Eternal Song of Freedom: Passover 2016

Eternal Song of Freedom: Passover 2016

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

Passover is probably the most work-intensive holiday in our Jewish calendar.  And no wonder!  It is, after all, supposed to remind us of slavery and what that was like!

Except that this time, all the work is done not for someone else, but rather for us.

And the bitter tears we shed—have mostly turned to sweetness, song and laughter.

Yet, despite the fact that our days of slavery are long gone, we are not free to forget our past.   As the Haggadah says, “In each and every generation, it is incumbent on us to see ourselves as though we ourselves were redeemed from Egypt.”  I am sure that for Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union, Latin America, Arab countries, and of course from the Holocaust, who have begun new lives in Israel, the United States or elsewhere, their memories are still painfully alive within them.

But even if our own past is nothing like that, even if we come from a comfortable and safe place, it is still our duty to remember that there are millions of people who are crying out today in pain and suffering.  Slavery takes many forms.  Ignorance, disease, poverty, terror and constant war are all that millions around the world see and know every day.  Prejudice, bigotry and persecution bring untold pain to millions more.  Drug abuse and homelessness result in hundreds of thousands of refugees who are still seeking a Promised Land—and the way to get there.

Without a doubt, Pesach is a joyful holiday.  Families and friends gather for festive meals, for singing, for laughter, for eating (and more eating), for a celebration of family traditions.  Yes, there’s a lot of work and preparation involved.  On top of that, there’s only matzah to eat for seven days (eight for the more observant).  But it’s a small price to pay, a symbolic price, for our freedom today.  Freedom always carries a price tag. 

One of the Seder traditions is that as we recount the Ten Plagues, we dip a finger in our cups of wine and take out one drop for each plague. The Rabbinic midrash we tell to explain this custom is that, as the waters of the Red Sea were closing in on Pharaoh’s chariots, the angels in heaven were rejoicing.  “My children are drowning and you are singing!” God reproved them.

So must we pause in our own joyful retelling of our escape to freedom, to remind ourselves that there are yet many who are still held in captivity and misery.  They may be friends or relatives.  They may be children or adults.  They may even be the children of our enemies.  It doesn’t matter. We must never forget or overlook their pain; we must keep looking for a way to ease the anguish they are feeling.

That, after all, is the meaning behind the breaking of the middle matzah during the Seder.  It represents the broken world we live in.  The smaller part is placed back on the plate, despite its brokenness; the larger part is hidden—for our children to find, and their children after them.  What we cannot fix hopefully will find its repair at some point in the future.

Yes, there is much to prepare before we sit at our Seder tables.  There are many “pieces” to our celebration.  Some may be missing, and their absence tugs at our hearts.  Yet, as the Seder begins to unfold, as we help the youngest child sing Mah Nishtanah, as we dip the bitter herbs into the sweet charoset, and even with our cup of blessings diminished by ten drops, still somehow all the pieces join into one unbroken whole.  In the glow of the holiday candles, past and future, what is and what may yet be, unite and become one eternal song of freedom. 

May this Passover give us all hope and strength to believe that the day will surely come when there will be no more crying, no more anguish or misery anywhere around the world.  May Elijah the Prophet come soon and announce the day when maror—the bitterness of life—is replaced by sweetness and joy for all humanity and for all our fellow creatures on this beautiful Earth.  

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman

Rituals of Liberation: Metzora

Rituals of Liberation:  Metzora

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

April 15, 2016

After humans and dogs, I think the living creatures I am most fascinated by are birds.  Even as a child, walking home from school I would often imagine sprouting wings.  The way home would be so much shorter and more interesting, I thought.

I am not the only one, of course, who has thought about growing wings and flying.  If this were so there would be no jets or spaceships today; no Greek myths of men flying free from rocky prison islands; no Biblical parables of ravens that fail in their mission and doves that succeed.

In ancient religious practices, birds were often offered as sacrifice.  In the Torah, when a person couldn’t afford a bull or a ram, a humble pigeon or turtledove would suffice.

This week’s Torah portion, Metzora (Leviticus 14:1-15:33), describes a ritual that involves not one but rather two birds.  One is slaughtered, the other is set free.

Metzora is one of two parshiyot, or Torah portions, that deal with highly contagious skin diseases.  The portions depict a time when little was known about science.  All people knew was what they could see and observe with the naked eye. 

This primitive level of medicine, thank God, is no longer practiced.  What hasn’t changed however, is the fear.  Ignorance still leads to fear, and there is still much we don’t understand.  Tazria and Metzora reflect our instinctive fear of disease and its carriers. In ancient days, the sick were thus relegated to an area outside the camp area, where they wouldn’t be able to interact with the uninfected.

There were reasons for this fear.  Debilitating, disfiguring and sometimes fatal, disease weakens not only the affected individual but also the rest of the community.  

The term metzora refers to a person afflicted with a skin disease that at one point was translated as leprosy (today known as Hanson’s Disease).  However, tzara’at, the name used by the Torah, probably refers to a much wider range of symptoms.  By the 2^nd century already, the Rabbis dismissed the medical value of these portions and turned their attention instead to other syndromes that tear communities apart—slander, gossip and hearsay.

