| FIRST
SEDER
Someone said prayer can be summed up in 4 words:
Thank you, gimme, oops & wow!
The Siddur, our liturgy, is the one document passed
along through our ages. The poor and illiterate did not own or know from
bibles and talmuds. A Holocaust survivor in the camps memorized the siddur
fearing he might be the only man left alive and he wanted to have something
to pass along. The siddur is our photo album that we have passed along
with the story of the emerging soul of the Jewish People -- a story that
has evolved over time, even in the Orthodox siddur. It is the Jewish story
that we have passed on -- people without a story have nothing to pass on.
That's what the Seder is all about.
The story of the Exodus is an example of a story
that has also evolved over time as we continue to pass it along to posterity.
Deuteronomy 26 (Item 1: lines 8-22) commands us
to tell the story of the Exodus from the standpoint of a person living
in the 7th century B.C.E. The farmer is told to bring his harvest
and say: Abraham was a wanderer (somewhat with land); the Jews went to
Egypt and were landless and are now in Israel with land. The whole story
is about land. There is no mention of Sinai, the Torah, the tabernacle,
the synagogue. Just farmers thinking about land and food. Another farmer's
biblical-based recitation in bringing the tithes, as referred to in Deuteronomy
26 (Item 1: lines 24-33) and interpreted in the Mishnah Ma'aser Sheni 5:10-14
(Item 2) was called the Confession and tracks the recitation of Deuteronomy
26. It is land-based; and the tenor of both confessions is "I was good;
I did what you commanded. Now bless me in return." This second confession
is taken from mishnaic texts in the first or second century BCE while the
Jews still had land.
Contrast this with our confessions which came into
existence after the destruction of the second temple and, of more relevance
to the people, came about simultaneously with war, famine, high taxation
and persecution -- the people lost their land. The Tachanun prayer (Item
3), first found in 9th century books and popularized after the
Crusades, is much more urban and sin-based in focus from the viewpoint
of a Jew under occupation.
The Dayenu composition (Item 4), which was noticed
by Saadia writing in the 10th century and who referred to it
as optional, ends our Jewish history with the destruction of the Temple
which was said to have been originally built to atone for all our sins.
Also notice the Musaf for Shabbat Rosh Chodesh (Item 5) appearing in the
9th century but perhaps several hundred years older. All of
a sudden, Sinai and the Temple have entered our liturgy but still there
is no mention of Babylon, the synagogue or anything new. The Talmud is
absent of and careless with history; Elijah talks to King David. And so
it has remained through the 1800's with nothing new since the destruction
of the Temple. The Rabbis lost faith in history and saw in it a never-ending
cycle of sin and punishment through destruction mixed with hope for a better
future through the performance of Mitzvot which would bring the son of
david and a return to the good ole days. It is a sin-drenched negative
anthropology -- a full turn from the pre-temple professorial confession
of a land-holding people. The Avinu Malkeinu prayer, amended through the
centuries, says "we are without deeds and therefore depend on G-d's grace."
No longer do we get reward just because we are good. [By the way, this
concept of grace which is now generally regarded as Christian, originated
here with the Jews.]
In the 18th century, people had begun
to study history as a discipline and Jews had risen to aristocracy in their
countries and the Reform movement didn't find this message relevant in
an age of self-deliverance. They thought man could bring about a Messianic
age including Jews and others through social justice. We are a holy people,
prophets of G-d, saving the world. Some took Tisha B'av out of the liturgy
and changed the focus to temples within the Diaspora; some thought the
Yom Kippur reading of the prophets in which our days of fasting are turned
into days of feasting had come about. They brought the incidents of the
past 18 centuries into the liturgy and today have added the Holocaust and
the various events surrounding Israel into the siddur. (Items 6-11)
In the Orthodox world, at that time, Samson Raphael
Hirsch did not change texts but explained away a good deal of them and
could even be said to have contradicted some in his commentary. (ie: The
Temple should be rebuilt -- meaning someday, but meanwhile stay in Germany.)
