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Counting the omer in hope towards an unknown future: Shavuot in a time of pandemic

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L’italiano segue l’inglese

As we count each evening from Pesach to Shavuot – forty-nine days or a week of weeks (hence the name Shavuot or Weeks) – we say a blessing with the ending “Who has commanded us concerning counting the Omer”.

Counting the Omer comes from the biblical narrative which tells us (Leviticus 23:10-16)

 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf (omer) of the first grain you harvest.  He will wave the sheaf (omer) before God so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath. On the day you wave the sheaf, you must sacrifice as a burnt offering to God a year old lamb without defect, together with its grain offering of two-tenths of an ephah of the finest flour mixed with olive oil—a food offering presented to the Eternal a pleasing aroma—and its drink offering of a quarter of a hin of wine. You must not eat any bread, or roasted or new grain, until the very day you bring this offering to your God. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks.  Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath and then present an offering of new grain to the Eternal”.

From the barley harvest of Pesach to the wheat harvest of Shavuot we count the days. Biblical Jews were profoundly aware of the importance of these harvests – and the third harvest of the year at Sukkot, when the newly ripened first fruits would also be brought to the Temple. Regular rainfall could not be relied on, nor was there a large river to provide the necessary irrigation – the whole agricultural endeavour was fragile and everyone knew it. So the counting of the days as the barley harvest began at Pesach until the wheat was ready at Shavuot marked a time of both anxiety and hope. The formula – this is day X of the Omer, which is Y weeks and Z days of the Omer – focuses us each night on exactly where we are in the cycle – will the barley harvest be successfully concluded? Will the wheat be ripe and ready?

That period of anxiety and hope resonated profoundly for the rabbis who rebuilt and reoriented Judaism after the destruction of the Temple and our exile from the Land of Israel. The agricultural focus fell away and in its place we remembered the journey out of Egypt to Sinai – from our liberation from slavery to reaching a milestone towards redemption with the Covenant with God; from being frightened individuals chased out of a foreign land to becoming a people who would return to their own ancestral Land.

We are once again in a period of anxiety and hope. Our normal life and routines have largely vanished:  the ability to meet friends and hug them, to pop out to the shops without fear of terrible consequences, to get on a bus or a train or go to a cinema or restaurant – suddenly all these are freighted with danger. Many of us know of people who have become seriously ill, or who moved from enjoying their life to their life ending in a matter of a few short weeks. The anxiety seems endless – and yet there is also hope. We have found the hope, as did our ancestors, both in marking the passage of time as we watch the Spring arrive with its blossom and its greenery, and in growing sense of community as we begin to understand how connected we are to each other, and as we forge ever closer relationships with each other – albeit with appropriate social distancing.

Shavuot does not mark the end of anything –either agriculturally or theologically. It marks the beginning of the second major harvest of the year, or the giving and receiving of the Torah – something that can never be a single event but is in fact a process that continually unfolds. As Menachem Mendel of Kotzk said, “The Giving of the Torah took place in the month of Sivan, but the receiving of the Torah takes place every day.”

Maybe it is because it does not mark a clear and decisive event that Shavuot is often described as a “Cinderella festival”, one that it is hard to be enthusiastic about – apart from the cheesecakes and other delicacies. But in reality Shavuot is one of the major festivals of Judaism. Along with Pesach and Sukkot it was one of the three times Jews were meant to visit the Temple in Jerusalem in order to thank God for the foods that would sustain life. In its rabbinic guise it is the moment when the Israelites became a people; the moment when, meeting God, we accepted the Covenant for all time and all generations, we agreed to be God’s people and do God’s will. Shavuot celebrates and rehearses the foundational moment of Judaism – tradition tells us we were all at Sinai, all part of the Covenant acceptance.

This year we will not be able to meet in the synagogue and re-enact Sinai. There will be no greenery decorating the bimah and Ark to remind us that Sinai was filled with flowers when God and the people promised their faithfulness to each other. The drama of the liturgy will feel a little less so when mediated through our internet providers. But the message of Shavuot – of the recognition of the fragility of life, of the existential anxiety of human beings, of the fact we are all journeying together through difficult land towards a hoped for but unclear future – that message will be clearer than ever this year.

So let’s celebrate the Spring time, bless the fact that we reach another day, be grateful for the community in which we live and with whom we share this journey. And remember the leap of faith of both God and the Jewish people to stick with each other and travel into a hopeful future.

Contare l’Omer nella speranza verso un futuro sconosciuto: Shavuot in tempo di pandemia

Mentre contiamo ogni sera da Pesach a Shavuot, quarantanove giorni ovvero una settimana di settimane (da cui il nome Shavuot o Settimane), diciamo una benedizione con il finale “Che ci ha comandato riguardo al conteggio dell’Omer”.

