The True Meaning of Matzah - Seventh Day Pesah, 5774

I suspect that some of you must have a running bet over whether I’m going to begin a sermon with, “I recently heard on NPR…” I’m not sure what the current odds are, but it may be that money is about to be owed:

I recently heard on NPR a fascinating story about a church in North Carolina that really struck me. At St. Albans Episcopal Church in Davidson, a well-appointed outer suburb of Charlotte, there is a new bronze statue on the church grounds, depicting a figure lying, huddled on a bench, wrapped in a blanket. The only body parts of the figure visible are its feet, which display the wounds that, according to Christian tradition, were caused by the crucifixion of Jesus at the hands of the Romans. The statue is titled Jesus the Homeless, and, as you may imagine, has caused no shortage of uproar within the congregation. Some love it, including the church’s pastor, and some hate it. (BTW, the sculptor has a wonderful name that may resonate for some in this holiday season: Timothy Schmalz.)

What caught my attention when listening to this story is the power of this message. One goal of art, as with religion, is to take us outside of ourselves, to raise our awareness about things that we cannot otherwise see. The message that this statue projects is not the typical theology common to images found in churches - Jesus’s birth or death scenes, or decked out with glorious threads and haloes and rays of light.

Rather, the message here is, remember the needy! You who come to this well-kept suburban church, which could afford to spend $22,000 to purchase the art installation in memory of a deceased member, should remember that there are plenty of people in the world, good, deserving people, who cannot afford a home, much less one in a neighborhood like this. And this is a message that all of us who live in more comfortable environments would do well to remember.

And while some believe that this is an affront to the central character in Christianity, others see this as religious consciousness-raising par excellence. As the church’s spiritual leader Rev. David Buck puts it, "We believe that that's the kind of life Jesus had. He was, in essence, a homeless person."

Now of course, I am not here today to talk about Jesus, even though yesterday was Easter Sunday. Rather, I am going to talk about Pesah, which of course plays a role as the backdrop in the Christian bible for the events surrounding Jesus’ death.

However, I think that the symbolic intent conveyed by the statue is as valent here as it is in North Carolina, and in fact, one of the central mitzvot / commandments of Pesah, the consumption of matzah, is its spiritual analog.

Occasionally, I will admit that we have a problem in Judaism. We try to hit too many buttons at once. When you consider Pesah, for example, you can see how the central message of this holiday might be obscured amidst all the other noise. What are the themes of Pesah? There are several - this is a holiday with at least four names: Hag ha-Aviv (the festival of spring), Hag ha-Herut (the festival of freedom), and Hag ha-Matzot (the festival of flat, tasteless, cracker-like bread), and of course, Pesah, referring to the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb. But the central message of Pesah is even more specific than that. It is reflected in the following statement, which we say during the seder, right before we ask the Four Questions that get the conversation about slavery and freedom started:

הַא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא, דִּאֲכַלוּ אֲבָהָתַנָא בְּאַרְעָא דְּמִצְרַיִם.  כָּל דִּכְפִין, יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכוּל; כָּל דִּצְרִיךְ יֵיתֵי וִיפַסַּח.

Ha lahma anya di-akhalu avahatana be-ar’a demitzrayim.

Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul; kol ditzrikh yeitei veyifsah.

This is the bread of poverty that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.

Let all who are hungry, come and eat.

Let all who are in need come and celebrate Passover.

Most of us probably rush by this statement on the way to more interesting territory in the Haggadah, or perhaps on the way to dinner, without thinking about it too deeply. It’s in Aramaic, and we all know that when we find ritual passages in Aramaic, it’s because the liturgical framers wanted us to understand. The passage refers to the Talmud, Tractate Ta’anit 20b. In enumerating the noble deeds performed by the great sage Rav Huna, the Gemara reports the following:

When Rav Huna was in possession of some medicament, he would take a pitcherful thereof, hang it on the door-post and say: “Whoever wishes to have some, let him come and take it.” … When he was about to sit down to a meal, he would open the doors, saying: “Anyone who desires to eat, let him come in and eat.”

