah For Pesach (Shabbat HaGadol) 5770.
Between this morning and Yizkor, on the eighth day of Pesach, we are going to look at one famous passage of the Mishnah, the tradition of Jewish oral law. This Mishnah, which is quoted in full in the Haggadah, is one of the liturgical and spiritual centers of the Haggadah and the Pesach seder. I want to learn it with you from three different perspectives as we celebrate the holiday together. Please look with me at the text of the Mishnah, Tractate Pesahim 10:5:
Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’”
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God, Halleluyah! (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”
Some background information will help us understand this passage more completely. Our teacher, Rabban Gamliel, lived in the land of Israel and was the patriarch of the Jewish community there in the decades immediately following the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans. He hailed from the family of the great Hillel, and was the preeminent religious leader of his time. Rabban Gamliel derived his ruling about the obligation to talk about Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs during the telling of the Exodus story at the Seder from the famous verse in Exodus, 12:8: “They shall eat the flesh of the Passover offering that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs.” Exodus 12 contains God’s instructions to our ancestors concerning the first Passover meal prior to their leaving Egypt. Whatever the Torah’s original reason for the Passover offering and for eating these three foods together, our teacher offered three unique explanations for them that are not found explicitly in the Bible, all of which emphasize the dual experience of slavery and redemption from slavery. Note that his entire teaching then transforms the Torah’s commandment into a three-fold obligation of continuity, remembrance and gratitude.
The first obligation—continuity: In the wake of the trauma of the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem and the holy Temple, Rabban Gamliel directed the Jewish community to continue offering the Passover sacrifice –in their time a rapidly fading memory- through words: the words of the retelling of the Passover story and the words recalling the Passover sacrificial ritual through which our ancient ancestors prepared for freedom. For Rabban Gamliel, Temple or no Temple, Roman occupation or no Roman occupation, freedom or no freedom, all Jews then, now, and always were, are, and will be preparing joyously for the Exodus through the Passover sacrifice.
The second obligation—memory: Rabban Gamliel then took one step further. Not only are you and I obligated to continue offering the Passover, howbeit in a different way. We are also obligated to see ourselves as having personally been slaves who were liberated from Egypt by God and Moses. This is an intriguing psychological dimension that our teacher adds to the celebration of Passover. My telling of the Passover story is not a mere retelling of someone’s else’s history: it is my history, a traumatic experience of transition from slavery to freedom that happened to me. In its original context, the proof verse used by Rabban Gamliel to make his point was originally addressed to the Israelites who actually left Egypt and were on their way to the land of Canaan. He turned it into a verse applying to all of us for all time. For him, regardless of time and place, all Jews, then, now and always, are tasting the bitterness of slavery and the sweetness of freedom.
The third obligation—gratitude: Rabban Gamliel understood that constantly reliving the experience of redemption from slavery should naturally lead to spontaneous, and uncontained, expressions of thankfulness to God for transforming us and our situation. After all, if we are always at the crossroads of slavery and freedom with our ancestors, then the trauma and catharsis of that experience is always ours, and our gratitude should be a spiritual and moral no brainer! However, he also understood human nature well enough to comprehend that, left to our own devices and at an increasing distance from the original experience of freedom and redemption, we will not feel or express gratitude for the most part. Such is the narcissism and lethargy of human experience, especially when a person or people take freedom for granted. Conversely, the actual experience of suffering oppression distracts us from genuine gratitude because who can feel thankful for freedom when one is immersed in slavery? I suspect that when Rabban Gamliel and his fellow Jews were surrounded by the living evidence of their own oppression at Roman hands, their natural motivation to thank God for freedom was likely pretty weak.
Yet these reasons are precisely why his teaching is set up as a series of three obligations, not pious suggestions or requests. Under the best conditions of freedom, a person will not make great efforts remember the oppressions of the past, and would certainly not try to imagine that experience as a living, personal one. Under the worst conditions of oppression, a person would not feel overly thankful for deliverances of the past, and would certainly not be so inclined to see God or any force in his or her life as a redemptive presence. Rabban Gamliel’s teaching worked so well in the past, and it works so well now, because it is a powerful personal and communal discipline that applies universally. Using ritual, psychology, and spirituality, it directs us to do what we find hardest to do under the best and worst circumstances: feel and live like slaves crossing over to freedom, who can internalize that experience and apply it to the seder and to our everyday lives. In words, deeds, and feelings, Rabban Gamliel, the seder ritual, and Judaism call us to choose the actions, the words, the feelings, and lives of free people. That is not only what gives us purpose as Jews, it is what gives us dignity as human beings.
Shabbat shalom.
First Dvar Torah For Pesach (Shabbat HaGadol) 5770.
Between this morning and Yizkor, on the eighth day of Pesach, we are going to look at one famous passage of the Mishnah, the tradition of Jewish oral law. This Mishnah, which is quoted in full in the Haggadah, is one of the liturgical and spiritual centers of the Haggadah and the Pesach seder. I want to learn it with you from three different perspectives as we celebrate the holiday together. Please look with me at the text of the Mishnah, Tractate Pesahim 10:5:
Rabban Gamliel said: “Whoever has not referred to these three matters connected to the Passover has not fulfilled his obligation (to tell the Passover story), and these are they: Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.
