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Being One, Being Two, Being Seven, Being Eight

My D'var Torah for Shabbat Chanukkah 5783 (December 24, 2022).

A question I often get around Chanukkah is: Is it true that all the candle hae to be at the same level, other than the shamash? Usually the question comes from creativity -- someone who wants to repurpose another item as a chanukkiah, or who has a new vision of the candles and their combination visually or symbolically or both. So for example, artists have asked me if they can make a thing with a spiral or a certain kind of zigzag and still call it a kosher chanukkiah. Growing up I never learned that this was an issue, but you hear the question a few times and you start to think it must be a thing.

Well, as a matter of principle in halacha (Jewish law) the answer is yes, you can have these kinds of chanukkiot! Though if you think you heard that Jewish law says “no” you’re not wrong, and I’ll get to that.  The Jewish law books say first that you have to be able to differentiate each flame when you are looking at the chanukkiah. This is the opposite of a medurah, which in modern Hebrew is a campfire or a bonfire. Medurah in itself is cool, and in a medurah like a chanukkiah because you have a lot of flames, but with a medurah or a campfire they are jumbled up together and you can’t perceive each one because they are mixed up and move around. Anyway, one easy way to make sure you have a sert of distinct burning wicks, and not have it appear like a medurah, is to space them out in a sequence on the same level. That’s what the books of Jewish law actually say about the straight line. Personally I don’t really get the same level part, because if you follow the logic of the Talmud out each night representing another level of holiness, you should be able to set up the candles like a staircase or an upward ramp. The Ashkenazi tradition is to stick to the straight line but to me it’s like eating legumes on Pesach, so be Sephardi if you like and spread your candles out however you find intriguing!

What is this all about, the difference between a line of flames and a campfire? Why shold we care?

In the Torah in the Mishkan (desert tabernacle), and in the Beit Hamikdash (the Temple in Jerusalem), there were oil lamps and a wood fire, both of which were always going day and night. Oil lamps we think of in connection with Chanukkah because of the ancient seven-branched menorah, and the Temple also had the ner tamid, the eternal light fueled by olive oil.

The fire on the altar reminds me of the burning bush, fire weaving and moving around through the scraggly scrub. One midrash says that the burning bush represents the suffering and the prayers of all the Israelites, and the presence of the Divine with them -- but as a whole, undifferentiated, all of their pain and groans and prayers jumbled together. Vast but trapped in place. In contrast to all that stood Moshe, a single person in that moment, not yet a leader; and the Divine, also singular, not yet in action to save them.

These ancient fires and lamps got me thinking again about this halacha about the differentiated lights. It’s not just about what you see on any given day: six candles, rather than a blazing fire pit with six or more sticks or branches somewhere in there. I think the law is also about perception across eight nights. It’s about the ability on the first night of Chanukkah to say this is one candle, the next night to perceive that these are two candles, and so on all the way to eight.

There is a difference between each candle, and there is a also a difference between perceiving one candle, and five, and eight.

Do you experience something different about the chanukkiah on different nights?

I really noticed this year on days 4 and 5 how different the chanukkiot looked by my window, compared to day 1 and 2. I mean Captain Obvious, I know -- but it’s gotten me to challenge myself about not looking at one as a means to two, not always looking at a couple candles in order to be excited about seven or eight. In my home, the effect is especially pronounced because we have several chanukkiot going each night; the effect of the change from night to night is dramatic. For me the meaning of these teachings about perceiving one, perceiving two, etc. is not to see two people in our community primarily as a strategy for connecting with a third one. How do we get ourselves toward appreciating each of the groupings in the Chanukkah story? Really appreciating just Judith or Matityahu in action; or just Yehudah Ha-Maccabee and his brothers; and just their small band; and their large force. I know I sometimes need to remind myself not to see small numbers of people just as inferior or miniative versions of larger numbers.

