ד"ת שאמרתי לפסח ולפרשת בא (1992)

/ ד"ת שאמרתי לפסח ולפרשת בא (1992)

Speech

April 1992

ד"ת שאמרתי לפסח ולפרשת בא (1992)

Bo Pesach

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Biblical Anthropology - Passover (2008)

In Exodus, the Bible (in the original JPS translation) Exodus 12:6-8, says, "6. Seven days thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and in the seventh day shall be a feast to the Lord. 7 Unleavened bread shall be eaten throughout the seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee, in all thy borders. 8 And thou shalt tell thy son in that day, saying: It is because of that – "ba’avur zeh" – which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt"Because of that which the Lord did for me when I came forth out of Egypt." What is the antecedent of the word "that?" The verse lacks clarity and is therefore open to various interpretations. In the 1985 JPS translation of Tanakh, the ambiguity is resolved: "And you shall explain to your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt.” Hence, clearly, the Passover ritual is occasioned by the need to acknowledge and praise the Lord for liberating us from the shackles of Egypt. That is, indeed, the common understanding of this key sentence. Rashbam, and apparently Onkelos, agree with this reading of our text, as do Ramban and others. However, Rashi and more explicitly Ibn Ezra and implied in the Targum Jonathan, reverse the cause and effect: It is in order that I perform these rituals that the Lord took us out of Egypt. Ramban, as I mentioned, is critical of this translation, one which is adopted as well (without mentioning the above authorities) by a famous contemporary scholar, R. Yitzchak Zev Halevi Soloveitchik. At first, this seems to be an outrageous halakho-centric exegesis: it is not the divine gift of freedom that is celebrated at the Passover Seder. Rather, He blessed us with freedom so that we might perform the mitzvot of Passover: the matzah, the bitter herbs, the Haggadah narrative.However, upon further reflection, what they are saying is that, in general, the Torah is not here to teach us history unrelated to practica…

Bo Pesach General Jewish Thought

Synagogue Sermon

Furthermore (1972)

In the Haftorah from the prophet Isaiah which we read this morning, and which describes the coming of the Messiah, there is one verse that especially attracted the attention of the Sages. והיה ביום ההוא יוסיף ה’ שנית ידו לקנות את שאר עמו, “And it shall be on that day that: the Lord shall again, a second time, recover with His hand the remnants of His people.”The Rabbis were intrigued by the word יוסיף which means: he will repeat, add, do again. Thus we read: אמר ריש לקיש בשם בר קפרא: תוספתו של הקב”ה מרובה על העיקר. (ילקוט שמעוני, מלכים רמ”ג)What God adds is greater than what He gives in the first place; His addition is more than His principle.Thus, the Rabbis add, the עיקר or major blessing that God gave to Adam and Eve was Cain; Abel was a kind of divine afterthought, the תוספת. Yet, Cain was only born with one twin sister, while Abel was born with two twin sisters. Here we see that God’s תוספת is greater than His עיקר. Another example given by the Rabbis is that Joseph was the עיקר, the main son of Jacob and Rachel, whereas Benjamin was a תוספת. Yet, Joseph had two sons, whereas Benjamin had ten. Again, we find the lesson that the afterthought of God is more significant than His first thought.That is why, the Rabbis add, כיון שראו הנביאים שתוספת הקב”ה יתר על העיקר התחילו מברכים את ישראל בתוספת, when the Prophets saw that God’s תוספת is greater than His עיקר, they began to bless Israel with the blessings of תוספת, of addition or “furthermore.” Thus, Moses blessed Israel with the words “יוסף ה’ עליכם ככם אלף פעמים”, “May the Lord add to you as you are a thousand times.” David said, as we read in the Hallel today, יוסף ה’ עליכם עליכם ועל בניכם, “May the Lord add to you, to you and to your children.” And Isaiah, in today’s Haftorah, recites the verse with which we began: “והיה ביום ההוא יוסיף ה’ שנית ידו” –“And it shall be on that day that the Lord shall again add, for a second time, with His hand…”The insight of the Rabbis is that sometimes the תוספת expresses the…

Synagogue Sermon

Recounting and Reliving (1965)

Passover, with its warm and enchanting pleasantness, is a balm for modern man’s sore spirit. We so painfully lack that which Passover has to offer us: the element of warmth, rootedness, and meaningfulness. We live in huge, cold cities, populated by faceless crowds, characterized by a harsh anonymity and a grinding conformity. Our labors are harried but perfunctory. Our relationship to our work is distant and tentative; the same function could be performed by anyone else. With automation, our lives and our occupations threaten to become even more mechanical. Man, in modern day and modern society, has become alienated, replaceable, and disposable; he feels unneeded, remote, and cold. The whole of society encourages this frigid impersonality which snuffs out the human spark within us, making us unfeeling towards our neighbors, incapable of experiencing, to the depths, a friend’s sorrow and happiness; and even immune to our own personal joys and pains.The answer of Passover to this impersonality and alienation can be defined in clearer terms on the basis of a brilliant insight provided for us by the late Rabbi Ze’ev Soloveitchik (known as “Reb Velvele Brisker”) זצ”ל. This Gaon asks: when we recite the Hallel all year, we preface it with a Berakhah, in which we bless God, King of the world, Who has sanctified us with His commandments, וצונו לקרוא את ההלל, and commanded us to read the Hallel; yet, when we recite the same Hallel at the Seder, we do not recite the blessing before it. Why not?His answer comes in the form of a conceptual dichotomy characteristic of his method in Halakhah: There are, he says, two types of Hallel. One of them is in the category of קריאה (keriah), reading or proclaiming. We solemnly declare the praises of God. The second type of Hallel is that of שירה (shirah), the praise of God as a poem or a song. We sing the praises of the Almighty.The difference between Hallel as keriah and as shirah lies in this, that keriah or “reading” the Hallel means t…

Synagogue Sermon

The Old and the New (1960)

One of the great problems that Judaism has to face in the modern world, one of the major blocs we have to overcome, is the human desire for change, for novelty and new fashions. In an atmosphere when people strive for the novel and the change needed to produce it, religion is not given a chance, not the merest entree into the human soul. Instead tradition, or traditional Judaism, is declared to be hopelessly static, unresponsive to the creative urge for something new, and so it is disregarded and scrapped in favor of the newest fad of the day. All Mizvot, observances, customs – all prayers, studies, readings – are dismissed as "The Same Old Thing," and ignored. Now this horror of "The Same Old Thing" is a very real reaction of the human being. A man does not want to read yesterday’s news, tune in yesterday’s programs, wear yesterday’s style hat. "The Same Old Thing" cannot hold him, therefore, in Religion as well.So that this instinctive reaction against "The Same Old Thing" — a reaction which keeps newspapers and the communications and textile industries in business — is responsible to a great extent for the spiritual breakdown of modern man. But it goes further than that. The horror of The Same Old Thing" accounts not only for heresy in Religion, tut for deterioration in many another vital aspect of life, e give up old and dear friends — because we want a new face, not "The Same Old Thing." Ie lose interest in our professions or in our businesses — we do not wish to face, every day, "The Same Old Thing." ..e hear of infidelity in marriage — our desire for change and novelty and dislike of "The Same Old Thing" leads us into the strange byways of imajorality. 1) Jell, what dues Judaism have to say to this? It will not do merely to condemn it. It is an innate feeling, a deeply rooted part of human psyche. You cannot banish the desire for change and newness merely by denouncing it. Yet you obviously cannot submit to it. That then?2) In order to meet this problem, To…