The Orthodox have also added several items on the periphery such as the
prayer for the United States and Israel but by and large have stuck to
the opinion of the Chatam Sofer who said there is nothing new in the Torah.
Napoleon forced the Jews to deal with an existential
issue -- are we a nation or a faith? If we were a nation, we had to leave
France. So we voted to be a faith even though prior to that we always felt
we were a nation. But the eastern Europeans didn't know about Napoleon
and so, as a nation, led by Herzl 100 years ago this year, decided they
needed land. So they built Israel. Which sorta puts us back where we started.
So where does this leave us in the 20th
century? Is today's Israel a light unto the nations? Is every evil, every
terrorist attack and every Holocaust a punishment for sin? If man is capable
of inherently being evil and causing destruction, what does this say for
the hopes of the 18th century reformists?
What is the story we pass on to our children in
a comfortable age when Jews hold the power behind the throne in the US,
Russia and many other countries? (Who would believe that the Russian deputy
national security advisor, first deputy prime minister in charge of economic
reform, foreign minister and the owners of the top 2 TV networks are Jewish?
)
Whatever story we choose will have 3 components:
Theology, Anthropology and Cosmology.
Theology -- where is G-d in our history? Is our
history part of his divine plan?
Anthropology -- is man a sinner, a prophet, capable
of independent creative action? Do we live in a doomsday period or a golden
age?
Cosmology -- Explaining the unknown: Has history
ended 2,000 years ago and are we in a never-ending meaningless cycle of
sin and punishment? Was the 18th Century the pinnacle?
Today's challenge is to decide how to pass on our
story.
Tomorrow night, a more in-depth look at the Haggadah
and how it tells our story through the eyes of the people who wrote it
and a more detailed discussion of the challenges facing us in the year
1997.
Passover 1997 -- Second Seder -- The Jewish
Story Via the Haggadah
What were the earliest Seders like? The Seder arose
from the Greco-Roman "Symposium" involving a banquet and philosophical
discussion. Instead of philosophy, the Seder discussed religion. The talking
followed the banquet -- look at the strange food, have Q&A, praise
G-d. But the talk was moved to the beginning following evidence that people
didn't take the Seder seriously. People got drunk, they made it up as they
went along; there were no 4 questions. Wine consumption was limited to
4 cups (though today we think that's a big obligation and/or license).
The food, being at the end, didn't create questions so a more official
liturgy had to be created and was, following the destruction of the second
temple.
* * *
Let's revisit Deuteronomy 26 (Item 1) juxtaposed
to the Haggadah's narration of the same item written in the year 90 CE.
The Haggadah quotes the Bible and adds in some small amounts of biblical
texts proving the point as well as some rabbinic interpretations which
add new angles to the text. We are only going to focus on the rabbinic
interpretations. (Addendum) Note these points:
1. Laban tried to destroy all of Israel; Pharaoh
only the males. (Lines 1,2)
2. The Arami sought to destroy my father. (Lines
2,3)
3. Jacob went to Egypt compelled by the divine
decree and went temporarily. (Lines 6-8)
4. The Jews became a distinctive people. (Line
14)
5. Much attention to the idea that G-d alone saved
the Jews. (Page 2, lines 4-12)
Fact is, human suffering affected the People in
the year 90 more so than the loss of the temple. The Galilee was the country's
breadbasket. The Romans took the Galilee first and starved everyone else
out. Jews left the country to find food. They didn't go to Babylon till
at least the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 and really till almost 100 years.
They went to Alexandria, Egypt where there was lots of learning, synagogues,
culture -- but few rabbis. The rabbis didn't go there and wanted to discourage
people from going there. The Rabbis wrote the Haggadah with this in mind.
Read it this way with historical context: Jacob
went to Egypt but only because G-d told him to. He went for a short time.
The Jews in Alexandria are distinctive but they're the wrong kind of Jews.
Even though there is a big community there, you should stay in Israel.
The truth according to the Bible? Jacob and sons went because there was
a famine; he didn't want to go but went to see Joseph. G-d told him not
to be afraid when he asked because he was afraid to go, but G-d didn't
order him to go. Jacob and sons stayed there for years and prospered; there
is no evidence they went for a short period of time.