Parashat Metzora describes the ritual of welcoming back a metzora, a person who had previously been diagnosed as leprous, was sent out to the sick colony, but subsequently was pronounced healed and allowed to reenter the community.

There was much reason to celebrate this moment.  We all remember what it felt like to return to school after a few days at home with the flu, or that mixture of compassion and admiration with which we were welcomed when we arrived with a thick cast on a broken arm or leg.  How much more so then, for a person who had struggled with the specter of death itself?  He or she would be received as one returning from the dead.  Grief would turn to joy, and prayers of supplication to thanksgiving.  All promises and vows made to God now came due, payable with sacrifice and celebration.

The Torah calls for a ritual that involves cedar wood, a string of crimson linen or silk, some fragrant herbs, and two birds.  Over a stream of flowing water, one of the birds was slaughtered.  Its mate, however, was spared.  The priest would dip the living bird in some of the blood of the slaughtered bird, and then set it free.

Watching the bird soar must have been a thrilling moment.  Its euphoric flight symbolized our restored strength, our freedom to reenter our homes, to rejoin our family and larger social circles.  At that moment we truly understood that we were given another chance at life; that our existence was meaningful again; that we could be important—or at least useful—once again.

At the same time however, an indelible memory of the illness remained.  Just like the bird that was dipped in blood before being set free, so was the individual, though pronounced healed, now branded with the mark of mortality.  It was a warning.  It was a notice reminding us that, although we were free, we were not without obligation.  With memory comes responsibility:  Towards those still sick, towards the needy, the weak and the dispossessed. 

These two portions in the Torah—Tazria and Metzora—are probably the chief reason why there have always been—and still are—so many Jewish doctors.  The mitzvah—the commandment—of healing the sick is deeply imbedded within us.

But there is more to this mitzvah than just the medical work that it entails. The Rabbis teach that Metzora holds yet another important lesson.  It’s about gossip, ostracizing and bullying.  How quick we are to criticize and judge others!  We look at the color of a person’s skin or at other individual characteristics, and we immediately judge:  Who may be included among us, who must be excluded and shunned.  We see differences and we turn them into signs of shame.  We ostracize the foreigner, heap disdain on the less educated.  And we have too little patience for people whose opinions and views are different from ours.

These are all human characteristics.  We are social creatures, members of larger groups.  We restrict membership in these groups to people we know and can trust.  There’s safety in that—and in a terrifying world, full of uncertainty, that’s a good thing.

But the bird that we set free reminds us of those very things that we fear—and yet which play an important part in life.  Freedom means being open to think new thoughts, to question old systems and look for new answers. Permitting mystery into our lives enables us to look for solutions.  Uncertainty and even doubt can lead us to hope and faith.  And getting to know the stranger can lead to greater reliance and trust, and to a broadening of narrow horizons.

The Torah’s medical knowledge may have been scant and primitive, but its larger lesson is that if wholeness is to be restored to a broken society, there must be acceptance of differences and imperfections.

It is barely coincidental that we read this portion on the Shabbat prior to the holiday of Passover, the holiday of our people’s liberation from Egyptian bondage.  Like the freed bird of the Ritual of the Metzora, we too were set free, the blood on our doorposts reminding us not only of our mortality but also of our obligations. 

At one point in the Passover Seder, we are instructed to dip a finger into our cups of wine and remove one drop for each of the Egyptian Plagues.  As we do so, we remind ourselves not only of our own abundant share of blessings, but also of the suffering that is still so prevalent in our world.  We are not permitted to lick our finger at the end; we must always feel compassion, even for those who had not-so-long-ago oppressed us, and certainly for the innocent among them. 

Today, we live in a time and place where we are free to wonder, to explore and to discover.  We are free to use our imagination, to create new worlds of knowledge and wisdom.  But at the same time, we must not forget our obligations.  That is the significance of the middle matzah, the one we break during the Seder meal.  While hiding one half for the children to find at the end of the evening, the half that remains in our hands reminds us of what yet remains to be done.  It’s a broken world we live in, and it is up to us to mend it.

As a people, we were set free from bondage, but not from the moral responsibilities imposed on us by our faith and history.  That is the lesson of Metzora; that is the lesson of Passover.

A happy and sweet Festival of Freedom to all, and Shabbat shalom.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman

Unacceptable Fire: Shemini

Unacceptable Fire:  D’var Torah for Parashat Shemini

By Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman

April 1, 2016

“Our eyes register the light of dead stars.” 

This opening line from The Last Of The Just, my “favorite” novel about the Holocaust (if one can have a “favorite” anything about the Holocaust) came to mind the other day.

I thought about it when I read the news that NASA’s Kepler telescope captured the flash of an exploding star.  This star, about 300 times the size of our sun, exploded 1.2 billion years ago.  That means that the light of this mighty explosion traveled 1.2 billion years to reach us. 

I don’t know what amazes me more—that we built a telescope powerful enough to register this explosion, or simply how powerful this explosion actually was.