Contare l’Omer deriva dalla narrazione biblica che, in Levitico 23: 10-16, ci dice:

“Parla ai figli di Israele e di’ loro:” Quando sarete entrati nel paese che sto per darvi e ne mieterete i prodotti del campo, dovrete portare al sacerdote, il manipolo che avrete mietuto per primo; questi agiterà il manipolo davanti all’Signore affinché vi renda graditi; nel giorno successivo e in quello di astensione dal lavoro lo agiterà il sacerdote. In un giorno in cui agiterete il manipolo offrirete un agnello senza difetti di un anno come olocausto in onore del Signore; e la sua offerta farinacea sarà costituita da due decime di Efà di fior di farina intrisa nell’olio come sacrificio da ardersi con il fuoco in onore del Signore affinché costituisca profumo gradito, e la sua libazione sarà costituita di vino, nella misura di un quarto di Hin. Non mangerete né pane né grano abbrustolito, né grano fresco del nuovo prodotto fino a quel giorno, fino a che cioè non avrete presentato il sacrifico destinato al vostro Dio; questa è la legge per tutti i tempi, per le vostre generazioni in tutte le vostre sedi. E conterete, a cominciare dal giorno successivo a quello di astensione dal lavoro, dal giorno cioè in cui porterete il manipolo che deve essere agitato, sette settimane, che siano complete: fino al giorno successivo alla settima settimana conterete cinquanta giorni, e presenterete un’offerta farinacea di nuovi prodotti in onore del Signore.”.

Dal raccolto dell’orzo di Pesach al raccolto del grano di Shavuot contiamo i giorni. Gli ebrei biblici erano profondamente consapevoli dell’importanza di questi raccolti, così come del terzo raccolto annuale a Sukkot, quando anche i primi frutti appena maturati sarebbero stati portati al Tempio. Non si poteva fare affidamento su piogge regolari, né c’era un grande fiume per fornire l’irrigazione necessaria: l’intero sforzo agricolo era fragile e tutti lo sapevano. Quindi, il conteggio dei giorni da quando iniziava la raccolta dell’orzo a Pesach fino a quando il grano non era pronto a Shavuot segnava un momento di ansia e speranza. La formula “questo è il giorno X dell’Omer, ovvero Y settimane e Z giorni dell’Omer” ci focalizza ogni notte esattamente sul punto a cui siamo nel ciclo: la raccolta dell’orzo sarà conclusa con successo? Il grano sarà maturo e pronto?

Quel periodo di ansia e speranza risuonò profondamente per i rabbini che ricostruirono e riorientarono l’ebraismo dopo la distruzione del Tempio e il nostro esilio dalla Terra di Israele. L’attenzione all’agricoltura è svanita e al suo posto abbiamo ricordato il viaggio dall’Egitto al Sinai: dalla nostra liberazione dalla schiavitù al raggiungimento di una pietra miliare verso la redenzione con l’Alleanza con Dio; dall’essere spaventati individui cacciati da una terra straniera al diventare un popolo che sarebbe tornato alla propria Terra ancestrale.

Siamo di nuovo in un periodo di ansia e speranza. La nostra vita normale e la routine sono in gran parte svanite: la possibilità di incontrare amici e abbracciarli, di andare nei negozi senza timore di conseguenze terribili, di salire su un autobus o in treno o di andare al cinema o al ristorante: improvvisamente tutto ciò è carico di pericolo. Molti di noi conoscono persone che si sono ammalate gravemente o che sono passate dal godersi la vita al finire la loro vita nel giro di poche settimane. L’ansia sembra infinita, eppure c’è anche speranza. Abbiamo trovato la speranza, così come i nostri antenati, sia nel segnare il passare del tempo mentre guardiamo arrivare la Primavera con i suoi fiori e il suo verde, sia nel crescente senso di comunità di quando iniziamo a capire quanto siamo collegati gli uni agli altri, e quando instauriamo relazioni sempre più strette l’uno con l’altro, anche se con un adeguato distanziamento sociale.

Shavuot non segna la fine di nulla, né in ambito agricolo né teologico. Segna l’inizio del secondo grande raccolto dell’anno, ovvero il dare e ricevere della Torà: qualcosa che non può mai essere un singolo evento ma è in realtà un processo che si svolge continuamente. Come diceva Menachem Mendel di Kotzk: “Il Dare della Torà ha avuto luogo nel mese di Sivan, ma il ricevimento della Torah ha luogo ogni giorno”.

Forse è perché non segna un evento chiaro e decisivo che Shavuot è spesso descritta come una “festività Cenerentola” di cui è difficile essere entusiasti, a parte le cheesecake e altre prelibatezze. In realtà Shavuot è una delle maggiori festività dell’ebraismo. Insieme a Pesach e Sukkot era una delle tre volte in cui gli ebrei erano richiesto di visitare il Tempio di Gerusalemme per ringraziare Dio per i cibi che avrebbero sostenuto la vita. Nella sua forma rabbinica è il momento in cui gli israeliti sono diventati un popolo; il momento in cui, incontrando Dio, abbiamo accettato l’Alleanza per sempre e per tutte le generazioni, abbiamo deciso di essere il popolo di Dio e fare la volontà di Dio. Shavuot celebra e prova il momento fondamentale dell’ebraismo: la tradizione ci dice che eravamo tutti nel Sinai, tutti parte dell’accettazione del Patto.