What made Rav Huna a great sage (and not a merely good one) was his willingness to share with those in need. We echo those words when we open our seder, even before telling the Pesah story, by saying, in a language that (at least historically) the Jews understood better than Hebrew, “Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul,” let all who are hungry, come and eat.

We borrowed this text directly into the Haggadah because it speaks to the values that we highlight on this holiday. We should be more like Rav Huna. When we sit and discuss our departure from Egypt, an abundant meal awaiting us in the kitchen, we should not forget that we are a people whose nationhood was forged in slavery and oppression, and that we should remember (א) there are plenty of others out there who are still suffering, and (ב) that we might just as easily end up in Mitzrayim, the narrow place of Egypt, once again. It is our duty not just to recite this line, but to really mean it. If we do not open up our doors to those who lack food and shelter and clothing, then we must, in subsequent days and months, open up our hearts and our wallets.

And thus, reciting this line at the seder is far from the end of fulfilling our Passover obligation. Think about it for a moment: the first seder was nearly a week ago, and we’re still eating matzah, and (at least for the Ashkenazim) a range of meager foods.

Eating is so central to our lives - those of us who can afford to, do it almost all day long. It’s such a huge part of our personal and macro-economies that we often do not realize how omnipresent it is - how much time and energy we spend eating, or preparing, or shopping for, or growing and harvesting and transporting and all the other tasks associated with food.

So it is remarkable indeed that we eat this lehem oni, this bread of poverty, for eight whole days. Not just one or two evenings, but for about 2% of your calendar year.

Matzah is, or at least should be, something akin to the Jewish version of the homeless Jesus: a reminder: a symbol of what we have vs. what we might not have; a beacon calling us to be at once grateful for our freedom and our ability to dine like free people as well as mindful of those who have no freedom and cannot dine like we do.

Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul. This potent message of the seder continues to resonate, even as this festival winds to a close.

My sister, who is living in Budapest, Hungary this year, put together a seder for some family and friends last week. She told me that the matzah that she procured in Budapest was somehow much worse than the matzah that she has been accustomed to in the States.

Now, I’m not sure how that can be - matzah, lehem oni, the bread of poverty, is not something to be enjoyed. But whether you like eating matzah or not, and regardless of its quality and relative tastiness, the meaning of the matzah is consistent: we emerged from oppression so that we can extend a hand to others.

We do not often step over homeless people here in Great Neck, nor are we frequently approached by people asking for money on Middle Neck Road. But there are needy among us here, as there are everywhere. The matzah should remind us of that, as well as our obligation to be like Rav Huna, and figuratively, if not literally, open the doors to those in need.

 

And so, to conclude, we should use these last two days of Pesah (and for many of us the last days of consuming matzah until the next 14th of Nisan) to consider how we might emulate Rav Huna, how we might fulfill our obligation to care for those who have less than we do. How can we carry the message and symbolism of matzah into the other 98% of the year? Can we commit to the following?

• Bringing food to Temple Israel when our Chesed Connection collects, or directly to the food pantry at St. Aloysius church here in town
• Participating in Midnight Run, which we host here at Temple Israel, and helping with Hatzilu, which distributes food to those in need locally
• Donating to charitable organizations that feed the hungry (e.g. Mazon here in America, Meir Panim in Israel)
• Helping our children and grandchildren to understand the importance of giving by demonstrating our willingness to do so. Get them involved!
• Educate yourself on what the issues are surrounding hungry and homeless people. Find your own way to help out. Seek out other initiatives and promote them to your family and friends. Raise the bar of dialogue.

Don’t let the message of the matzah get lost in all the other messages of this season. Let all who are hungry, come and eat.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson
(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Monday, April 21, 2014.)

The Rest of Pesah: An Opportunity for Self-Improvement

The leftovers are in the fridge, the matzah is growing tiresome, and the haggadot have been put away for next year. So why do we need six more days of Pesah?

