The Passover Seder’s “Four Questions” are a hit in most Jewish households. It is the opportunity to nudge the youngest child forward, cajoling them to sing Mah Nishtana, leading everyone in familiar song. But if we analyze the text, there is only one question being asked:
When we sit down to Passover seders, we read about the oppression in Egypt and try to imagine ourselves as enslaved. We often forget that we are celebrating a holiday first celebrated before liberation.
The very first night of Pesach the Israelites were anxious and scared and knew that what was happening had no precedent in history. They hoped for a miraculous deliverance but had not yet seen it. The first Passover began not in ease but in anxiety.
For many of us this Passover will be true to the spirit of our ancestors. We are overcome by uncertainty and anxiety. We do not know what will happen; there is an element of the Yom Kippur liturgy hovering above the seder table – who will live and who will die, who will be healthy and who will grow sick.
The Passover message is that in darkness are the glimmers of redemption. “In the evening there is weeping and in the morning joy” wrote the Psalmist. On this Pesach we identify with the fear our ancestors felt in the face of a very different threat and we look for salvation, as they did, in one another and in God.
The sin of the golden calf is very strange. The Israelites thought that Moses would be on the mountain for forty days and he did not come down until a day later, on the forty-first. In that single day they built and worshipped the calf.
Imagine the scene. Did no one say — “Wait, maybe he was delayed! Maybe he took a nap, or found the climbing difficult, or stopped for coffee!” (We have not found archeological remains of Starbucks, but one never knows.) The instant response could only have been due to one thing — panic. And panic makes people do foolish things and fall back unthinkingly on old ways.
In our current situation, vigilance is good, but panic is bad. Clearing out the shelves is panic. If the Israelites had understood the information correctly (it takes time to go up and down a mountain), been more faithful and wiser, they would not have built the calf and ruined that generation’s chance of entering the promised land.
Panicking, we do not see and care for one another. The deepest test of our day is not medical but moral. Continue to be faithful and check on those who are alone. Stuff is not salvation. Be kind and be safe.
In this unsettling time, it is helpful to remember that Judaism has faced contagions and dangers before, and our sages have reacted wisely. Perhaps best known is the decree of the great Rabbi Yisroel Salanter, who, during the cholera epidemic of 1848, not only permitted but demanded that his congregants eat on Yom Kippur, and he did not exempt himself.
Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, is of paramount importance. The first word reminds us of pikayach, which means to have one’s eyes open. So, although some reactions may be more than is required, the possibility of saving lives necessitates that we err on the side of vigilance.
Judaism is largely about creating community, and that is very difficult to do when people are wary of touching and even gathering. The measures are temporary, however, and urgency genuine. Nonetheless we should not allow concern to swallow joy, or possibilities to be more real than actuality. Every day there is beauty and love and faith and music and wonder. Do not lose today in an imagined tomorrow. As Longfellow wrote: “Let us then be up and doing/ With a heart for any fate;/ Still achieving, still pursuing,/ Learn to labor and to wait.”
In Myanmar they tell a story about horses. The story goes that horses were originally created without teeth. The cow has teeth only on the bottom and water buffaloes only have teeth on the top. Originally they both had full sets of teeth. The poor horse came to the cow and said, “Look, you have top and bottom teeth and I have none. Would you consider giving me your top teeth so we can at least both have some?” The cow good-naturedly agreed. The horse then went to the water buffalo and asked that he share his bottom teeth. The Water buffalo also agreed. So the horse, who started out with nothing, ended up with teeth on the top and the bottom.
And that, says the Burmese legend, is why horses laugh.
Lessons from animals, scientific or mythic, exist in Judaism as well. The Talmud teaches us to learn modesty from the cat and fidelity from the dove. The Bible counsels us to imitate the ant’s industry, and the Mishnah urges us to be bold as a leopard and swift as an eagle to do God’s will.
To which I would add, since we have teeth top and bottom, learn to laugh.
We all struggle between the impulse to assume we are self-made and that we are indebted to others. Both of course are true: without effort and hard work it is impossible to accomplish much in this world. Yet without all the structures, that existed before we came into this world, societal and environmental, we could have done nothing. To believe you are self-made is an act of blithe arrogance; yet to believe you do not deserve credit for your accomplishments is to blunt the motivation that moves society forward.
Judaism’s answer is gratitude coupled with responsibility – we are grateful for the gifts we have been given and responsible to use them for the good of the world. If you have a brain that works you did not ‘earn’ that brain, it was a gift. To be arrogant about natural gifts is foolish. If you have chosen to use it for the benefit of human beings however, you have every right to be proud of that choice. God gives the artist the gift; the artist gives us art.