Look at the story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai who
was carried out in a coffin led by his students. The Romans didn't want
anyone leaving the city as they were trying to starve the Jews out. Why
would they let 6 people out with a coffin that would be sure to spread
disease had it stayed inside? The reality was that the zealot Jews wouldn't
let the Rabbi out. The Rabbi had made a deal with the Romans and his students
snuck him out with the Romans' permission. The Rabbis wanted to end the
war with the Romans; they wanted people to live so that Judaism could survive.
The zealots felt they could bring about their own deliverance and wanted
to keep the war going. In return, the Romans gave the Rabbis Yavneh to
set up a Yeshiva; the zealots wound up at Masada. The point of this being
the emphasis on the idea that only G-d can deliver the Jews -- no agents
or zealots.
And what about Laban being worse than Pharaoh?
Arami "oved" avi; it means to wander. The Haggadah reads it with the PE'EL
grammatical form "eevade" meaning to destroy. This is a misreading. But
strike the vowels and take the letters ARAMI and shift the first
two letters (no big trick since people did this commonly then anyway) and
you get RAMI meaning Roman. Pharaoh only wanted to kill males; the Romans
want to kill everyone. Just like Haman through the ages stands for our
most recent enemy, Laban was taken to be read illustratively as the Romans.
Some brief examples of further changes over time:
Illustrations of those tormenting the slaves in
Haggadot have ranged over the years from Egyptians to Romans and now to
Nazis. The reference to Ezekiel 16:7 (Addendum: lines 17-19) (the Jews
were populous as pubescent women) was illustrated in the earliest printed
16th century haggadot literally; the Italian censor got rid
of it and its commentary said the verse referred to men.
* * *
So here we sit in 1997. Does any kid know who the
Romans were? Does anyone care? All the double entendre of those that wrote
the Haggadah (a story about the Exodus, lest we forget) has long been forgotten
while we take things at face value or come up with guesses based upon our
own perceptions of history as to what the authors of the Haggadah might
have meant. Does that make the Haggadah any less relevant to us? In view
of last night's discussion, does that compel us to update the photo album
of Jewish history -- to rewrite the story to account for our own personal
experiences? Do we take the view of the Biblical 7th century
BCE in which we held land and could do no wrong, the 2nd century
after the destruction of the Temple when history had ended and we were
sin-drenched in a meaningless cycle of sin and punishment, or the 19th
century when we were prophets and deliverers of salvation through social
justice?
Is there a whole new way we, the American Jews,
leading the world and even Israel in terms of inventing religious ideology
for better or for worse, should look at the world in 1997? Are our prayers
focused on the destruction of the temple fine as they are, or were Rabbi
Sampson Rafael Hirsch's commentaries any more or less an honest way of
accounting for a change of historical viewpoint than were the Reform and
Conservative changes to the liturgies themselves? Do we assume that we
live in an age where the rabbis of Yeshiva University don't hold a chanukah
candle to the light of the Yavneh Yeshiva of 2,000 years ago? Can we afford
to let nostalgia and self-righteousness based on a 1st century
historical-based viewpoint of the world marginalize us in the face of Jews
who don't feel the relevance of a sin-drenched negative anthropology and
who instead feel that we are living in a golden age unparalleled in human
if not Jewish history?
So my question tonight is, given a blank slate,
how would you tell the Jewish story which is what we do at the Seder? At
a time when Jews want to change the rules and refuse to agree on Who is
a Jew, the very definition of the subject of the story, is there a Jewish
story? Or do we go around telling each other what we think and want them
to believe is the Jewish story? The rest of the world appears to be fascinated
with the Jewish story. We, on the other hand, appear to be torn between
figuring it out, telling old stories and creating a new one that might
not be real.
It is our deepest challenge among all Jews to tell
our story honestly in the current era with integrity to the history that
created that story without attempting to create a new story, while ensuring
that the story remains vibrant and relevant worth passing along till the
end of time. |