This holiday is something of an endurance test, and not just for your gastro-intestinal tract. Pesah is a challenge: eight days of limiting yourself to a hametz-free existence, and if you have family origins in Eastern Europe, it is even more limited than that. (We Ashkenazi vegetarians are particularly hard up during Pesah - without soy, mealtimes are particularly meager, although the recent availability of quinoa, which is acceptable for Pesah, has proven to be a real blessing.) This is about mind over matter, about conquering the stomach’s dominion over your life.

And there is no question that doing so every once in a while is good for you. Our 24/7 culture with its constant availability of all sorts of food, much of it unhealthy, rarely forces us to think twice about what we are putting into our bodies. But Pesah upends the food equation; for eight days of the year, I have to rethink my dietary choices, to refocus my relationship with food.

Although we spend the first two nights of Pesah recalling our journey from slavery to freedom, from the physical distress of Mitzrayim (Egypt) to the spiritual satisfaction of receiving the Torah and claiming God’s Promised Land, the remainder of the festival is about the discipline that freedom warrants. So before you hoist that matzah sandwich to your mouth, or test the edibility of that kosher-for-Passover “cookie,” try to remember that setting limits builds strength of character. And maybe some fresh fruits and vegetables would be better for you, anyway. Hag sameah!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally published in the Temple Israel Voice, 3/28/13.)

Four Essential Jewish Questions of Our Time - Shabbat HaGadol, 5773

Every year around this time, Rabbi Stecker and I find ourselves working very hard to help others with their sedarim. Starting a month before Pesah, we teach seder skills and material in a wide variety of formats and before many different audiences: the Men’s Club, the Nitzanim Family Connection, the Religious School Bet class, the Shabbat afternoon se’udah shelisheet crowd, and so forth. 

Pesah is, as I am sure many of you know, the most-practiced ritual of the Jewish year among American Jews. About 4 out of 5 of us show up to a seder of some sort, and for some of those Jews, this will be the ONLY Jewish experience that they will have in 5773; far more people come to a seder than seek forgiveness in the traditional ways on Yom Kippur.  For those of us who are regulars, who are committed to Jewish life, this is an opportunity to engage, and I encourage everybody here to reach out as ambassadors of Jewish living.

Related to that, I think that now is the time to start asking the hard questions about American Judaism, and talk about them around the seder table. After all, the seder is meant to be not only a meal, but also a discussion. It is modeled after the Greek symposium, an ancient type of dinner party that featured food, wine, discussion, and entertainment, all of which was enjoyed while reclining. We have the haggadah to guide us through our Jewish symposium. But the haggadah is only a guideline, a kind of framework: you can fulfill your Pesah obligation of “Vehigadta levinkha bayom hahu,” (Shemot / Exodus 13:8) of telling the story to your children on that day by reading it from the haggadah, but you can also fulfill it if you leave the printed page. The very word, “haggadah,” is derived from the same shoresh / Hebrew root of the commandment “vehigadta” in that verse; haggadah means telling, and does not necessarily mean reciting from a book.

Telling the story of Pesah, of traveling from slavery to freedom, usually raises a few questions. Well, four at least. But in fulfilling the obligation of “vehigadta levinkha,” of telling your children, should we not connect our modern world with our ancient tales? Here are four more questions for discussion, questions that we should all be asking around the table on Monday and Tuesday night:

1. On this Festival of Freedom, how will we ensure that our own contemporary freedom does not lessen, or indeed sever our connection with Judaism?

2. Is it indeed possible for us to continue to be Jewish while enjoying full assimilation into American society? Or is the only recourse to preserve our Jewish identity, as the Haredi world seems to believe, to self-segregate, i.e. to “enslave” ourselves, to curtail our independence?

3. What kind of Jewish world do we want in the future?

4. What are the things that we can do to make sure that our grandchildren have strong Jewish identities, and healthy, modern and open synagogue communities where they can practice comfortably?

