Parshat Tzav - Pesach

The torah speaks about four children

One who is wise and one who is wicked; one who is simple

And one who does not even know how to question

(Yerushalmi, Pesahim 70b)

 

What does the wise child ask? What is the meaning of the testimonies, statutes, and judgments which the Eternal our God has commanded us?

You shall explain to him: 'The Lord delivered us from Egypt, from the house of slavery, with a strong hand'.

What does the wicked child ask? What is the meaning of this service to you? What is this bother with which you inconvenience us every year?

Because he excludes himself from the group, you should tell him; 'Because what the Eternal did for me' for me he did, for that man he did not do. If that man were in Egypt, he would have been unworthy of deliverance forever.

What does the foolish child say? What is this? after the Pascal meal [by saying] 'To the aftermeal entertainment", [Hebrew], that he not move from one group to another.

The child who does not know how to ask - you must begin for him. Said R. Yose: So says the Mishna: 'If the child lacks knowledge [of how to ask], his father instructs him.'

(Yerushalmi, Pesahim, ibid, ibid)

 

"The Torah speaks about four sons", and the answer to the wise son is "You shall explain to him the laws of the pesach sacrifice, that one must not conclude etc.", but no Biblical passage is cited, only laws of the Pascal meal, and this is because this is the Oral Law, and regarding the Oral Law is it Witten "When the Lord delivered you from Egypt etc." "shall you worship etc" on this mountain, for the Oral Law is endless and it renews itself daily, therefore do we recall the exodus from Egypt daily, because the entire Torah is commentary on the exodus from Egypt, as is written "I am the Lord your God who delivered you from the land of Egypt", and just as the Name, be He blessed, renews creation daily and sheds light upon the land and its inhabitants, so is the Oral Law renewed daily.

(R. Avraham Mordecai Alter of Gur: Imrei Emmet - Parashat Bo 5667)      

 

 

 

 

Egypt - The Mundane Redemption

by Haim Watzman

In the year 1300 AD a Christian poet and pilgrim landed on an island somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Upon arriving on the shore, he spied an approaching ship and heard its passengers singing "In exitu Isräel de Aegypto." They were singing, in Latin, the psalm that we sing just before the Pesach meal on Seder night, Psalm 114. That psalm is part of the "Egyptian Hallel": "When Israel came forth out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language." We speak here of three journeys - that of the poet and passengers, that of the Israelites, and ours, the participants in the Seder.

Like other parts of the Seder, the recitation of the Hallel, the set of psalms we recite on festivals and other days of celebration, is different, in two ways. It is said at home, by the company that has gathered to celebrate the Seder together, and not in public, in synagogue. And it is divided into two parts. Two psalms are recited before the meal and the rest afterward. On no other holiday do we halt the Hallel in the middle to eat a meal.

This particular psalm about the Exodus also differs in spirit from all that has preceded it on the Seder night. To this point in the recitation and explication of the Hagaddah we have told of the Exodus from Egypt and performed precepts and rituals that make that story into a concrete and present action rather than a legend of the past. While the events we relate are miraculous ones that stand outside the laws of nature, we tell of them as events that indeed occurred on the same timeline and in the same geographical space that we live in today. We do not merely recall these events, but are meant to experience them as if we had been there at the time and are there today. We eat matzah because it symbolizes the bread of affliction that the slaves ate in Egypt and the bread that did not have time to rise on the night of redemption; we eat bitter herbs in order to feel ourselves the bitterness of slavery, and we eat from the paschal lamb (or today, from a stand-in), just as God commanded the Children of Israel to do on that night in Egypt. We also tell about the tellers of the story of the Exodus - about the Sages in Bene Berak who told the story all night.

But Psalm 114 does not tell of events that took place even within the miraculous reality of the Exodus. When the Children of Israel left Egypt, they did not in fact see the sea flee, the mountains did not skip like rams nor the hills like young sheep. There is no mention of any such phenomena in the book of Exodus and we do not make any note of them while relating the story of the deliverance from Egypt during the narrative portion of the Seder. We do not rise from our seats on Seder night to dance in evocation of the mountains that skipped, and the symbolic foods on the Seder plate do not include spring water in memory of the rocks that turned into a pool.