My colleague and classmate Rabbi Sue Fendrick once gave a talk in which she mentioned the distinctness of different numbers of people in Judaism.

Two people together are a chavruta, a study pair. There’s something unique about two people facing each other over words of Torah, with no one else to hide behind when your partner expresses and idea or asks a question. You experience Torah differently in a pair, differently than in a Torah service and even a small discussion group.

Three people make a beit din, a court of law. They can rule on a conflict over money and property; they can proclaim officially that someone has become Jewish. Three are enough to call each other formally after a meal in gratitude -- chaverai, n’varech! -- to say the blessing called Birkat Hamazon.

Ten of course are a minyan, enabling us to have a Torah service or say the Mourners’ Kaddish and respond. Ten defines a public according to Jewish law. If you do an act that is seen in the presence of ten or more and is particularly ethical and does honor to the Divine and our people -- a Kiddush Hashem -- that’s a bigger deal than if fewer were around to see it. And the same for Chillul Hashem, if in the presence of ten one does something particularly unethical and shames us or the name of God.

I think about the 208 delegates at the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897 -- that’s far fewer than make up this congregation today. So too the 23 on the ship that landed the first formal Jewish community in North America in 1654, in New Amsterdam.

Seven, I learned in group psychology, might be the ideal size of a committee or task force -- the point where the chemistry of introverts and extroverts, creatives and analyticals, has the best chance of combining a good end product with good feeling about the experience.

Eight is the extra on top of that seven -- it’s the number of covenant, the leap from the best of what people can accomplish together in our reality to something we might deem messianic.

Even one, in Judaism, is a kind of group. You may be solitary, but you are never alone. Moshe, alone at the burning bush, was with the Divine, and the singular Divine, Adonai Echad, had Moshe. The first candle of Chanukkah has the shamash, the fire that links them to someone else who stored the oil and planned for you to arrive, waited for you to make them less alone.

Jews today are conditioned in a good way to think of how the people in any given “here” can spread what we have -- but our weakness is to get caught up too much on who is missing. The Chanukkah miracle of the oil was meant to reframe scarcity as not just sufficiency, but abundance and overflowing. So too we should see whoever is in the room or around the table, in any number, as abundant and overflowing. You may by now be thinking of Margaret Mead, who could have been talking about each night’s chanukkiah when she famously said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.”

So part of the sweetness of the Chanukkiah is the chance to appreciate all the numbers we find ourselves in, the partnerships and discussions and services and protests and parties. The unique and distinct character of each group where we act and learn and reflect and grow. Each day of Chanukkah is a unique festival of lights.

My colleague Rabbi Fendrick closed the talk I mentioned with this beautiful last part from a poem by Marge Piercy called “The Low Road”, and it’s a perfect kavvanah (intention) as we look at our candles each night:

Two people can keep each other sane
can give support, conviction,
love, massage, hope, sex.

Three people are a delegation
a cell, a wedge.
With four you can play games
and start a collective.
With six you can rent a whole house
have pie for dinner with no seconds
and make your own music.

Thirteen makes a circle,
a hundred fill a hall.
A thousand have solidarity
and your own newsletter;
ten thousand community
and your own papers;
a hundred thousand,
a network of communities;
a million our own world.

It goes one at a time.
It starts when you care to act.
It starts when you do it again
after they say no.
It starts when you say We
and know who you mean;
and each day you mean
one more.

Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov and Chag Urim Sameach!
A Good New Month and a Joyous Festival of Lights!

My Rosh Hashanah Sermons From Last Week

Here are my sermons from Rosh Hashanah 5783:

First day:
Help Me Talk About What I've Been Through and Who I Am

Second day:
Right-ology: How to Be Right Better in the New Year

Wishing everyone a Shana Tova Umetukah, a good and sweet new year!

Media From Me for Elul -- Tov! Podcast, Maimonides YouTubes

We're deep into Season 3 of Tov!, my podcast about The Good Place and Jewish ideas related to teshuvah. You can find all the most recent episodes here, or type "Tov!" into your favorite podcast app.