And, like the traditional Four Questions of the seder, these can be summed up in one question: “Where are you headed, Jewishly speaking?” The question is to be asked, as it is to the Four Sons, in a manner that is both national and personal.

Let me tell you why these are the essential questions of our time.

Five years ago, Dr. Arnold Eisen, then the newly-minted Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, spoke here at Temple Israel. Responding to the state of the Conservative movement, he said that the decline in our numbers was not insurmountable, but that if things did not turn around in 5-10 years, the then-future prospects were not so good. Well, it’s been five years, and (Temple Israel’s relative stability notwithstanding) I have not detected any real change in the slope of that decline.

Numbers in the Reform movement and in Modern Orthodoxy are not much better. The only segment within Judaism that is growing rapidly is, of course, the Haredim, the fervently Orthodox.

There is no question that we Jews have greater freedom here and now than we have ever had; we are fully integrated into American society. There are few remaining barriers to Jews: We are not excluded from the best universities, as some of us were in the first half of the 20th century; we are welcome at the most prestigious workplaces and social forums in the nation; we occupy a third of the United States Supreme Court; the idea of a Jewish president is not beyond the realm of possibility; and much of non-Jewish America is willing not only to date us but to marry us as well.

There are no surprises here; we have come a long way in a few generations. Many of you know that statistics (from, for example, the National Jewish Population Survey) have shown the intermarriage rate hovering at about 50% for more than two decades. Related numbers show that children in intermarried families, on the whole, grow up with a far lower connection to Judaism. There are, of course, Jews who have married non-Jews who succeed in raising strongly-identified Jewish children, and there are many non-Jewish parents who are committed to raising Jewish children -- bringing their kids to synagogue, Hebrew school, and so forth -- but they are the exception, not the rule. 

But really, the issue is not intermarriage, which is I think merely a symptom of the greater problem. It’s about American Judaism in general, and particularly non-Orthodox Judaism. It’s time to think critically, not just about numbers, but the strength of our community’s connection to Judaism.

We know that Orthodoxy, and in particular Haredi Orthodoxy, is booming. They are growing rapidly, with many children per family, strong communal interconnection, and of course a zeal for Judaism and Jewish life. You may have read NY Times columnist David Brooks’ piece on this recently, a fawning account of his visit to black-hat Brooklyn titled “The Orthodox Surge.”

Brooks reports an excursion to Pomegranate, the top-shelf kosher grocery store that he likens to the specialty-food supermarket giant Whole Foods. I will not dwell on the strengths of Brooks’ argument, or its weaknesses. But in response, Jordana Horn of the Forward wrote an opinion piece that should be mandatory reading at your seder table. Ms. Horn describes herself as a committed Conservative Jew, and resents Mr. Brooks’ implication that Orthodoxy holds the Jewish future.

After pointing out that it is possible to be dedicated to Judaism and not Orthodox, she makes the following observations:

I fear that when my children grow up, they will encounter a world in which they will have to choose to be Orthodox or secular, and that no other options will exist — that while Conservative and Reform Jews were busy building gorgeous edifices of synagogues, they will have neglected to build communities that ensure their survival. 

I long for someone to stand up in Conservative and Reform synagogues and say, “Hey — if we want our egalitarian models of Judaism to have a fighting chance in the future, we need to think out of the box.

“We need to put our money where our mouths are when it comes to ensuring a Jewish future. We need to make sure our young congregants are on JDate. We need to make sure to reach out to and include Jewish singles and young families as much as we do senior citizens.

“We need to have a financial plan for making Jewish nursery school the best possible option, and an accessible one, for Jewish parents. We need Jewish day care in our synagogues for working parents so that the synagogue is seen as an indispensable part of life. We need to have infant and child care in every single service and program we offer.”