Quest’anno non potremo incontrarci nella sinagoga e rievocare il Sinai. Lì non ci saranno addobbi floreali per la bimà e l’Arca, a ricordarci che il Sinai era pieno di fiori quando Dio e il popolo si promisero l’un l’altro. Il dramma della liturgia si sentirà un po’ meno, mediato attraverso i nostri fornitori di servizi Internet. Ma il messaggio di Shavuot, del riconoscimento della fragilità della vita, dell’ansia esistenziale degli esseri umani, del fatto che stiamo tutti viaggiando insieme attraverso la terra difficile verso un futuro sperato ma poco chiaro, quel messaggio quest’anno sarà più chiaro che mai.

Quindi celebriamo il periodo primaverile, benediciamo il fatto di raggiungere un altro giorno, ringraziamo la comunità in cui viviamo e con cui condividiamo questo viaggio. E ricordiamo il salto di fede sia di Dio che del popolo ebraico per restare fedeli e viaggiare in un futuro pieno di speranza.

Traduzione dall’inglese di Eva Mangialajo Rantzer

Pesach and the Seder Plate: the lesson of hope

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The festival of Pesach has an extraordinary amount of symbolic and/or coded practises.  The items on the seder plate – the burned egg (beitza) for the additional festival sacrifice of thanksgiving (chagigah) brought during the three pilgrim festival, is also a symbol of fertility and of life.  Hard boiled and touched by flame it has no “speaking” role in the service, but reminds us of both hardship and survival. The charoset, a mixture of wine nuts and fruit, is generally said to symbolise the mortar used by the Hebrew slaves in their building work (its name, first found in Mishna Pesachim 20:3 shows it to have become part of the seder ritual, though there is debate as to whether the charoset is mandatory.) Eaten first with the matza and then with the bitter herbs before the meal, it embodies a confusion of meanings – if it has apples as in the Ashkenazi tradition, it is to remind us of the apple trees under which, according to midrash, the Israelite women seduced their husbands in order to become pregnant – their husbands not apparently wanting to bring a new generation into the world of slavery. If it has dates and figs, as in the Sephardi tradition, it is to remind us of the Song of Songs, read on Pesach, an erotic work which supposedly alludes to the love between God and Israel, as well, of course, as being rich in the symbolism of fertility. The wine-dark colour is supposed to remind us of the blood placed on the doorposts of the houses to stop the Angel of Death from entering, and the blood into which Joseph’s torn coat was dipped to show his father that he had most likely been savaged by a wild animal – the moment from which the Pesach narrative is born.

The zeroa, the shank bone of a lamb, is a reminder both of the lamb roasted on the night of the exodus (exodus 12:8-9) and of the korban pesach, the lamb brought as paschal sacrifice when the Temple stood in Jerusalem. Along with the egg it forms the “two cooked dishes” required by the Mishnah, and the “pesach” together with the matza and the bitter herb (maror), is one of the three objects we are required to discuss in order to fulfil the obligation of the Seder according to Rabban Gamliel. While the zeroa represents the paschal sacrifice, in fact there are a variety of traditions as to what can go on the plate – as it means an arm or a shoulder – so chicken wings can be used, or – should one go further into the etymology where it is used to mean “to spread out” – chicken necks and in fact any meat – even without a bone – can be used (Mishnah Berurah). But for vegetarians there are other possibilities. A beet is an acceptable symbol for the zeroa according to Rav Huna (Pesachim 114b) and it does “bleed” onto the plate in meaty fashion. Vegetarian punsters in the English language are fond of using a “paschal yam”. And for the greatly squeamish a model bone – be it fashioned from craft putty or from paper – can stand in symbolically.

The zeroa also represents the “outstretched arm” with which the bible tells us God first promised redemption from slavery (Ex.6:6) and then took us out of Egypt (Deut 26:8). It resonates and possibly also references Moses’ outstretched arm over the sea of reeds which caused the waters to part and then to return, although a different verb us used here (Exodus 14)

The maror – the bitter herb – is actually only one of two bitter herbs on most plates, the other being the hazeret. Hazeret was usually the bitter leaves of romaine lettuce, and the maror is generally represented by grated horseradish root. However the Mishnah (Pesachim 2:6) gives us five different vegetables that could be used: as well as hazeret and maror there is olshin, tamcha, and char’chavina. Such a lot of bitterness we can sample! According to Talmud, it is the hazeret rather than the maror which is preferred, though somehow we have reversed the order, and often the hazeret remains on the plate to puzzle the seder participants as to its purpose. Some mix the two for each time we eat the bitter herbs, some use one for the maror and the other for the Hillel Sandwich, some leave the hazeret untouched….. The bitter taste is in memory of the bitterness of the slavery – and yet we mix it with the sweet charoset, or eat it with the matza