Also, I have been logging in at 12:36pm Eastern time each weekday this Elul to teach and talk about some classic teaching about teshuvah, mostly Maimonides but other things maybe too. You can join here, or you can listen to the ones I've taped:

Inheriting America, Choosing America

This is another take on something I've written and spoken about before, how and why I chose to stay in America because of my engagement with quintessential American themes of freedom and individuality. I spoke about this last Shabbat, in anticipation of Independence Day 2022. It's published here at the Times of Israel.

Tov! Chapter 7 -- Lying!

On “The Good Place” Chapter 7 is the classic lying episode, and on the podcast Rebecca Rosenthal and I jump off from the Talmud’s analysis of white lies to talk about truth and relationships, how and when we tell people important truths, and how truth emerges between people not just by telling.

(Also the Klingon death ritual....)

Listen and delve into the show notes here!

Tov! Podcast Chapter 3 Is Up!

On “The Good Place” Michael tries to guide Chidi and Janet toward new things, but it’s Eleanor who finds unexpected inspiration because of Tahani. So on the podcast, Jon Spira-Savett and Audrey Marcus Berkman explore reincarnation Jewish-style and who the teacher you need turns out to be.

Launching Tov! The Podcast About "The Good Place" and Jewish Ideas

If you're a fan of "The Good Place" and at all connected to Jews or Judaism, try out my new podcast that I'm creating with a bunch of colleagues!

Tov! is on all the major podcast platforms, and it will be a fun and interesting way to explore some Jewish texts and ideas. Check out the website for episodes and show notes, or search for it in your app and try it out!

It's launching right as we begin Elul, the month in the Jewish calendar leading to Rosh Hashanah. This is the time of year when we're all Eleanor Shellstrop, trying to improve our lives as though everything is in the balance.

Ahavat Yisrael or Sin'at Chinam -- Learning From the Destruction of the Temple

This is the D'var Torah I gave on Saturday, July 17, Shabbat Chazon -- the Shabbat preceding the fast of Tisha B'Av, which commemorates the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem by the Babylonians and the Romans.

I want to tell you a story from the Talmud often taught at this time of year, around the fast of Tisha B’Av. But first I want you to take a minute and think about the Jewish person who is most unlike you as a Jew. The Jew or the Jewish group you find it hard to admire, or who is hardest for you to feel connected to as a fellow Jew.

Here is the story (Babylonian Talmud Gittin 55b):

Because of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza, Jerusalem was destroyed.

It happened this way: A certain man had a friend named Kamtza and an enemy called Bar Kamtza. He once made a party and said to his servant, “Go and bring Kamtza.” The servant went and brought Bar Kamtza.

When the man who gave the party found Bar Kamtza there he said, “See, you are my enemy; what are you doing here? Get out!” Said the other: “Since I am already here, let me stay, and I will pay you for whatever I eat and drink.”

Said the host: “Absolutely not.”

“Then let me give you half the cost of the party.”

The host refused.

“Then let me pay for the whole party.”

Still the host refused, and took him by the hand and threw him out.

Said Bar Kamtza, “Since the Rabbis were sitting there and did not stop him, this shows that they agreed with him. I will go and inform against them to the government.”

He went and said to the emperor, “The Jews are rebelling against you.”

Said the emperor, “How can I know that this is true?”

“Send them an offering,” said Bar Kamtza, “and see whether they will offer it on the altar.”

So he sent with him a fine calf. While on the way he made a blemish on its upper lip (or some say, on the white of its eye)—in a place where we Jews count it a blemish but they Romans do not.

The rabbis were inclined to offer it in order not to offend the government. Said Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas to them: “People will say that blemished animals are offered on the altar.” They then proposed to kill Bar Kamtza so that he should not go and inform against them, but Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas said to them, “Is one who makes a blemish on consecrated animals to be put to death?”