Ms. Horn is right on. And she could have said far more. Not just Chabad, but many variants of Orthodoxy have a tremendously impressive suite of outreach offerings that are easy to enter; they bring them right to you. They go where the Jews are, and they invite people in. Ladies and gentlemen, we say on two nights of every year, in front of all of our friends and family, “Kol dikhfin yeitei veyeikhul,” “Let all who are hungry, come and eat.” But aren’t we just paying Aramaic lip service? Are we really working hard to bring people into our fold? 

And furthermore, are we working hard with the people who are already there at the seder table, young and old, intermarried and in-married, to give them the tools that they need to live authentically Jewish lives as mainstream Americans?

Many of you have heard me say this many times in this space that we in the Conservative movement are committed to Rabbi Mordecai Waxman’s slogan of “tradition and change.” You know that I am committed to the Judaism of the Torah and the Talmud, the faith which inspired our ancestors and sustained them through centuries of misery, poverty, persecution, and wandering across continents and oceans. You know that I hold steadfast to the principles that Moses Mendelssohn, as the first emancipated Jew, held dear in the middle of the 18th century when he successfully joined German society as a practicing Jew. You know that I reject the isolation that the Haredi world pursues, that I am committed to living as much as an American as a Jew, that I support the moderate approach to halakhah and interpreting our canonical texts through a lens that is at once traditional and modern and scholarly. You know that I, that we at Temple Israel, stand for open engagement with both the Torah and with science, with egalitarianism and modernity, with Israel and with America.

And yet I, like Jordana Horn, wonder if my daughter and her children and grandchildren will have to choose between the Jewish approach that is stuck in 18th-century Poland and the one that hangs bagel ornaments on Christmas trees.

So those are the four questions we should be asking our friends, our family, our children and grandchildren. Where are you going, Jewishly? 

And hey, maybe that’s OK with most of those 80% of American Jews who show up for a seder. Maybe they do not care if there is a middle ground to Judaism. But I’d like to think that they do, and that if we all reach out to them, just like Chabad is doing so successfully, maybe they would be happy to come around here once in awhile, and not just on a major holiday or a family simhah.

For extra credit, the followup question is this: If you do indeed want a middle path to Jewish life, what are you going to do to make sure it does not disappear? Are you going to marry a Jewish person, or insist on conversion for a non-Jewish partner, or at the very least, work to agree that said partner will commit to raising your children as Jews? Are you going to join a synagogue? Are you going to take your family on vacation to Israel, rather than Mexico? Are you going to make sure your children obtain a Jewish education? Are you going to challenge yourself to try on for size just one new mitzvah, one that is easy and meaningful to you, like lighting Shabbat candles or blessing your children on Friday night, or studying some Torah? Are you going to discuss with your children how important it is to you that your grandchildren know that they are Jewish and why?

After all, what is the use of freedom, and freedom to practice our religion, if there is only one variety to choose from, and that variety rejects the very freedom we enjoy, and the secular structures that make it possible?

From the second day of Pesah until Shavuot we count off seven weeks of Sefirat HaOmer, the counting of the sheaves of grain that our ancestors were commanded by the Torah to do. Although today we bring no sheaves, we are understand this period as one of self-discipline, of kabbalistic meditation on the emanations of God, and as a period of preparation for receiving the Torah on Mt. Sinai. It is a time of study, and as it seems likely that the theme for our Tikkun Leyl Shavuot will be an examination of the role and power of the qehillah qedoshah, the synagogue community, I urge you to begin to consider these themes as we launch into Pesah and beyond.

 Where are you going, Jewishly? Ask these questions around your seder table.  Shabbat shalom and hag sameah.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel of Great Neck, Shabbat morning, 3/23/2013.)

The End of the Exodus - Thursday Kavvanah, 4/12/2012

Where does the Exodus story end?  With the conclusion of the book of Exodus?  When the Israelites enter the land of Israel?  Or, as one of today's morning minyan attendees quipped, is it still going on?