And then there is the Karpas. Often described as the hors d’oeuvres to turn a meal into a banquet (with the afikomen functioning as dessert), it is eaten dipped into the salt water early in the seder ritual. The word Karpas is not used in the Talmud, which mentions only yerakot – (green) vegetables. Indeed the word only appears in bible once –in the book of Esther – where it means fine linen cloth. It has, one assumes, come into the haggadah through the Greek “karpos” – a raw vegetable – but its connection to the fine linen and its place at the beginning of the seder makes it possible to see it as referencing the coat of Joseph dipped in blood by his brothers – the beginning of the connection with Egypt which will lead us eventually to the exodus and the seder.

The word and the food is open to much speculation. One drash I like plays on each letter of the word: When we look at the four letters of this word kaf, reish, peh and samech, we discover an encoded message of four words which teaches a basic lesson about how to develop our capacity for giving.

The first letter “chaf” means the palm of the hand. The second letter “reish” denotes a person bent down in poverty. When taken together these two letter/words speak of a benevolent hand opened for the needy.

But what if you are a person of limited means, with precious little to give? Look at the second half of the word Karpas. The letter “peh” means mouth, while the final letter “samech” means to support. True, you may not be capable of giving in the material sense, but you can always give support with your words.

Seen in this way, the Karpas is a reminder not just of the springtime with its fresh green leaves, but of our ability to show compassion for others and to support them whatever our circumstances. We dip the Karpas into salt water – which represents the tears shed by the slaves as they worked, and also maybe the water of the Reed Sea which presented a terrible obstacle to the fleeing slaves as the army of Pharaoh charged behind them to recapture them – so the ritual of dipping the Karpas reminds us that however much grief today brings, however painful our circumstances and great our fear of what is happening to us, the ability to empathise and to support others is the quality that will help us in our daily living.

The Karpas is for me the Pesach symbol par excellence, because it combines most powerfully both distress and hope. As a token of the new green of springtime, the bright taste of the parsley awakens a delicious sense of fresh hopefulness. Dipped into the salt water, that hopefulness is immersed in grief – and yet its taste still comes through. While each of the Seder plate symbols – along with the matza which is both the bread of affliction and the bread of liberation – is a potent combination of both pain and joy, the Karpas is the clearest encapsulation of this lesson. Coming right at the beginning of the Seder, it is a harbinger of the Pesach story and reminds us that hope survives through tears and through difficult times.  And hope is the prerequisite for survival.

My teacher Rabbi Hugo Gryn wrote that his father taught him that one can survive without food for three weeks and with no water for three days, but one cannot survive without hope for even three minutes.  The Pesach Seder begins with the encoded lesson – hope survives. We can tell the story of the slavery, of the plagues, of the fearful night of the angel of death, of the darkness and uncertainty, of the panicked leaving without knowing the destination and the crossing of the sea while pursued by the horses and chariots of the vengeful army. We can tell the story of the failed rebellion against Rome and the many oppressions over the generations. We can tell the story and taste the bitterness without fear or distress because the first thing we do after blessing the wine and washing our hands is to dip a fresh vegetable into salt water, bless the creator of the fruit from the ground, and taste the hope even through its coating of misery and grief.

This year has been a Seder like no other for most of us. Alone or separated from loved ones in lockdown, unable to source some of the usual Pesach foodstuffs or anxious about supplies, the story of the plagues has been thrown into sharp relief, no longer in the realm of fairy-tale but bluntly and frighteningly here. We cannot know yet how this story will end. Whether our masks and sheltering in place will keep us safe; whether we or our loved ones will hear the swoop of the wings of the Angel of Death. Everything is up-ended, but the message of the Seder supports us. Amidst fear and distress, through grief and terror, we hold on to hope. Hope is the beginning of our journey and it is our companion through life. The Hebrew word “tikvah” – hope – comes from the word for a cord or a rope. Threaded through the Seder, threaded through the generations who come to the Seder, binding us together through time and space, hope is what holds us in life and to life.

While the Haggadah is often described as the story from slavery to redemption, it is far more importantly the book that imbues us with hope – however long the redemption will take. And it ends with the hope “Next year in Jerusalem” – not necessarily a literal expectation, but a hope for new horizons, new possibilities, a hope for a better world.

 

Elisheva: challenging the patriarchal structure with her mixed feelings. Parashat Va’era

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Early in the sidra is a partial genealogy, which leads us rapidly to the Levitical line. A genealogy of the Levites takes us from Levi through Kohat to Amram father of Aaron and Moses. Unusually, three women are named in this genealogy:

Amram married Yocheved the sister of his father, and she gave birth to Aaron and Moses (Miriam is not mentioned here).