Rabbi Yochanan thereupon remarked: “Because of the scrupulousness of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkulas our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt, and we ourselves exiled from our land.”

This story from the Talmud is retold often around Tisha B’Av, part of the idea that the Second Temple was destroyed because of gratuitous hatred among Jews, sin’at chinam.

There is a lot here in the story and I’m not going to give you a complete analysis. But a few things stand out particularly to me this year:

• The names Kamtza and bar Kamtza, the host’s friend and his enemy, are almost the same. Among Jews, the people we like and the people not so much are really close together, sometimes in the same space and if not, then not entirely different from each other.
• This is a story about a Jewish party, a social gathering of people in the same place, that ends connected to the political world of the Romans – but it starts with the Jewish party.
• The story asks whether relations among us as Jews are governed culturally by us or by the general world. We know that Jews argue or don’t always get along – will this be played out Jewish-style or Roman-style?

The last issue is particularly worth our attention, always and especially this year. Jews argue and Jews don’t all get along always. Conflict is built into Torah and Talmud, and into Jewish culture. The good version of this is called machloket l’shem shamayim, disagreement and even division for the sake of Heaven. It goes hand in hand with Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people and love of Jews generally, beyond one’s own community and the Jews at your own Shabbes table or your own synagogue.

I do think what happened here is that a Jewish fight got turned into a Roman one, and the rabbis stood there and let it happen. They didn’t ask what Jewish ethics had to say about these two people in an uncomfortable situation, who maybe were enemies for a good reason. The rabbis got stuck on technical rituals questions and didn’t see the bigger human picture. So the Talmud here doesn’t blame the destruction of the Temple on the Romans; or on Bar Kamtza, the Jew who sold out Jews to the Romans; but on the rabbis who could have turned this around.

Bar Kamtza didn’t act well but we understand he was hurt. The rabbis didn’t act well because they didn’t put ritual and relationships together. And they got so focused on Bar Kamtza that they forget the Romans were a much worse enemy, a much bigger issue. The rabbis and Kamtza and bar Kamtza could have all gotten on the same side of that.

I’m very much feeling like our Jewish community’s conflicts today are being Romanized, so to speak. Americanized. And this story and the Tisha B’Av fast day are reminders to deal with our conflicts Jewishly. Ahavat Yisrael for me has always been about forcing myself to ask: Who is the Jew who is least like me, whom I have the hardest time feeling connected to. Then looking for a connection of friendship or admiration with someone in such a group. For me it’s a nice long list of Jews different from me who are hard for me. It’s charedi Jews, and West Bank settlers, and completely secular you-can’t- possibly-lure-me-into-shul-no-matter-how-good-the-music-or-food-or-your-sermon. I have to work at that. That’s not what modern day Romans do. Rather than get sucked in more to American-style conflict, I can find ways to love and connect that don’t sell out my integrity. I might even find something that my own Bar Kamtza and I both care about, a moral issue that we can work on together.

There is a tremendous example of Ahavat Yisrael that took place recently, from the new Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett. The speech he gave in the Knesset introducing the leaders in his new government was a like mashup of announcing the starting lineup for the Celtics at the Garden and a book club summary of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals.

Prime Minister Bennett presented by name, with affection, the leader of each party in his government and the specific good each one was going to work on for Israel. More of these partners than not are ideologically opposed to him in some profound way.  I know this was politics, but he turned a moment of just enough votes in the Knesset to an expansive and generous and forward-looking, hopeful moment. It went even beyond Jews, as the new prime minister even gave a shout out for Mansour Abbas of the Arab Ra’am party.

Bennett did this while the country was hardly out of war with Gaza and just beyond fighting in the streets between Jews and Arabs. He did this with all the emotion in the air around former Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he did this while death threats were being made members of his political party and the new government. I would say you should read the speech, but it’s not soaring, it’s not a great read. It’s just the fact of it. Prime Minister Bennett found a way for Kamtza and Bar Kamtza to fight the Romans instead of each other. And the Romans are worth fighting together even if you’re not going to be actually friends. In my proudest, Jewish-egotistical way I would say only a Jew could have pulled this off.