Don Yitzhak Abravanel proposed that the subject of Psalm 114 is in fact the parting of the Red Sea, and argued that the two psalms recited before the Seder meal are about the redemption from Egypt, while the rest of the psalms recited after the meal are psalms of thanksgiving to God that hint at the complete redemption promised for the end of days. But his interpretation is difficult to accept for two reasons. First, the psalm itself says that it is about the Exodus and not the parting of the sea. Second, it does not, as noted, actually tell about the deliverance. In fact, the supernatural events it describes seem to fit the final redemption better than anything that has happened in the history of the Jewish people.

I suggest that the simple meaning of this psalm is not its narrative but its emotion. Its subject is not God's power to change the course of nature but the joy that filled the world at the time that the Children of Israel cast off slavery for liberty. The prancing hills, the reversing rivers, and the liquefying rocks symbolize the new freedom the people received under the strong hand of the Holy One Blessed Be He. The psalm appears at this point in the Seder because up to this point we have not spoken of the joy of redemption. We have spoken of slavery, of plagues, of the long night of waiting, but not on the elation of the slave who is now free.

But then why do we split the Hallel in two, just as we previously split one of the three matzot on the Seder plate in two, and then sit down to eat?

The poet-pilgrim who arrived at the island on the other side of the world was Dante, the great Italian poet, author of The Divine Comedy. That poem tells of his journey to Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. Psalm 114 appears when he arrives at his second destination, the island of Purgatory where sinful souls are purified and cleansed before they return to the divine presence. In this world the laws of nature no longer apply - there is only divine providence. What could be a more appropriate song to sing than one about the collapse of the laws of nature in the face of God's miraculous redemption? They sing and ascend the mountain in the center of the island to receive their purgings and plagues, after which they will ascend to the world that is only good.

And we - we sing the same psalm and then sit down to eat meat and bread, to drink wine, and to celebrate with our families, friends, and any poor person who comes to our door.

I suggest that the Seder Hallel is interrupted because the Jewish people's deliverance from Egypt did not lead us from the material world to paradise, but rather from slavery to freedom. Freedom is not utter redemption. The Children of Israel left Egypt to establish a society in its own land, one that was supposed to be the diametric opposite of Egypt. It was to be a society founded on justice and liberty rather than on the arbitrary whims of a Pharaoh and slave labor. The Jewish people did not die in Egypt and did not pass on to a world that is only good. They remained alive and accepted a mission to make this world a better one.

That is why, once a year, we recite the Hallel in our homes, rejoice in the Exodus from Egypt, and then leave off this divine recitation of miracles to do the most mundane thing possible - to sit down and eat a family meal. Because after the holiday we will remain in a world in which the labor is not yet completed, and neither are we free to flee it. The redemption we celebrate is a mundane one, as in the words of the Kotzker Rebbe: The heavens are God's heavens, and he gave the earth to humankind...‎ to make it into a heaven.

Haim Watzman is a member of Kehilat Yedidya.

 

 

"Shabbat Hagadol - the Great Sabbath"- The courageous iconoclasm and the miracle.

The Sabbath preceding Pesach is called "Shabbat Hagadol", for the following reason: A great miracle was performed on it. The pascal lamb was to have been obtained on the tenth, as is written 'On the tenth of this month they shall take a lamb for each family a lamb for the house'. The Pesach on which Israel left Egypt fell on Thursday (as per "Seder Olam"). Therefore we find that the tenth of the month fell on Shabbat, and each took a lamb for his Pesach sacrifice and tied it to his bedposts, and the Egyptians asked: What is this for? And they replied: To slaughter it for the Pesach as the Lord commanded us, and they gnashed their teeth because their god was to be slaughtered yet they could say nothing, and because of this miracle it is called "Shabbat Hagadol."

(Tur Orach Hayyim 430)

 

"And he shall reconcile parents with children"

(From the Haphtarah of Shabbat Hagadol in Malachi 3)

 

R. Yehudah says [Elijah comes] to bring closer, not to distance. R. Shimon says: To smooth over disagreement. The Sages say: Neither to distance nor to bring closer, but to make peace in the world, as is written: 'Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of the Lord', and it says 'He shall reconcile parents with children'.