Aaron married Elisheva, the daughter of Amminadav, the sister of Nachshon; and she bore him Nadav and Avihu, Eleazar and Itamar.

Eleazar Aaron’s son took him one of the daughters of Putiel to wife; and she bore him Pinchas.

It is unusual for the wives to be named in these genealogies and so we must explore this further to see what Torah is trying to tell us.   Amram and Yocheved are nephew and aunt –both descendants of Levi, so Aaron and Moses are, so to speak, doubly Levitical.

It is not clear who Putiel is – he appears only here. Nor do we know how many daughters he had, or the names of any of them.

But Elisheva is given a much fuller ‘yichus’ – she is the daughter of Amminadav, the sister of Nachshon and we know from later in bible that her tribe therefore is that of Judah.  Not much is known of Amminadav, but Nachshon features further in text and tradition.  We learn in the book of Numbers that under God’s instruction, Nachshon ben Amminadav was appointed by Moses as ‘Nasi’, leader/prince of the Tribe of Judah (Num. 1:7), to stand with Moses and to help him lead the people.  We can also see that through Boaz he will be a direct ancestor to King David; and curiously he sits exactly half way in the biblical genealogy that leads directly from Judah to David.

Because of his descent from Judah and his many regal descendants, Nachshon is praised in the rabbinic literature. Most famously – even though the biblical text does not mention him there – he is said to have shown real faith at the Reed Sea. The Israelites having left Egypt after the final plague, found themselves trapped. In front of them was the water and behind them the furious pursuing army. They complained bitterly to Moses asking why he had brought them there only to die in the wilderness.  And while they were standing there, each one angrily refusing to go further, and while Moses was praying to God for help, Nachshon ben Amminadav jumped into the water and when it reached his nostrils, the waters parted. (BT Sotah 36a; Mechilta Beshalach)

This is the brother of Elisheva, a man apparently of great qualities – and as Elisheva is introduced to us as his sister – an unnecessary addition in the generational genealogy- it is assumed that something else is being alluded to here beyond the blood relationship. Elisheva brings into the Priestly line that will descend from her and Aaron the qualities of leadership embodied by her own family which will provide the Royal line.

Elisheva will give birth to the four sons of Aaron, two of whom, Nadav and Avihu, will suffer a terrible and violent death shortly after being inducted into the priesthood. The other two will continue the hereditary line of the Cohanim – the Jewish priests.   She is, with Aaron, the root of the priestly tradition. And she also brings together the two formal leadership roles within the biblical tradition – she brings the royal line of Judah which is already generations old, (Judah having been blessed by Jacob on his deathbed as being the Royal line), together with the brand new line of hereditary priesthood.

Elisheva is understood in tradition to be a woman who had reason for great pride and joy by virtue of her relationships to male leaders:  The Talmud (Zevachim 102a) tells us that on the day of the inauguration of the Mishkan “Elisheva had five additional joys over other daughters of Israel. She was the sister-in-law of the king (Moses), the wife of the High Priest (Aaron), her son (Elazar) was the segan (deputy high priest), her grandson (Pinchas) was anointed for war, and her brother (Nachshon) was a prince of the tribe of Judah [and the first of the twelve tribal leaders to make a gift offering for the inauguration]  One can add to this list that it was Betzalel ben Hur her nephew  of the tribe of Judah, who was the architect appointed by God to build the Mishkan.

Talmud however goes on to note “yet she was bereaved of her two sons”

I find this extraordinary. The Talmudic text is well aware that Elisheva, like Aaron, is bereaved of two of her adult children in a moment – destroyed when beginning their work as priests, but offering strange fire before God. We don’t really understand what happened here – were they drunk? Idolatrous? Inefficient?  Improperly dressed? – but we do understand that they die instantly. And we also understand that while a male response is described to these deaths, (Moses speaks to Aaron about God’s demands for the priesthood, Aaron is silent, Mishael and Elzaphan the sons of Uzziel the uncle of Aaron are instructed to bring the bodies out of the mishkan and put them outside the camp, Elazar and Itamar are instructed about their priestly duties, along with Aaron…) Nothing is said about the response of Elisheva, the mother of the dead boys.

Aaron is famously silent – we are told this and it is understood that he is able to accept that the greater good of the priesthood is more important than the individual fates of his two sons. But his enigmatic silence is at painful odds with the complete erasure of the response of Elisheva. I cannot for a moment imagine that she would have taken the deaths quite so phlegmatically.

In the Midrash (Vayikra Rabba 20:2) we see the situation from the viewpoint of Elisheva. “Elisheva, the daughter of Amminadav, did not enjoy happiness in this world. True, she witnessed the five crowns [attained by her male relatives] in one day…but when her sons entered to offer incense and were burnt, her joy was changed to mourning.”