Passover: because the Omnipresent passed over the houses of our ancestors in Egypt.
Unleavened bread: because our ancestors were redeemed in Egypt.
Bitter herbs: because the Egyptians embittered the lives of our ancestors in Egypt.
In every generation a person is obligated to regard himself as if he personally has gone forth from Egypt, since it is said (in the Torah), “And you shall tell your son on that day, saying, ‘It is because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt. (Exodus 13:8)’”
Therefore we are obligated to thank, praise, glorify, honor, exalt, extol, and bless the One who performed for our ancestors and for us all these miracles. God brought us forth from:
Slavery to freedom, anguish to joy, mourning to festival, darkness to great light, subjugation to redemption.
So, we should say before God, Halleluyah! (that is, the psalms of Hallel, Ps. 113-118.)”
Some background information will help us understand this passage more completely. Our teacher, Rabban Gamliel, lived in the land of Israel and was the patriarch of the Jewish community there in the decades immediately following the destruction of the second Temple by the Romans. He hailed from the family of the great Hillel, and was the preeminent religious leader of his time. Rabban Gamliel derived his ruling about the obligation to talk about Passover, unleavened bread, and bitter herbs during the telling of the Exodus story at the Seder from the famous verse in Exodus, 12:8: “They shall eat the flesh of the Passover offering that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs.” Exodus 12 contains God’s instructions to our ancestors concerning the first Passover meal prior to their leaving Egypt. Whatever the Torah’s original reason for the Passover offering and for eating these three foods together, our teacher offered three unique explanations for them that are not found explicitly in the Bible, all of which emphasize the dual experience of slavery and redemption from slavery. Note that his entire teaching then transforms the Torah’s commandment into a three-fold obligation of continuity, remembrance and gratitude.
The first obligation—continuity: In the wake of the trauma of the Romans’ destruction of Jerusalem and the holy Temple, Rabban Gamliel directed the Jewish community to continue offering the Passover sacrifice –in their time a rapidly fading memory- through words: the words of the retelling of the Passover story and the words recalling the Passover sacrificial ritual through which our ancient ancestors prepared for freedom. For Rabban Gamliel, Temple or no Temple, Roman occupation or no Roman occupation, freedom or no freedom, all Jews then, now, and always were, are, and will be preparing joyously for the Exodus through the Passover sacrifice.
The second obligation—memory: Rabban Gamliel then took one step further. Not only are you and I obligated to continue offering the Passover, howbeit in a different way. We are also obligated to see ourselves as having personally been slaves who were liberated from Egypt by God and Moses. This is an intriguing psychological dimension that our teacher adds to the celebration of Passover. My telling of the Passover story is not a mere retelling of someone’s else’s history: it is my history, a traumatic experience of transition from slavery to freedom that happened to me. In its original context, the proof verse used by Rabban Gamliel to make his point was originally addressed to the Israelites who actually left Egypt and were on their way to the land of Canaan. He turned it into a verse applying to all of us for all time. For him, regardless of time and place, all Jews, then, now and always, are tasting the bitterness of slavery and the sweetness of freedom.
The third obligation—gratitude: Rabban Gamliel understood that constantly reliving the experience of redemption from slavery should naturally lead to spontaneous, and uncontained, expressions of thankfulness to God for transforming us and our situation. After all, if we are always at the crossroads of slavery and freedom with our ancestors, then the trauma and catharsis of that experience is always ours, and our gratitude should be a spiritual and moral no brainer! However, he also understood human nature well enough to comprehend that, left to our own devices and at an increasing distance from the original experience of freedom and redemption, we will not feel or express gratitude for the most part. Such is the narcissism and lethargy of human experience, especially when a person or people take freedom for granted. Conversely, the actual experience of suffering oppression distracts us from genuine gratitude because who can feel thankful for freedom when one is immersed in slavery? I suspect that when Rabban Gamliel and his fellow Jews were surrounded by the living evidence of their own oppression at Roman hands, their natural motivation to thank God for freedom was likely pretty weak.
Yet these reasons are precisely why his teaching is set up as a series of three obligations, not pious suggestions or requests. Under the best conditions of freedom, a person will not make great efforts remember the oppressions of the past, and would certainly not try to imagine that experience as a living, personal one. Under the worst conditions of oppression, a person would not feel overly thankful for deliverances of the past, and would certainly not be so inclined to see God or any force in his or her life as a redemptive presence. Rabban Gamliel’s teaching worked so well in the past, and it works so well now, because it is a powerful personal and communal discipline that applies universally. Using ritual, psychology, and spirituality, it directs us to do what we find hardest to do under the best and worst circumstances: feel and live like slaves crossing over to freedom, who can internalize that experience and apply it to the seder and to our everyday lives. In words, deeds, and feelings, Rabban Gamliel, the seder ritual, and Judaism call us to choose the actions, the words, the feelings, and lives of free people. That is not only what gives us purpose as Jews, it is what gives us dignity as human beings.
Shabbat shalom.
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