The proper answer to, “Did you build/create/make that?” is, “Yes, I did. But I had help.”
Several years ago, I pointed out to my congregation that at our seders we were the Egyptians. While we enacted the ritual and said the prayers, in most homes we were being served by those we hired. Obviously, it was not slavery, but we were the Egyptians in the sense that our moral character was determined by how we treated those over whom we had power.
In Genesis 18:4 Abraham says, regarding the travelers visiting him, “Let a little water be fetched.” Why only a little water for tired, thirsty people? One astute commentator notes the key is “be fetched.” Since someone else was going to do it, Abraham did not want to place the burden on a servant to carry heavy buckets.
How you treat the housekeeper, the gardener, the sanitation worker – the waiter – is a good measure of your moral seriousness and sensitivity. Most people act nicely toward the powerful. But how do you act when you have the upper hand, when you are making the demands and paying the bill? Smug entitlement is ugly and unJewish. Every human being is in the image of God and when we do not treat others that way, we diminish that image in ourselves.
Most Jews are not aware, in a world of factory farmed and cruelly killed creatures, that kindness to animals is central to Judaism.
Tza’ar ba’alei chayim, not causing pain to any living thing, is even reflected in the Ten Commandments. We give animals a day of rest on the Sabbath as well. As the Psalm (36) states: “Man and beast You save O God. How precious is Your steadfast love.” Proverbs relates a test for the righteous: “A righteous person has regard for the life of his beast (12:10).”
This tradition persisted through Talmudic times and beyond. The standard code of Jewish law, the Shulchan Aruch tells us that it is forbidden according to the Torah to “inflict pain on any living creature.”
In one sense all of Judaism rests on this principle. When Rebekah compassionately draws water for all 10 camels of the servant of the patriarch Abraham, she is chosen as the wife of Abraham’s son Isaac. It is unJewish to blithely ignore the cruelties inflicted on animals in public exhibits or on our dinner plates. Our mission is not to pillage God’s creation, but to be its stewards and shepherds. True mastery means true mercy.
In the wake of a rising of anti-Semitism, one strategy is to emphasize the Jewish contribution to the world. The hope is that recognizing the many blessings Jews have brought to humanity will ameliorate some of the hatred. The list of benefits created by Jews, from the polio vaccine to the writings of Kafka, are sometimes triumphantly listed as though the mind of the hater can be changed by the qualities of the hated. Yet resentment of achievement is as likely as admiration of it.
A virus which is not spread by reason cannot be cured by reason. A rainfall of facts will not put this fire out. In his journal the poet Delmore Schwartz wrote the following inspired by the story of Joseph:
The gift is loved but not the gifted one
The coat of many colors is much admired
By everyone, but he who wears the coat
Is not made warm.
We should still insist on facts and achievements and the reality of Jewish existence. But hatred does not begin in the behavior of the Jew but rather in the derangement of the anti-Semite. Our job is to create a world where those who offer gifts too are kept warm.
It is well known that Jews have a deep love of argument. If you disagree with this, you are just proving my point.
The Talmud is many things, but one defensible definition is an extended argument. It contains wonderful phrases for argumentation, like raminhu, which means you are throwing two statements against each other, sometimes from the same Rabbi. In other words, Jews even love arguing with themselves.
We started early; Abraham and Moses and Ezekiel and Samuel all question or argue with God, among many others in Jewish history. And from the Talmudic principle of Kal V’homer (a fortiori, meaning “from the stronger case.”) if you can argue with God, you can certainly argue with the person next to you who, by the way, is clearly wrong.
It might seem difficult to be part of such a disputatious culture, but after all, better to solve things with sharp words than with fists or guns. So the next time someone upsets you, take the Jewish approach – “Oh yea? Want to argue about it?”
When I was a teenager, two strangers came to our home. They were Russian, and I learned that they visited to thank my parents, who had helped them escape from the Soviet Union. I have since learned many stories of Jews who helped other Jews, risked their own safety, smuggled goods in and people out, in an attempt to help.
Such benevolence is not new. In the 15th century, some 250 Portugese Jews captured at African seaports were sold as slaves throughout the kingdom of Alfonso V. The Jews of Lisbon formed a committee and through the beneficence of philanthropist Yehiel of Pisa, hired the famous scholar and statesman Don Isaac Abravanel to redeem them. The redeemed slaves, men, women and children, were housed, clothed, fed, and taught until they could support themselves.
Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – all Israel is responsible for one another. In a world of atomization and individuality, our tradition reminds us that our responsibilities extend beyond ourselves. As the midrash expresses it, one must not say the hole in the boat is only a danger for the one who sits above the hole. We sink or swim as a people just as ultimately, we sink or swim as a world.