The Kepler telescope may probe the farthermost depths of space, but our own eyes perceive much more recent fires.  Of course, both result from the same forces of physics and chemistry.  It’s just that some fires are bigger than others. 

The human being’s ability to control fire was a huge first step in evolution.

The next step was in our understanding that fire comes from somewhere far beyond us. 

For ancient people, fire was a powerful tool of the gods.  In myths people told, the gods would hurl lightings from clouds or mountaintops.  In the legend of Prometheus, one of these gods steals fire and presents it as a gift to humanity.

There is no such story in the Torah, no account of how human beings first encountered fire.  The Torah simply explains fire as energy that emanates from God.  It is part of the enormous energy God used—and still uses—to create the universe.

In the Sinai Wilderness, which the Israelites traversed for forty years before reaching the Promised Land, there were several kinds of fires.  At the entrance of the Mishkan—the holy Tabernacle—stood the Menorah, the seven-branched candelabra made of solid gold, which Aaron, with an unwavering hand, lit every evening.

On the sacred altar, an eternal fire was lit and continually maintained by the priests.

And of course there were also the home fires, which provided light and warmth, and where families prepared their communal meals.  These were all man-created fires, maintained and controlled by people. 

But there are also other stories in the Bible where fire erupts from heaven, a fire representing God’s hand.  So it is with the seventh Plague of Egypt, hail, when frozen balls of ice interwove with plumes of fire.  And so it was also in that amazing vision of the Burning Bush, burning but not consumed, when Moses heard God’s call for the very first time.

In the Torah, fire represents God’s favor, or conversely, God’s anger.

In this week’s Torah portion, Shemini, it does both.

Shemini (Leviticus 9:1—11:47) begins where the previous portion leaves off, on the eighth day of the Dedication of the Tabernacle.  For seven days Aaron and his sons, the priests, sat at the entrance of the Tent of Meeting, not allowed in, not permitted to venture out either.  On the eighth day, Moses tells the Israelites, if they do things right, God’s Presence will appear before them all.

Bayom ha-shemini—on the eighth day, Moses and Aaron bring an offering to God. Aaron lays the sacrifice on the altar, arranging the pieces exactly as he is instructed. The two brothers then offer a prayer, and—lo and behold!—a flame shoots out milifnei Adonai, “from before God,” and, in view of all the people, consumes the offering. As God’s Presence appears above the Tent of Meeting, the Israelites bow to the ground in joy and gratitude.

But then, a terrible thing happens.  Unbidden, Nadav and Avihu, two of Aaron’s four sons, decide to offer a similar sacrifice.  However, they bring eish zara—“a strange fire”—to the altar, one that makes their offering un-acceptable; once again a flame shoots out mi-lifnei Adonai, “from before God;” but this time, instead of the sacrifice, God’s fire consumes the two brothers.

There are many interpretations that try to explain why this calamity took place, what exactly went wrong.  What was that “strange fire” which Nadav and Avihu brought to the altar?  Was it simply, as some rabbis say, fire from the kitchen, used for ordinary, everyday purposes?  Or was this perhaps the fire of excessive passion, as some other Rabbis explain.  It’s possible that in their fanatical zeal, Aaron’s sons were consumed by their own inner fires.

Or was the explosive spark that they brought to the altar plucked from the fires of jealousy and greed, from the kind of blind hate that has caused more pain and destruction than almost anything else in the world?

The many possible explanations all have one thing in common:  The fire that Nadav and Avihu brought to their sacrifice was offensive to God.  The opposite of the energy of Creation, this was destructive energy, used to put a tear in the fabric of society, not to mend it.

Tragically, the story of Nadav and Avihu is not an isolated case.  That eish zara, that “strange fire” that they brought to the Temple is still used to stoke the fires of ruin and devastation.  Hatred, fear and greed are today’s eish zara, “strange fire.” Rampant and uninhibited, these are the passions that drive terrorists to commit unspeakable acts of horror.  And these are also the motives behind vicious words—against this minority or another—that once again have become common and almost acceptable in our culture.  Today’s eish zara is rampant in the social media.  It is all too clear in headlines and world events; in vulgar and even nauseating election-year speeches and rallies; and in the shameful prejudice lurking behind laws that still refuse to recognize the beautiful and wide diversity of the human race.

The Torah, the Jewish People’s eternal instruction manual, teaches that though they both emanate from God, there are actually two kinds of fires:  A holy fire, and an evil fire.  The first unites people, bringing them together in love and compassion.  The other is the fire of hate.  Rather than uniting people, this fire excludes those we see as different, as the other.  Fed by ignorance, prejudice and fear, this is the strange fire, the eish zara, that Shemini refers to.  It is the fire of jealousy and greed.  Divisive to the community, this fire is not acceptable.  Not in our eyes, not in God’s eyes.

This is the great lesson of this week’s Torah portion. 

May we all learn to distinguish between the fire of love and the fire of hate, between the fire of Creation and the fire of Destruction.  And may our sacrifice always be acceptable before God and our community.

Ken y’hi ratzon—may this be God’s will.  Amen.

© 2016 by Boaz D. Heilman