Tomorrow is the last day of Pesah.  (OK, so not really, except in Israel.  The Torah tells us that this holiday is seven days long, and we in the Diaspora must suffer an extra hametz-free day just to remind us that we are in exile, so it really ends on Saturday night, April 14.  That's 14% more Pesah*.)

One would think that we would conclude this festival with a Torah reading that marks the conclusion of the story, and we do.  But it is something of a judgment call on the part of the (ancient) rabbis as to the conclusion.  To make Pesah fit neatly into the rabbinic overlay of the year, it can't be the receiving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai, because that goes with Shavuot.  It can't be the end of the book of Exodus, because all that happens is that the mishkan / tabernacle is built and the Shekhinah, God's presence, moves in, and what would we do with that?  It can't be the entry of the Israelites into Israel because, frankly, that does not occur until the book of Joshua, which is not among the Five Books of Moses.

Instead, we mark the end of Pesah by chanting Shirat HaYam, the song that the Israelites sang upon crossing the Sea of Reeds and arriving safely at the other side (Exodus 15).  It's a good choice: celebratory, joyous, and marking the conclusion of a difficult chapter while hinting that there is more to come (Ex. 15:17):

תְּבִאֵמוֹ, וְתִטָּעֵמוֹ בְּהַר נַחֲלָתְךָ--  מָכוֹן לְשִׁבְתְּךָ פָּעַלְתָּ, יְהוָה; מִקְּדָשׁ, אֲדֹנָי כּוֹנְנוּ יָדֶיךָ

You will bring them and plant them in Your own mountain
The place You made to dwell in, O Lord.

Is it clear that this is the end of the Exodus?  No.  But it is certainly a milestone on the path home, a kind of euphoric rest area on the Sinai-Israel highway.

Hag sameah!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson


* This year there is no real Israeli advantage because the seventh day is followed immediately by Shabbat, and one may not prepare non-Pesah food for Shabbat during Pesah, even with the "eruv tavshilin," the permission to prepare food on yom tov for Shabbat.  So the whole Jewish world is suffering for all eight days.

Tasting the Bitterness of Slavery: The Hazeret vs. Maror Debate

I have often been puzzled by the presence of two reserved spots on many seder plates for the same role during the evening's festivities.  The "Maror" segment (just after making the berakhah over the matzah and just before eating the Korekh, the sage Hillel's sandwich), includes the unique berakhah,

Barukh attah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha'olam, asher qiddeshanu bemitzvotav, vetzivanu al akhilat maror.
Praised are You, Lord, our God, Ruler of the universe, who has sanctified our lives through His commandments, and commanded us to eat maror.  

On some seder plates, you will find only a spot for maror.  On others, you will find an additional one for "hazeret," which is also a type of maror.  Confused?  Me too.

The source for this mitzvah is Exodus 12:8, which states that the Israelites were commanded to eat the Paschal Lamb with something called merorim, the plural of maror, and it is unclear what was meant here.  According to the JPS Torah Commentary, maror "probably referred originally to the kind of pungent condiment with which pastoral nomads habitually season their meals of roasted flesh."

But the rabbis of the Mishnah, trying to interpret for their day (that is, the first couple of centuries of the Common Era), stated that this mitzvah can be fulfilled by eating one of five different types of vegetables.  Problem is, we do not know what most of them are!

Today, the practice among most of the Diaspora is to use horseradish, which for my entire life has been the traditional understanding of the word maror.  Israeli Jews, however, generally use Romaine lettuce, which is known as hazeret.  Hence the presence of the additional spot on the seder plate.

Rabbi David Golinkin just produced a new teshuvah on the subject, and it makes for a great historical romp through the pungent condiments of the Middle East and Eastern Europe.  Check it out here.

I won't spoil the surprise, but remember that whatever the answer, your family's custom is still your family's custom, and I wouldn't go changing anything at home merely on the basis of one rabbi's deduction.  Pesah is a joyous festival of freedom, not an opportunity to tell your grandparents that they have been misled for their whole lives.  Enjoy! 

חג שמח!


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson