Rabbi Zeitlin

Our sages describe the slavery of Egypt as being so all-encompassing that even our thoughts were no longer our own. Some accounts say that God Himself had to provide us the strength even to  groan in misery–we were no longer capable to cry out and beg for rescue. So devalued, and so overwhelmed with that contempt, it’s not surprising to learn that four-fifths of the Jewish People were fine remaining slaves and didn’t bother to participate in the Exodus.  Of course, these people were lost in history, as have been so many of our ancestors over time (perhaps less than one-tenth of the Jews in Persian exile bothered to return with Ezra and Nechamiah).

I don’t find much value in dismissing those people as merely “assimilated”, as “not committed to yiddishkeit“, or as “materialistic” or “self-hating” (although perhaps “self-devaluing”, is a good description). Rather, it’s more accurate to describe them as having passed the point of no return on the road to dispirit.  They were “self-hating” in that they’d integrated into themselves the Egyptians’ (and Persians’ and Romans’ and Germans’ and… and…. and…..) loathing for them. After generations of being treated as dirt with nothing to contribute but blind muscle, with no worthwhile culture of our own, we, too begin to see ourselves this way, and we easily race to complete self-alienation.

How did the one-fifth, people who, like their brothers, had all their fight and spirit kicked out of them, develop the gumption to even hear Moshe, let alone to later follow him into the desert? How could a leader who didn’t believe in himself generate any faith at all within people who didn’t feel themselves worth saving? More important, how can we, individually and as a people, develop, at the very least, not only the self-esteem to believe that we are worth being freed from both our personal and communal ghettos, but also the self-confidence that we actually can survive the “desert” and reach our destiny? In our time, how can we learn to stand up to the tsunami of hate and lies about Israel, our nation and people, and how can we learn to confront ourselves and our self-generated acceptance of living merely at fractions of our real potential? How can we feel confident that tomorrow’s answers and insights will exceed today’s, freeing us to move into, rather than deny, the future? Bluntly, how can we outgrow crippling self-pity and self-contempt?

To be honest, I don’t have a magic answer in my rabbi-manual. Of course, this question is echoed in the challenges psychologists and psychiatrists face in treating depression, and their track record ain’t so great either.

The best I can do is merely to restate and refocus the question, look for analogies and parallels which, at best, will only provoke further questions. Is there anything unique about myself? about my people? Am I bursting with gifts that only I can bring to the world? Are the insights and values of my tradition merely “a narrative”, so narrow with no benefit to mankind? Why would God bother to rescue and redeem me from the torment of Egypt? Perhaps someone else is more worthy and I should be left behind? Ultimately, why don’t I believe that the very fact that God continuously redeems and renews me proves that I am worthy?

All, perhaps, with the faith that the process itself of asking questions will reveal some hints. Isn’t that what the Seder is all about?

I find it extremely sad that most “modern”, “innovative”, “relevant” rewrites to the Haggadah begin with removing “the boring parts”, all the rabbinic teaching that actually makes up the bulk of the liturgy. Indeed, it is exactly these Mishnaic and Mishna-like passages that power not just the Seder, but the entire journey from slavery to freedom.

While any kind of slavery is, indeed a travesty and a “crime against humanity”, the slavery of the Jewish people in Egypt was sui generis, one-of-a-kind. It encompassed much more than being forced to labor under inhuman conditions, inescapable poverty, the constant threat of physical violence, contempt by the majority population and the suspension of all that we now call “human rights”, which is probably how most contemporary westerners would describe slavery. Rather, the Egyptian Exile was so all-consuming that it’s described in our tradition as “the exile of thought”–we no longer owned what went on in our own minds!

Many traditions share values such as kindness and justice.  Judaism doesn’t hold an exclusive patent on concern for the earth, for all life and the hope for a better tomorrow. However, Judaism does contain and is based on a very unique way of thinking. Rather than being exclusively based on empirical reality, and also not being based on the very denial of that reality as “illusion”, Jewish thinking combines and requires both the empirical and the intuitive, the linear and the associative, the mundane and the divine. Moreover, it demands that we evaluate in all of these seemingly opposing realms simultaneously! And, in addition to that, we’re constantly reminded that human understanding, while potentially great, is, by definition, limited. We’re also not only allowed to think is such a free, revolutionary mode, we’re mandated to!

When we read on Seder night about the struggles of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah to convince his colleagues that it’s proper to include the paragraph about tzitzit (ritual fringes) in the evening recitation of the Sh’ma, the discussion of just how many plagues struck the Egyptians in Egypt and how many at the Red Sea and the disputations about when to eat matzah and maror (bitter herbs), the intent of the Haggadah is not to instruct us in those or any other rules. Rather, the deliberate planning that went into creating the Haggadah by the rabbis of the Mishna is focused on returning to each of us the ability and power of Jewish thought.

The Haggadah is a crash course on How To Think Jewish 101! It’s all there to remind us of the methodology, to remind us that there is such a thing as objective truth and right-and-wrong, based on the Torah, but not in a fundamentalist, literalist, ignorant reading of it, but rather using our specific analytic tools which force us to think in so many contrasting modes all at the same time.

John Lennon wrote about revolutions, “You better free your mind instead”. As long as we’re limited in our thinking abilities we’ll be enslaved to the latest intellectual fad, to whatever value system is imposed on us from the outside and also by our own tyrannical impulses. But if we remember to constantly question, not in the childish/rebellious way based on our own narcissism (and so in fashion today), but rather using the transcendental logic of our tradition, we’ll remain at least able to reclaim our freedom as often as necessary.

I invite you to enjoy and put to good use the resources our tradition has already provided us. Chag Sameach to all.

(note:  I want to thank my student, Elissa Yaffe, for pointing out to me the obvious, but often overlooked (certainly by me), fact that the Haggadah is, indeed, largely composed of Mishnaic teachings. This illustrates another important feature of the traditional style of Jewish Thought–truth can only be approached through the cooperative effort of people studying and working together, honing each other’s ideas.)

“הַמְחַדֵּשׁ בְּטוּבוֹ בְּכָל יוֹם תָּמִיד, Hamchadeish b’tuvo b’chol yom tamid, Who renews with His Goodness every day, continuously/eternally”, is repeated daily in our morning prayer.

קְדשִׁים תִּהְיוּ כִּי קָדוֹשׁ אֲנִי, Kedoshim ti’hyu ki kadosh ani, Be holy because I am holy, (Vayikra 19:2).

We’re mandated to imitate God because, in our efforts to approach and attach ourselves to The Creator we operate in the spiritual realm where closeness is not geometric but, rather, in degree of similarity.  Just as God creates for the benefit of others, we’re instructed to create for the benefit of others.  Just as God infuses every moment of time in this material world with the pure, evolving energy of evolution and growth, we’re mandated to change and grow and renew ourselves continuously though our lives.

Re-experiencing the holidays in the yearly cycle, just like re-experiencing similar situations in our daily lives, challenge us to leave behind our complacency and habitual behavior and to engage with each moment with a totally renewed and open mind, heart and spirit.

Words are critical. Of all humanity’s many achievements, language is by far our greatest. Dismissing the obvious, trendy and anti-humanistic “observation” that “other animals also employ language”, from the dances of bees to the songs of whales, we’ve never detected any messages more complex and sophisticated than “go there for food” or “avoid there because of danger”. All of our many accomplishments, be they in creating ethics-based societies, technological advances, philosophies, scientific discovery and more are enabled through the use of our ability to form and express abstract ideas.

While English divides the world into a neutral, value-free mineral-vegetable-animal, Hebrew explores more deeply and provides a hierarchy of concepts:  Inanimate (mineral), Living (vegetable), Moving (animal) and Speaking (Man). And while it’s a popular contemporary conceit to ignore and deny any distinction whatsoever (other than, perhaps, in terms of “destructiveness and inherent evil”–note:  this comment is meant sarcastically) between Man and the rest of creation, the very fact that we, human beings, are even discussing such issues is a pretty clear indication of our unique role.

Words are holy.

Words are often inadequate.  We praise, in other words we establish and maintain a relationship with The Creator with words, even if words such as “The Creator” are completely incapable of describing or defining The Creator, merely labeling a concept beyond words, beyond even the concept of concepts. We use words to heal and comfort ourselves and others (of course, we also use other means we’ve developed such as medicine (traditional and “scientific”)). We form relationships with other people and create intimacy largely with words. When necessary, we can sometimes use the concept of communication, based on words, to use languages beyond words, such as visual art, music, dance. The story in the Torah of Adam naming all the animals really means that he discovered and described the essential nature of external reality based on the power inherent in words, letters and even fragments of letters, the basic elements of language. Even the Hebrew word for Man, אדם, Adam, is based on א, Aleph, which represents the transcendent and Divine, and דם, Dam, which not only refers to blood (i.e. animal) but also to silence. We lift merely animal existence into a higher realm by refusing to remain silent!

But like everything else in our world, words on their own are basically neutral. They can build and they can destroy, they can create love and they can bring pain. Because we humans, granted the twin to the power of speech, also have the power to choose how we use words.

Words repeated often lose their power and meaning. Repeated over and over with evil intent can create the illusion of truth even when they’re really lies. (Nowadays we call them “narratives”.) Used deviously, we might think we’re convincing others but, eventually, the inner rot of this misuse of language will emerge and become visible to all, described as a “skin disease” (a change in outward appearance) in the Torah portion Metzora.  Words are holy.

But the false use of words, especially in more subtle and, often, well-meaning ways can bring even deeper damage, especially to the speaker.

In a feel-good society, many words become euphemised, dulled and stripped of their meaning. Because feeling bad about oneself is considered unacceptable and to be avoided at all costs, we’re cheated of proper diagnostics of our true condition and, thus, blocked from growing and improving. When sin and evil are minimized as “missing the mark”, not only do we have no incentive to change, we focus on the lie that we are, just as we are, fine and perfect.  “Born this way” and not subject to growth. Enslaved to superficiality, we’re unable to cry out to God, to reach higher than the mundane, to transcend that which, certainly, we have in common with all Being, and fulfill the unique promise of being Man, enabled and ennobled by words.

The to-do list this time of year is always daunting.  Not only do we face the yearly accounting that goes with a thorough house-cleaning (what to keep/what to discard?, what of the “things” I’ve generated, looking back on them, have value?), it’s also personal income tax season in many countries, forcing us to face the same questions in terms of our financial efforts of the past year. Not to mention, of course, the sheer drudgery of both cleaning and form-filling.

For many of us, it becomes overwhelming.  There is so much to do and so little time to do it in, and, eventually, we reach the point where what’s left can only be done by ourselves. Search high and low, there is no one, absolutely not a single person or even group of people, no matter how well-intentioned and loving, who can help us or even ease our burden. We can’t even imagine a possible solution or any type of relief. We’re face-to-face with panic.

Similarly, our ancestors in Egyptian slavery. It wasn’t merely that we were forced to labor unpaid on major construction projects as is often presented. We were owned, body and soul. Our sages go so far as to say that we couldn’t even own our thoughts! Each day, the pressure would build as we descended ever farther into the depths of despair. We went to sleep in panic and woke to experience that panic somehow increased.

In our day, it’s easy, not to mention fashionable, to assume there is no higher authority than one made of humans, so when there is no person to call upon, we’re totally lost. In their day, the oppression was so unimaginably pervasive, the authority of our enslavers so absolute, we also were unable to look any higher.

The process of redemption we experienced in Egypt is largely considered to have been “from above to below”, to have been initiated by The Almighty Who extracted us, totally helpless, “with a strong hand and an outstretched arm”. However, we’re taught that before that could happen, we needed to do something, at least to cry out. A deeper reality is that even this ability to cry out was beyond us and it, also, was provided to us by The Creator.

For many of us living today, it’s difficult and often seems childish to “cry out to God”, especially if our understanding has yet to evolve beyond the image of God as inept disciplinarian or, even worse, some sort of cosmic ATM. We often don’t even know what to cry out for. House-cleaning help?  Free tax advice? Help in our “struggles”?

In most significant ways, we don’t know what this “freedom” we celebrate on Pesach really is. Is it the privilege to work for our own benefit?  Is it the freedom to worship or not worship as we please?  Is it the freedom to buy what we want? Is it the freedom to live, for the first time in millennia, in Eretz Yisrael (which this year, like most in the State of Israel’s short existence, always seems especially threatened this time of year)?  These are all so elusive and often so fleeting. In fact, we struggle with even knowing what we really want.

Perhaps our freedom, at this point, is just that, our very ability to struggle. We’re blessed with the intimation that we’re far from complete, that the world is far from perfect, that our personal tasks are far from finished. The first step towards freedom is recognizing, acknowledging and perhaps even blessing our despair.

Not all the traditional commentaries are critical of Nadav and Avihu, the two sons of Aaron, the Cohain Gadol (high priest) who perished after bringing their own, uncalled for, incense offering during the dedication of the Mishkan, Sanctuary.

There is something very positive about being motivated by deep passion.

One of the most difficult challenges we each face on a daily basis is to find that space between arrogant over-estimation of our individual power and self-abnegation leading to the equally false illusion of total powerlessness and apathy.

The Torah portion Sh’mini tells the story of Nadav and Avihu who overestimate their own preparedness and power and therefore perish bringing their self-generated אש זרה, aish zarah, “strange fire”, i.e. uninvited initiative, into the Mishkan, Sanctuary.  Just a week ago on Purim, we read the exchange in the Megillah after Mordechai tells Esther to inform the king of Haman’s plot to destroy the Jewish people.  At first she protests that everyone knows that to approach the king without being summoned potentially carries a death penalty.  Mordechai implores Esther, אַל־תְּדַמִּי בְנַפְשֵׁךְ, Al T’dami b’nafshech, Don’t mute your soul. Don’t lose yourself in a sense of impotence because the fate of the entire world could well depend on your action!

In this life, we can neither rush in like the proverbial bull in a china shop.  Nor can we allow ourselves to become petrified with fear.  Rather, we should trust ourselves and the moral code we continuously struggle to integrate and understand and then proceed to do our part.  Remember, no one else can do your job and without it the universe will remain incomplete.

Obviously, the observance of Purim is not a celebration of boorish drunkenness, but it is a celebration of intellectual fallibility. The goal we aim at is עד דלא ידע, ad d’lo yada, until you don’t know (the difference between “bless Mordechai and curse Haman“).  The entire story, the Megilla of Esther, does not contain a single mention of God, another indication that, on the surface, we were (and usually are) totally ignorant of what’s really going on around us.

Purim leads the way to Pesach, just a month later.  In fact, the very day after Purim we’re instructed to start learning the laws of Pesach, rules telling us how to prepare our homes, our Seder and the other observances of the festival–a procedure we’ve already performed many times. You’d assume we already know the whole process and, at most, we just need a little brush-up. But no, we’re instructed to start at the very beginning as if we’re completely new at this. If we’ve actually observed Purim properly, all our previous “knowledge” about Pesach is seen for what it is, next to nothing.

Pesach celebrates our freedom, and little enslaves us more than our own arrogance and preconceptions. This is one of the reasons I have so little patience with those on the extremes of our tradition. The militant atheist who declare that there is no mystery, that everything can be known through empirical science, that mere human beings really can be the masters of all knowledge, has eaten poisoned fruit, indeed, from the עץ הדעת טוב ורע, Etz HaDa’at Tov v’Rah, the Tree of Knowledge, Good and Evil.  Likewise, the sanctimonious, self-appointed “guardian of the faith” who believes that he is the final and eternal word in halacha, Jewish practice, requiring that everyone conform to his radically-limited understanding, is equally arrogant, having eaten his very own variety of the poisoned fruit.

סור מרע ועשה טוב, Sur May’Rah v’Oseh Tov, Turn away from Evil and do Good, a verse from Psalm 34 read every Shabbat and Festival morning, is an oft-interpreted Torah teaching. One thing it tells us is that the first step of “doing right” is realizing and rejecting the “wrong” we’ve been committed to. The word רע, rah, evil, is spelled “ר”-“ע”, raish-eyin.  The root of the word which means knowledge is דע, dah, “ד”-“ע”, dalet-eyin. Not only do they share the letter ע, eyin, the difference between the “ד” for דע and “ר” for רע is a tiny stroke of ink, extending the top line just as little to the right.

Perhaps, emphasized on Purim, we also need to סור מדע, sur may-dah, turn away from the evil of thinking we already know everything.  How do we fill an already filled glass? The solution is deceptively obvious, but it’s a lot easier if we’re willing to admit that what’s already in the glass isn’t so precious that we can’t afford to let go of it.

………..אנא בכח גדולת ימינך, Ana B’Koach Gedulat Yemincha…., is a poem we recite daily in the morning liturgy and also, very prominently, in Kabbalat Shabbat on Friday nights and during the counting of the Omer between Pesach and Shavuot.  Written by Rabbi Nehunia Ben HaKana, a 1st century tanna (sage of the Mishna) and Kabbalist (author of the Bahir), it’s a prayer and a praise. Not really singled out for additional prominence by traditional Jews, it’s relatively recently been popularized by the Kabbalah Center as well as some movements generally within the “liberal” wing of Judaism; for some it almost achieves a “magic” status since it generates, from the first letter of each word, the forty-two-letter name of God, widely used as a focus in meditation.

The point I want to emphasize is that beyond the surface meaning of the words, which is nice but not that special, the main significance we understand and emphasize is generated by only 42 of its 216 letters, less than 1/5th of the total!  The inner meaning of the remaining 174 letters is something we yet know nothing about.  Nonetheless, it’s not only fine for us to recite this prayer, most of whose significance is unknown to us, it’s highly recommended, possibly mandated (by being included in the traditional liturgy) that we do!

We have just recently entered into the Book of Vayikra in our yearly Torah cycle.  These parshiot describe in great detail (although completely insufficient detail for us to actually know exactly how to perform them–for that we require the Talmud, the Oral Torah) the animal sacrifices of the Mishkan and, later, the Beit HaMikdash (Temple).  Continuously, for two thousand years after there actually have been any sacrifices, we not only read these parshiot yearly but we recite parts of them daily.  They obviously have power, although probably not so much on the level of surface/literal meaning since we’re not using them as actual instructions.

L’Havdil, structurally it’s a little like “junk DNA”, a phrase that always jars me because it implies that whatever currently can’t be subsumed by a certain stage of scientific progress is “junk”.  Just like researchers have yet to figure out what the parts of the puzzle they don’t understand, we either lost or never yet have had revealed the deeper meanings of the remainder of Ana B’Koach or the descriptions of the sacrifices.

I’m inspired that such an infinitesimal slice of the full meaning of Torah, which itself reveals only an infinitesimal slice of God, already generates more knowledge than we can ever fully comprehend. We don’t know everything and we’ll never know everything and that, itself, is part of the mechanism that allows us to attach ourselves to God.

It dawned on me not long ago that we frequently confuse the secular concept “belief” with אמונה, Emunah, which can also be translated with the word “belief”.  In the secular sense, believing is equivalent to joining a particular religion.  “Do you believe in Jesus/Allah/Yaweh/Dharma/Great Spirit/Gaia?” is really asking which, if any, spiritual path you follow. Rather than a mode of thought/emotion, it’s a statement of opting in.

In Judaism, belief is independent of identity. אמונה, Emunah, is, indeed a mitzva, a commandment, an act that binds us to The Creator.  It is one of six hundred thirteen mitzvot.  It’s a goal, an ideal, and we’re mandated to continuously engage in this mitzva, not merely check it off once as a membership requirement. And, like all mitzvot, we rise and fall in our observance of it.  And, the mitzva is to believe in God, not to believe in Judaism. There are times that relationship seems effortless and there are times that God seems so distant as to not be perceivable at all. The complacency of taking Emunah, either permanently accepted or permanently rejected, as a given is a dangerous illusion.

The basic fact of one’s Jewishness has nothing to do with one’s belief. Let me repeat this, the basic fact of one’s Jewishness has nothing to do with one’s belief. This reflects the complex reality that Judaism is, indeed, a religion, but it is also a peoplehood.  It’s not a race nor an ethnicity, but it is both a nation and a religion.  Not every Jew participates in the religion (this doesn’t mean that he isn’t mandated to, merely that he doesn’t engage). Many Jews believe and many don’t.  Since God resists definition, even the belief that one Jew holds isn’t identical with the belief another has, not to mention usually not consistent within a single lifetime.

While it is, in one sense, very important what a Jew believes, in another, perhaps deeper one, it doesn’t matter at all. (Although from a communal perspective, people can, and have, “opt out” of their Judaism, but from a soul-based perspective it’s not at all clear.)

By its very nature, belief isn’t limited to logic, nor to objectivity. When the Rambam (Maimonides) lists his principle beliefs, he’s not presenting an in-or-out creed test.  Rather, he’s declaring that, for example, belief in the existence of the Creator,  belief in God’s eternity, belief in the divine origin of the Torah and the like are, for him, inescapable truths which, although they defy logic or empirical observation, are nonetheless, true.

As I’ve mentioned frequently, אמנה, Emunah, is related to the word אומן, Uman, which means an artist or craftsman. It’s unverifiable knowledge and it is always a work in progress.