Chag Pesach Kasher v’Sameach, happy Passover to
you; I hope all of our Seders will be meaningful and full of richness this
year. As our Seders approach I find myself giving extra thought to
the Ma Nishtanah, the four questions. So while we answer the
questions by saying, avadim hayinu, “we were slaves,” the fact
is that the Ma Nishtanah holds two truths in tension; we
are free, but we are also still slaves. In other words no matter how
small, or only significant to you or I, we all are slaves to something in this
life, all of us have a mitzraim, a “narrow place” we aspire to get
out of. As such the first two questions ask why we eat maror and matzah only
during Passover, something we do to remind us that were slaves in Egypt. The
second two questions remind us of our freedom, being able to dip not once but
twice and the ability to recline as only people who are free had the right to
do. Those questions in the end remind us that our freedoms mean more
because we know what it means to be enslaved, yet being enslaved births our
need to be free from what constrains us; hence two opposing but related truths
that coexist simultaneously.
This
week, on the 1st day of Chol HaMoed that this year is on the
Shabbat after our Seders, we do not read our normal Torah reading; we read
instead Exodus 33:12-34:26, Numbers 28:19-25 and Ezekiel 37:1-14 from the
Haftarah. Looking just at the Exodus and Ezekiel reading, although very
different, each speaks words of meaning during this season. First, in
Exodus 33:12-34:26 we encounter the story of Moses asking to see God’s face,
yet only God’s back is revealed to Moses as he sits in the cleft of the
rock. This was not a passive request by Moses either, but a causative
imperative, the word הַרְאֵ֥נִי (harayni) is an aggressive request
meaning “show me now,” Moses absolutely needed to know! For
Maimonides (Guide of the Perplexed, 1:54) what Moses wanted to see was God’s
“attributes” that were not physical but about God’s “essence,” something that
is spelled out in this same reading from Exodus in 34:7-8 that says God is “compassionate
and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending
kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and
sin …,” emulated by people in our human characteristics that reflect
God’s goodness and essence (see Avot 2:13), traits that we too must exhibit in
our dealings with others we encounter.
This is what happens during the Seder; we read,
sing and pray words that allow us to see God’s goodness in the freedom and
equality of all people. The God whom Moses wanted to know is a God who cares
about people’s need to be free from enslavement, either forced, deserved or
hidden still to be discovered, being free from what keeps one imprisoned
(however that may look). Is this not what the wise child wants to know,
like Moses, aggressively asking what does the message of Passover mean to
him or her? This is also why we read Ezekiel 37:1-14 during Passover.
Here the Prophet Ezekiel utters what appears to be a cryptic prophecy
about dry bones in a valley that will come together and cause life. After their
formation God covers these bones with skin and breathes life into them so they
may live as “a vast multitude.” Ezekiel comes to learn that this vison of
the dry bones is about the restoration of the House of Israel, reinforcing
God’s commitment to the Jewish people just as it was with their deliverance from
Egypt that is celebrated during our Seder. So why do we read the prophecy of
the dry bones on Passover? In this case Rabbi Dalia Marx answers that
question by saying “if the story of Passover speaks of God's mighty hand, this
prophetic reading speaks about God's spirit.” Deliverance is spiritual as
well.
We see this relationship between the physical
and the spiritual in the Amidah prayer and how that was communicated in the
Reform siddur, Mishkan Tefillah, ultimately speaking into the holiday of Passover
and the words of Ezekiel. Theological reasons aside, the traditional words in
the Amidah are that God m’chay’yay Mayteem, is the one “who give’s
life from the dead.” In the Mishkan Tefillah that has been replaced
with m’chay’yay haCol, or the one “who gives life to
all.” But the editors also decided to leave Mayteem in the
siddur even though it is put in parenthesis. Again, theological
reasons aside, we learn that by saying m’chay’yay haCol we
are dealing with inclusive language that all may benefit from the goodness of
God. Yet this is also how we can understand m’chay’yay Mayteem although
in parenthesis, and even more so how it can relate to Passover itself. In
this case it is about the experience of a newness of life, something that can
be spiritually felt within our inner-being and/or our better-self that
has been raised from the "dead" so to speak, hence the words of
the Prophet Ezekiel, hence the deliverance of Passover and new life on the
other side of enslavement.
After the Urchatz, washing the hands
before the maggid section, our first b’racha is
over the Karpas, or a green vegetable that is to remind us in part
that spring is a symbol of new life. Where I serve as a Rabbi I meet
too many people who are trapped in the decline of their body, looking for a way
to find meaning and hope, seeking not to give into the enslavements of
their situations. But this is what happens to all of us when
we partake of the elements before us on our Seder tables, we
encounter (just like Moses did) the bitterness of what
enslaves us but also the sweetness of freedom gained. This is
what I thought about as I pondered the Ma Nishtanah, not
giving into the tension faced, but seeking to comprehend the extent of my
freedoms while not letting what enslaves rob me of the freedoms I now own,
let alone the ones I will embarce in the future. Think that is an
acceptable answer, hope you agree!
Chag Pesach Sameach and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Adam
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