The Midrash not only allows her mourning, it accepts that the deaths of her sons affected her profoundly so that even the achievements of her other male relatives would not give her any happiness.  Mourning as a parent is all-consuming. It is not ever something that one can recover fro;  the best that can happen is that joy can once again be experienced tinged with sadness, with an awareness that life is incomplete and will remain so.

Elisheva, the woman who brings together the lines of power and leadership – monarchy and priesthood, who is the foremother therefore of all those who have to care for the people, who have to lead it thoughtfully and in is best interest; Elisheva, matriarch and founding spirit of all the leaders whose job is to serve, to provide security, to be thoughtful about the impact of their decisions in the wider world –  brings not only the qualities of power that leadership needs, she brings another quality – the awareness of incompleteness and imperfection that we must live with.

It is a truism that peace/shalom is never fully here – the most we have is an absence of conflict and we must work to stop such conflict breaking out and gaining ascendancy. Our hope for each other uses the prefix le – leshalom, TOWARDS shalom, rather than b’shalom –IN/WITH peace because we are constantly striving towards it – we only reach our individual shalom when we are dead, as the biblical language confirms.  It is also true that every joy we have in life is good but it is temporary and it is always susceptible to change. We live in a world of uncertainty and entropy, change will happen and we must be able to cope with it.

Elisheva had so much in life – she came from a successful and value driven family, she married into another one, she had children and grandchildren, she features (albeit briefly) in bible. But as the midrash tells us, she did not enjoy happiness in this world, she lived in the liminal space where the pain of her mourning, and her awareness of the continuing fragility of the lives of those we love can  tinge, if not overshadow all happiness.

At a Jewish wedding there is a tradition to break a glass at the end of the ceremony. There are many reasons given – to scare away demons who may be lurking and to remember the destruction of the Temple  are two of the most famous, but the most likely is to remind everyone in the room that joy is transitory and good times must be enjoyed when we encounter them.

Life is hard and we shall all encounter a mixture of good and bad, of ease and difficulty, of problems and effortlessness as we go through it.  We will all meet difficulties, many of us will face fear and anxiety, some of us will have to deal with tragedy. We cannot allow fear or pain or sadness to overwhelm us but neither must we suppress the realities that they exist.

Elisheva encountered both extreme highs and lows of life. Bible is silent on her way of dealing with it, but rabbinic tradition uses her as a model, in the full knowledge that the people it is writing for would also face good times and bad, and needed to find resilience beyond that of blind faith. Elisheva lives on after the tragedy of the deaths of her sons, she continues to experience joy and sadness, she is able to experience both but neither of them can be untouched by the other. She is a human being who copes with life.

The name Elisheva can mean either “my God has sworn an oath” or it can mean “my God has satisfied”. What is the oath that is sworn? That God will remain our God through the ages, through good times and bad. And in what way is Elisheva ‘satisfied’? She has had a lot of good in her life, which enables her to deal also with the bad.

We learn from Elisheva that we can both enjoy life and mourn for what we no longer have, or might never have. We must live with the mingling of light and dark, knowing that each will tinge the other but each must be lived through. We learn that holding a constant sense that we are still connected to God, even in the dark times, even when may be afraid or sad or even angry with God, will help us through our lives.

No one gets away with a life that has no loss and no pain. No one escapes pain – it is an elemental human condition and closely allied to the ability to love. The men around Elisheva take refuge in their status, but Elisheva stands out, a scion of the royal line, the mother of priests. She may appear to have everything, but what matters can be taken away in a heartbeat and then the “everything” shows what it truly is – momentary, material, and irrelevant. Elisheva reminds us that relationships not only underpin our lives, they provide connection and the place to be ourselves. Everything else will pass.

Metzorah:an object lesson in convalescence

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Hillel’s disciple, Ben Bag Bag commented “turn it [Torah] over and over again, for everything is in it” (Avot 5:25), but even he might have been challenged to extract some edifying homily for today’s society from parashat metzora.

The sidra contains graphic descriptions and treatments of certain ancient plagues, translated as ‘leprosy’. Be it the purification ritual for the leper who has been declared clean, or the process of dealing with houses affected by plague; be it the discharges of men or of women – the text goes into maximum detail, and the relevance for today flees from the mind of the reader as the images strike us forcibly and revoltingly.

But every sidra brings us something new and it is an obligation for us to examine the narrative and to allow it to speak to us today.  And of course it does speak – we are reminded that while the rituals around a priest’s examination of leprous spots may seem irrelevant, our attitude to illness and to the sick is not.  In Tazria which was read last week, but is often read together with Metzorah, we learned that the victim’s place was outside of the camp, alone and apart.  This week we read of the difficult process of return to the land of the living.

And it is difficult.

One of the sacrifices to be brought by the now-healed leper is the asham, the guilt offering. Why a guilt offering? What had the sick person done?  Wouldn’t a thanksgiving offering be more appropriate?

There is a rabbinic tradition that the word Metzorah is an acronym for ‘motzi shem ra’ – for gossip, from which sadly comes the inevitable idea that the victim of an illness must be being punished for a sin they have committed. This would then explain the guilt offering as being the atonement brought by the penitent convalescent for the sin which caused their illness.

The idea exists in our tradition, but we should not fall into the trap of taking it any more seriously than a rabbinic homily to explain a curious choice of offering, for if we began to go down the road that illness is a punishment from God for previous bad behaviour, we would soon be in serious theological trouble, having to defend a cruel callous and punitive God.  How would we explain children’s illness, or that of people who try hard to live an exemplary life?  Equating such things with God’s punishment goes against the grain of our core teachings, even while the midrash remains ‘on the record’.

So why the asham, the guilt offering?   Those of us who have either been close to someone who has had a potentially life threatening illness or ourselves survived a long and painful time will know that the feelings on returning to health and to life may be complex and ambivalent. No longer having the support of health professionals quite so frequently, or of a family who have been exhausted by the effects of the illness can be frightening and cause instability and anxiety in the now healthy person. There is a fear that the illness might be hiding and return, or that something else may strike us out of the blue as the illness did.

For some people the humiliations of the illness or the treatment have gnawed at their sense of worth and of identity.  They begin to be not themselves, but people whose horizons are diminished, whose interest in life begins to wane, who become institutionalised or self centred.  The four walls of the sickroom become the only world of interest, so that the restrictions of the illness begin to impact not only on the physical body, but the emotional, spiritual and intellectual self as well.  One may come to hate one’s own weakness, resent the way the body will not perform to order, be angry with oneself for having given in, for being unable to take part in life, for being unable to share the future with loved ones.  One questions ones own life.  And upon recovery, the questions build – why me? Who now am I? Why have I been spared when others were not?  Survivor guilt is a well-known phenomenon that is not restricted to experiencing a violent upheaval in political terms, but also plays out in people who have danced too closely with death and yet come back into life. Depression and anger mix with anxiety often in the recovering patient. And should there be continuing medications or the need to live with high-tech requirements for your body to carry on and your heart to continue beating there is never a time when one can forget or consign the experience to memory. The depths of human pain and human distress  are often unacknowledged in the triumphalism of the successful bringing back of the very sick into the land of the living.  The very ill person has different horizons from the rest of us, and should we ignore those we may cause great distress to the convalescent.

For society too, the return of the sick person may bring about feelings of vulnerability and guilt.  Most people, when they ask the question ‘how are you?’ are not expecting a detailed, or even a truthful, answer.  The response ‘I’m fine, how about you?’ is the socially acceptable one.  We fear our own vulnerability, and the sick tend to remind us of it, so when we encounter them we tend to feel a little guilty about our own anxiety, about our own health status, about what we meant to do for them if only we had got around to it…

So the bringing of a guilt offering, both by the recently recovered and by the community into which they are re-entering, may be no bad thing, but the truth is we cannot any longer bring such a thing – so we need to be looking for what we can offer in its place.  We could bring understanding and some insight, compassion for those who suffer and for ourselves; we could bring awareness of the plight of the ill and of those who care for them; we could bring warmth and love, patience, and the recognition of our own anxiety, and so transform the experience of the sufferer and the convalescent, and just as importantly transform the experience that we ourselves encounter when we encounter illness and vulnerability.  Whether it be people who are diagnosed with cancer or with AIDS, whether it be people who have mental fragility and frailty or people with age related illnesses – they need our compassion and our presence in their lives, and we need theirs.  So when we read about the unpleasant illnesses in Metzorah let’s remember how seriously the bible took the care of such individuals and of society, both during the illness and after it. It is a model lesson which we might easily overlook in the mess of symptoms described in this sidra, yet as ever the Torah has much to teach us about how to behave towards others.

With increasing joy, we explore our dark side: Purim thoughts

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purim shadowPurim is possibly the hardest Jewish festival to explain, to Jews and non Jews alike. A festival whose roots are not in Torah, whose story is found in the only biblical book not to mention God, Megillat Esther is also notable for its lack of references to the Land of Israel, or to Temple rite, or any recognisably Jewish expression. Instead we know this festival for noise making, drinking to excess, the celebration of violence, and some distinctly “unreligious” behaviour and clothing.
Set in Persia in the third year of the King Ahasuerus (said to be Xerxes, King of Persia in the 5th Century BCE), a Jewish man named Mordechai allows his niece Esther to go forward in the beauty contest to be queen after Vashti has been expelled for insubordination. Esther duly becomes that mythical creature, a Jewish princess, but does not reveal her Jewish identity to anyone until plans for genocide against the Jews are unveiled by Haman, the King’s senior minister, and Esther finds herself in a position of potential influence of the King. Esther persuades the King that Haman must be removed from power but tragically the decree, once made, cannot be retracted and so the only remedy is to command the Jews to defend themselves against the attacking Persians. So on the date chosen by casting lots (Purim), the thirteenth day of the month of Adar, five hundred attackers are killed in Shushan, the capital city and seventy five thousand are killed in the rest of the empire. No material possessions are taken – this was simply an act of self defence. The next day, (14th Adar) was designated a day of celebration of the survival, and Esther sends a letter throughout the Empire commanding an annual commemoration of the event.
There is no evidence of Esther or of this particular event outside of the megillah, but the genre of the story of course is one we know well – that Jews living on sufferance in a land that is not their own find that they become disliked or scapegoated or simply political pawns in someone else’s power game. It could be because they are successful in the land and become the victims of jealousy, or else that they are not successful and seen as parasites. Whatever the pretext, the historical Jewish experience has been of differing levels of insecurity and an apprehensive reliance on the goodwill of a host community; usually the apprehension has had a good basis as in difficult times the Jewish community have traditionally been vulnerable. This festival then does not mark an agricultural milestone nor a theological event, but it does speak to the lived experience of a people in Diaspora.
The Havdalah service with which we mark at the end of the Sabbath on a Saturday night is a bittersweet event – we are leaving behind the solace of the Shabbat, and entering a working week once more, with its concomitant expectation that we are facing all the problems of the outside world once more. The service begins with a number of verses taken primarily from the book of Psalms and from the prophet Isaiah, which refer to the protection of God and the hope for divine salvation. One verse stands out for me in this collection of verses that hope for relief from a worrying world – that from the book of Esther “La’yehudim ha’yetah orah ve’simcha ve’sasson viykar The Jews had light, happiness, joy and honour”. (Esther 8:16) which is followed by a heartfelt addition – the response: “Cayn tihyeh lanu – May it be the same for us”. The use of this verse here in the service marking the end of shabbat and the start of the working week, and the response which is added to it liturgically, speaks to me of the clear and frequent anxiety of the Jewish community who, having taken time out from the world to create the Shabbat experience of security, peacefulness and warmth within their homes now know that this time out of time is over for the week and they have to get through another six days in a hostile world before having the possibility of experiencing this peace again.
Purim is unusual because it is a fantasy which we act out for one day each year and for this small amount of time all the usual rules are relaxed. Drinking is encouraged, there is a carnival atmosphere as people wear fancy dress and may even abandon the prohibition of cross dressing (OH 696:8). We joyously and noisily blot out the name of Haman as the Megillah is being read aloud in the synagogue. We celebrate the reversal of our usual story – for once we are the victors not the victims. For once we get to stand up and fight back. In the short space of this festival we act out a revenge fantasy against all those who blindly want to destroy or humiliate us.
But this is not without a degree of conflicted anxiety. While the need to imagine winning against one’s enemies for at least one day a year was clearly understood, at the same time the effect of this fantasy being enacted in a public show was not ignored. Right back Talmudic times (Megillah 7a) we read that Rav Shmuel bar Yehudah taught that Esther had to plead for her story to be told. This is something quite unique in tradition where remembering is the essence of our activity.
“Rav Shmuel Bar Yehudah said: “Esther sent a message to the Sages: “Place me in Jewish memory for all generations!” But the sages replied “Your story would incite the nations against us.”. However Esther replied: [It’s too late for that.] My story is already recorded in the chronicles of Medean and Persian kings.”
– In other words, while the celebration of the story of Purim might damage interfaith relationships, and even potentially contribute a pretext for a pogrom, it could not be hidden away and therefore might as well be told.
There remain a large number of apologetics in our tradition to mitigate the effect of the festival – for example one comment on Esther 9:5 “And the Jews smote all their enemies with the stroke of the sword, slaughtering and exterminating; and they did to their enemies as they wished.” Is that the words “vaya’asu besone’eihem kiretzonam” — “they did to their enemies as they wished” is understood to mean that the Jews acted the way their enemies had wished to do to them – in other words this is simply a reversal of the active and passive objects of the verbs, not a new activity.
In the early life of Reform Judaism there was a question whether Purim should continue to be marked – it seemed to the fastidious European reformers to be distasteful, noisy, cruel, uncivilized – all the things we had moved on from, or so we thought. But any idea of removing it from our calendar has long gone – it has become clear that Purim is a necessary festival, allowing us to explore our darker side in safety and with clear and certain boundaries for a very short time each year. Even though we are now not a people who are entirely dependent on a host community but have a land of our own, the story of Purim retains its importance and its meaning for us and we have to express our pain and frustration at having been the scapegoat in so many places over so many generations. The question now is of course, how we engage with our dark side outside of Purim, how the pain which some say our history has bred into our DNA can be dealt with so that it is not suppressed but is acknowledged while not being allowed to colour our judgements today. This is a priority for our generation and those who follow us. As we rightly celebrate our survival through centuries of persecution, and our ability and right to fight for that survival keeping our values and responsibilities intact we should remember the importance of keeping perspective and limits that the festival also highlights, and remember too that our identity is based on the how we behave all the days of the year.