So we might all learn from that. We should try to find a way to say something true and sincere and generous about Jews we’re not like. And as part of that, we have to love ourselves as Jews – you for your own Jewish life, us for our shul’s Jewish life. We have to do better at making sure that there are many good and admirable things that a Jew so different would say about us.

There is a cost to Ahavat Yisrael, to putting this much value on loving all other Jews. Whenever you set aside even for a minute an ideological debate, you are putting on hold a belief you hold because other people’s wellbeing depends on that core belief. There’s a cost, no doubt.

But Ahavat Yisrael is a model not for when to give up our principles, but for how to enlarge our world. For saying: there’s a person unlike me who isn’t only my opponent, who isn’t all the timeworking against what’s important to me, and who I hate to say might be a role model for me in some way.

When I think of the charedi community or the settlements, I know there’s a tight-knit quality and a commitment to taking care of each other that I want more of in our community and that I want to imitate. When I think of the most secular Jews I know, I often find an honesty, a straightforward path toward moral commitments, that I want to work at more.

We Jews have more history than anyone of suffering because of our divisions --  losing life and losing our land and losing each other. We also have more history than anyone of enduringbecause we figured out how to be divided. We are resilient because we’ve learned to be at the same party, as Kamtza and Bar Kamtza. Our divisions have not destroyed us; sometimes they have helped us grow. I know my own Judaism is stronger because of the Orthodoxy I reject in my own life, because of the Reform I reject in my own life, because of the Israeliness I chose not to pursue in my own life.

Who knows if this is the gift we’re supposed to find for our time. To find our Ahavat Yisrael, our love of Jews, and machloket l’shem shamayim, division focused around things that matter. Who knows, we could spread this out to the Romans, to the Americans. At least we can try not to be swept up on other people’s terms in the divisiveness of the moment.

So as we go into Tisha B’av, let’s each think about the Jew who pushes our buttons, whether that’s here locally or anywhere in the Jewish world. Find something to admire or like or chuckle about. Find an idea from them that challenges you in a good way, and be thankful and gracious. Imagine a party we can all be at together -- or at least a Kiddush after services.

Shabbat Shalom!

Ships, Planks, and Storms -- Looking Back and Ahead

These were my words of Torah at the start of Temple Beth Abraham's annual congregational meeting on June 15, 2021. Though they refer specifically to that occasion in places, I think the Torah here is apt for all of us as we reflect on the past fifteen months and the transitions we in, each in our own way. I shared a version of this as a Shabbat D'var Torah the prior weekend.

It was taught among our early rabbis:

Rabban Gamliel said:
One time I was going on a ship, and I saw another ship broken apart
And I was in pain because of a brilliant sage who was on it
– and who was it: Rabbi Akiva.

But when I went up onto dry land, he sat and discussed in front of me a matter of Jewish law, halacha.
I said to him: My son, who lifted you up from the sea?

He said to me: a plank [from a ship] happened to come to me, and every single wave that came over me, I nodded my head toward it.

This story from the Talmud is a Jewish version and elaboration of the saying that we’re not all the same boat but we are all in the same storm.

Rabban Gamliel and Rabbi Akiva experience a storm in very different ways. Rabban Gamliel was on a ship that was safe, even though it was tossed around, seeing other ships that are wrecked, and knowing some people have been lost, and some Torah in particular gone.

Rabbi Akiva was thrown from his ship, and the way he sees it, it’s only by fortune that he finds a plank to hold on to. He says that he nodded his head toward each wave as it came. Some interpret this to mean that he lowered his head, so the wave wouldn’t throw him off his board. Some say he nodded, to acknowledge the wave and its power much greater than any he had – a power to harm him or to bring him ultimately to the shore.

Rabban Gamliel is the one who tells the story. Rabbi Akiva, he says, starts discussing points of Jewish law, which is presumably what the two of them used to do on dry land before. But Rabban Gamliel stops him, and asks to hear his story. I think Rabban Gamliel was worried about his friend and student. Because Rabbi Akiva hadn’t been one just to sit and discuss the rules on their surface. He had been one of the most creative sages, an activist, a spiritual master -- and Rabban Gamliel fears that Akiva is not all there.

It’s a hard thing to ask after a storm, when someone seems to want to go back to business as before and pick up what you used to do together. It’s hard because when Gamliel says who saved you, Akiva says: It’s not a who. I got lucky. This plank came. He doesn’t say whether he thinks it was God. He tells a story of having to bow his head low and relives that.

There might be some resentment between the two rabbis, let’s be honest. Why did you have an easier time through the storm? Why did you worry about me and my ship from afar and not come by to help lift me up?

And yet Rabban Gamliel gets Rabbi Akiva to make a kind of Freudian slip in Hebrew. Akiva calls the plank of the broken ship a daf, which also means a page. A page in a book, a book of Torah, a folio of Talmud; a page in the story of a life; a page of our history together as Jews. A page came to me and saved me, and from that page I could turn toward the enormous wave and nod. Rabban Gamliel helps Rabbi Akiva perhaps begin to see that the story of the storm is not the only story. It’s not even the only storm. It’s certainly not the only trial in Akiva’s life, this Rabban Gamliel knows, and together perhaps they can start to tell a story of how each in their way arrived at the shore, and where that story fits into the dapim, the pages and planks that build the story of both their lives, and of their common life.

We have all been in a storm, and I’ll speak for myself, some days I feel like I’m walking onto the shore and other days I feel like I am still in the storm. I talk to people among you each day, who report being on a ship or a plank or on the shore. From the ship I have been fortunate to be on – a ship of my own family, a ship of community and colleagueship among local pastors and national rabbis – I have seen other ships broken apart, and not all of those ships left planks for people to hold onto. We in our Temple community have lost – people have died this past year and not only because of the pandemic. We have lost 5 people at least in our congregational families to COVID-19, and about ten percent of our households have had at least one person sick, and at least ten percent of our households have experienced the loss of a job or income since a year ago March. And so many other losses, of stability and friendship and connection and wellbeing.

Our ships and our planks and our pages – what you had, what you found, what you held onto or made into something, what you remembered as a source of hope -- so many of these the past fifteen months. And there have been waves aplenty, not only of disease but around national leadership and equality in our land. I see the waves that Rabbi Akiva nodded at, as representing his realization that in a storm you see what the truly profound forces are, what is deep and powerful. Or maybe you get a glimpse, you feel it – and you talk when you get back to land.

For us as a community, it’s important to realize that people experienced this storm differently, and also that plenty have not reached the shore yet. Let’s be generous with each other – don’t make assumptions, about where someone else is at, whether they are ready to come out or come here or give a handshake or a hug. We will continue to be a hybrid congregation, and work hard at doing that well. There are conversations to have about halacha, about matters of law and behavior; and there are the joys of conversations we so want to resume, with the people here we have missed. But somewhere too is the conversation that Rabban Gamliel invited Rabbi Akiva to have – about what you experienced, what was hard, what you learned, what gives you hope. It’s not healthy to leave those behind. It’s not what Sages do, to skip that entirely – and I look out and see so many wise people here. So I hope we each get the Rabban Gamliel we need, who will listen to our story, and for someone else who was Akiva this year, you might yourself be Gamliel.

The purpose of our community and our institution is to be the ship and the shore, and even the plank and the page, through times that are stormy and God willing less so. Tonight we look at the ship’s sturdy hull and soaring sails, and chart voyages and landfalls that lay ahead. May they be good and safe and joyful, for you and for all of us together.

Figuring Out the Talmud's Last Page on Pesach

Here is a Passover puzzle I was trying to solve today at our siyyum (completion of a section of Torah study) to undo the fast of the first-born (that’s a whole other story). It is the last teaching of Massechet Pesachim, the Talmudic book about Passover.

 

Rav Simlai attended a pidyon ha-ben, the ceremony for “redeeming” a 30-day-old first-born baby boy from a kohen (priest). Background: First-born Jewish boys are considered to have a special obligation to the Divine, because their lives were in danger on the night of the first Passover, the prelude to the escape from Egypt, when the tenth plague struck and killed all Egyptian first-born. Their survival having been a special gift and mystery, they are presumed to belong to the Divine, and the priests are entitled to draft them into religious service in the Temple. The Torah says that in practice, members of the tribe of Levi are substituted for the first-born, but as part of this the father of each first-born has to redeem the baby from the Levite priests. We actually still have this custom, of paying a few symbolic coins to a kohen in a special ritual, even though there is no Temple where the boy would grow up to serve.

 

So back to Rav Simlai, who is a guest at a pidyon ha-ben, and the other guests recognize that there’s a rabbi in the house so he is asked a question. There are two blessings recited at the ceremony. One goes with fulfilling the mitzvah, the obligation, and is said by the father. The other is the She-he-chayanu, a blessing of gratitude to the Divine for “giving us life, keeping us alive, and bringing us to this day.” Rav Simlai is asked who should say this – the father because he’s doing a mitzvah, or the kohen because he’s getting some money in his pocket for probably not a hard day’s work (that part is my editorializing).

 

Well Rav Simlai didn’t have a ready answer, and like I imagine many a rabbi at a party, didn’t have all his books with him, not realizing he’d be on the clock. So he excused himself (or maybe he waited until the party was over) and headed over the House of Study, where he got an answer: The father says the blessing. The Talmud concludes that such is the law – and that’s it, the end of Tractate Pesachim.

 

So I wonder why this is the last word about Passover and what it means. Well one easy equation is that redeeming each child is a microcosm of the redemption of all Israel. Just as the father buys back the child’s freedom, so too God bought us back into freedom. God had told Moses, after all, to tell Pharaoh that “Israel is My first-born son.” So this father, as he starts his family, is being reminded not to take his son’s freedom for granted, nor really his life, because after all the first-born experienced even more danger the night of the first Passover than everyone else. This is a way to bring the idea that each of us left Egypt to a very personal level; it’s not just history and it’s also not just political and social in scale.

 

The only problem with that is: If father=God and child=Israelites, who does the priest stand for? Surely the priest is not like Pharaoh! Surely if the boy were to be unredeemed and left at the service of the kohen, this would a life completely unlike slavery to Pharaoh.

 

Best I can do is this: In Egypt, the choice was stark between slavery and freedom. For this father, there is a true choice between two destinies of service: one in direct official service to God, and one is some other holy way that this father and family will have responsibility to work out. That’s what freedom means. It’s more than an alternative to the horror of slavery. It’s the opportunity and responsibility to provide multiple paths of goodness and holiness for our children, to see in our own lives that there are multiple paths. If a path that comes with some label of goodness – “follow this arrow toward the priest who will guide you to a life of service” – if that isn’t your path, it’s not enough to say I can’t do that, I can’t be that. The duty of the parent, and of the generation more generally who welcomes any child into the world, is to help them look over the other paths, the ones that aren’t so obviously labeled as “service.”

 

So indeed, the father says the blessing of She-hechaynau, thank you for bringing us to this point, where it’s my responsibility to help this child learn how to choose freely among the many good choices, to find the path that’s right. I gladly pay a few coins for that privilege, for having the power of creating freedom for this child, the way the Divine did and does for all of us.

 

A zissen Pesach – a sweet Passover to all who are celebrating!