Blog

The Journey

Jewish Renewal attempts what may seem impossible in a secular day and age: The creation of sacred communities.  What do the rabbis, cantors, rabbinic pastors, and spiritual directors of Jewish Renewal work to achieve, wherever they are?

We remind ourselves and our congregations: We are walking toward revelation each and every day, and that we walk as a mixed multitude but a committed community.  Our intentions are to create healthy communities which consciously seek to foster and protect sacred space.  At Sinai, we will receive the law which we know is dear, a law which asks us to name our mistakes, and to commit both to listening and to speaking honestly and directly.

It is hard work.  Freedom is hard work.  Thinking constructively, acting generously, learning how to be ever more inclusive of those who have been isolated and rejected  — these are the tasks of a Jewish renewal community and of its leadership.

As is thinking beyond ourselves, into the world, as part of the world.  We go to Sinai, yes, but we remember that Rabbi Ishmael told us that the Torah was given in a no-man’s-land because it belonged to all humanity.

We walk on, to Shavuot, to the giving of Torah, to the mountain of Sinai.  We go, renewing our community, our understanding of Judaism, our hope for the world.

May your Passover lead to renewal,

Rabbi Barbara

P.S. TOO member and historian Sheldon Hanft responded to yesterday’s post about teachers and students and the honor they do one another with this beautiful note:

“My mother was a kindred soul to Rav Shmelke of Nickolsburg. The day preceding the first Seder we would go to the Streitz Matzot factory and she would gently touch the boxes to find one that was still warm from the oven. The matzot may not have been perfect but at least she knew the contents were fresh.”

Thank you, Sheldon.

The Baking of Matzot and the Making of Mitzvot

Rav Shmelke of Nickolsburg was willing to give his life for the performance of any mitzvah. When it came to baking matzah for Pesach, he attended to his task with scrupulous care so that there would be no doubt that they were kosher for Pesach. Yet he was plagued by a terrible fear that he had not done everything perfectly.

Once his matzot were baked, Rav Shmelke would sort them out, rejecting one after another until he had selected the three best and finest matzot for his seder table. Though he prayed for the blessing of the Holy One he was filled with anxiety – had he somehow failed in his duty?

One Erev Pesach, he was returning from the bakery with his three prized matzot, his worries were revealed in his anxious face. A student of his came alongside him, his face suffused with joy. The tzadik knew that such happiness could only come from a mitzvah just performed, and asked his student what he had done to make him rejoice. “I am happy,” his student said, “that I have just baked these matzot in my hands for my seder table.”

The tzadik, envious of his student’s happiness, asked if he would be willing to exchange his matztot for those he himself had baked. The student was delighted to do so. The pupil rejoiced sevenfold at being privileged to eat matzot baked by the master, for these were certainly ten times more kasher than his own.

Why did the tzadik rejoice over his student’s matzot more than his own? “All the time I was baking my heart was troubled,” he explained. “I was beset by doubts. But these matzot have been baked by a man who is upright and he testifies of them being baked properly; in such ease there is no place for doubt.

From this we can derive the following lessons.

1. The Torah was not given to the angels in heaven but every Israelite is capable of completing the mitzvot properly. If the student’s matzot had been improper, then God would have prevented them coming into the hands of the tzadik.
2. The love of their fellow Israelites and their confidence in them is more important to the tzadikim than all the effort and energy they exert in learning Torah and practicing the mitzvoth.

Emmanuel Kitov, The Book of our Heritage

A story…

“Said Elazar ben Azaryah: ‘Here, I am like a seventy-year old, and yet I never merited (to understand why) the going out from Egypt should be said in the night – until Ben Zoma drashed (explained): As it is said: In order that you will remember the day of your going out from the land of Egypt all the days of your life. (Deut. 16:3) Days of your life – (that includes) the days. All the days of your life – (that would include even) the nights.’ And the sages say: days of your life – this world. All the days – to bring in the days of Messiah.”

Jews begin counting the days when the sun sets.  Why?  Because, Torah tells us that’s how God counted days: “And there was evening, there was morning, there was the first day” (Genesis 1:5).  That’s why our holidays all begin at night…

Our seders are held during the evening hours: Tell the story at night, when the day “begins.”  Let what you have learned enfold your sleeping soul.  Then: Wake to live new truth during daylight hours.

If we could, each day and each night, renew the memory of how freedom is attained, maintained, and secured for all peoples, Meshiachzeit (time of the messiah) would finally be within our reach.

Hag sameach!

Rabbi Barbara

The haggadah is filled with fours.  Rabbi David Seidenberg explains that the secret of all these fours is in the transformation of each symbol or motif from a symbol of slavery into a symbol of freedom. For example, he points out, matzah appears first in our haggadah as a symbol of slavery (poor bread) but becomes a symbol of redemption when we ask:  “For what reason do we eat matzah? Because our ancestors didn’t have time to let the dough rise…” Matzah later represents the bread of political freedom eaten when the Temple was still standing when we make it into a Hillel sandwich.  Finally, matzah represents, as the afikoman, the hidden part,  the missing piece that completes the whole.  This last, he points out, is the bread that we will eat when Messiah comes.

Passover, like Yom Kippur, offers us so many chances to transform ourselves.  What has enslaved us; what can free us?  How can we become whole, and healed?

Hag sameach!

Rabbi Barbara

The story of Passover is about liberation; our seder plate offers us important symbols to remind us of the travails of enslavement and our ancestors’ hopes for freedom.  What new symbols have already become part of our seder?

Most of us have long since added a Miriam’s cup to our seder and an orange, in order to represent our rejection of any kind of homophobia and to acknowledge that the LBGTQ community should be invited to our communal table with gratitude and welcome.  Below are some newer ideas — those of you coming to the community seder today, feel free to bring your own!

artichoke — diversity of Jews or interfaith families
kiwi — Israelis and Palestinians
tomato — oppressed farm workers/modern day slavery
fair trade chocolate or cocoa beans — modern day slavery
wilted lettuce — oppression of poor people who don’t have fresh produce in their neighborhoods
small red potatoes — freeing of the Ethiopian Jews
beet – vegetarians

Hag sameach!

Rabbi Barbara

Why are there four cups of wine to drink during our seder meal?

1. There are four divine promises made in the redemption story told in Exodus 6: 6-7: I am God, and I bring you out… I will deliver you…I will redeem you… I will take you unto me.  Each cup of wine represents a promise.
   

   

2. Pharaoh’s cup is mentioned in Genesis, chapter 40, four times. The cup is put into the hand of Pharaoh, but the Israelites (in the form of their seder) will take it from his hand and thank God with a cup of salvation four times over.
3. Our four cups represent our four matriarchs: Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel and Leah!
4. And, if you are thinking Jewish Renewal style, you might imagine each of these four cups representing the four worlds:

Assiya, a world of material reality and making.

Yetzirah, a world of forming and feeling.

Briah, a world of creating, imagining, thinking.

Atzilut, a world of spiritual transcendence.

May your Passover be filled with joy in all four worlds and may your four cups contain the promise of hope and good heart.

A liberating Passover to all!

Rabbi Babrara