(Yalkut Shimoni, Malachi Chap. 3, 595)

 

When the Holy One delivered Israel from Egypt, he did not deliver only those who were in Egypt, but all generations did he liberate, as we recite at the end of the Haggadah "Not only did He redeem our ancestors, but He also redeemed us with them", meaning to say that when the Holy One, blessed be He, removed Egyptian power over Israel, this removal was not effected because they were of that particular generation, for if that were the case, the exodus would have been for that generation alone, but the exodus extended also to [future] progeny.

(Sefer Gevuroth HaShem of the Maharal of Prague, p. 227)

 

In every generation there is an exodus from Egypt, relative to the situation of the generation. All this existed during the exodus from Egypt. To the degree which a person believes "as though he had left Egypt', this phenomenon is revealed and he feels the current exodus from Egypt and every one can be released from his personal straits.

 (Sfat Emmet, Vayikra).

 

The Holy One blessed be He Suffers together, so-to-speak, with those who suffer

And you find that all the while that Israel was enslaved, the Divine Presence [was enslaved] with them, so-to-speak, for it is said: And they saw the God of Israel and beneath his feet was the likeness of a sapphire pavement. And when they were redeemed what does it say? Like the very sky for purity and it is said in all their troubles He was troubled. This only tells me about the community's troubles, where do I learn this regarding the troubles of the individual? It is learned from the verse: He shall call me and I will answer him, I am with him in his troubles.

(Mekhilta Bo Messekhet De Pas'ha 14)

 

If this had not appeared in Scripture, we would not be allowed to say it. It is as if Israel told the Holy One blessed be He: "You redeemed Yourself."

(Mekhiltah Bo, 99a)

 

Pesach - Our Time of Freedom?

This goal ['Our Time of Freedom'] of the exodus from Egypt was not achieved; the mission of 'Our Time of Freedom' received a semblance of freedom, something which may perhaps be a primary condition for freedom, but is not yet true freedom. The people who left Egypt did not accept upon themselves the Kingdom of God, and therefore we do not recite the complete Hallel on a festival on which the attempt to realize our freedom fell short. True, we read how, after the crossing of the Reed Sea, the people: "... trusted in God and in His servant Moshe", but immediately afterwards the Torah relates how that trust was only temporary - spontaneous faith born out of being powerfully impressed by what had happened - but not faith which derives from awareness of God's divinity. Therefore it did not last even three days; the people call out to Moshe "Is the Lord present among us or not?"

Even though this appointed time is a holiday for Israel who was delivered from the hands of its torturers and freed from the yoke of its oppressors, there is still no justification for recitation of the 'Complete Hallel'. We have yet to be redeemed from our enslavement to human nature. This fact teaches us that primary thanks for redemption is not related to what happens to the Jewish people in history, but to what the Jewish people do in history. After all, everything that happens is indifferent because it is an act of God in His world, whether we - from our perspective - call certain events 'redemptions' and 'deliverances' and other events 'misfortunes' 'pogroms' or 'holocaust.'

 (Y. Leibowitz: Discussions on Israel's Festivals, p. 74)

 

Lord of the surprise: Who believes in miracles?

The enumeration of the miracles performed on behalf of the Children of Israel during the exodus from Egypt is a central part of the Seder. But for modern man, educated on the knees of Science, on the natural order of the world, the story of the miracles seems childish, primitive, mythological.

If, however, we see the miracles only as ancient superstition, we will miss the message of these extraordinary occurrences. We must see the miracle as a symbol of the power of the spontaneous in existence, as a belief in the ability to transform arrogant regimes. What had been seen as destiny, the vulnerability of a small nation subservient to a strong and secure empire, is revealed to be an illusion. The language of the miracle is the Bible's method of protesting the deterministic attitudes of people who accept the world as it is, sans faith in the power to change it. On the Seder night we pour into ourselves the faith that there exists in the universe an unexpected force.

The belief in miracles is the basis for the 'hope model' in Judaism. The exodus from Egypt intends to plant in us revolutionary hope, despite historic conditions. The protest against the conditions of the universe is possible because the Jews possess a pool of memories which fashion that which seems to us to be possible. The exodus from Egypt is essential because it allows us to hope. Order in the cosmos is not unalterable. Tomorrow does not have to be as it is today.

 (R. David Hartman, z"l, from: "This Night" - An Israeli  Haggada, ed. By Mishael and Noam Tsion)

 

The Holy One, blessed be He, does not rejoice in the defeat of the wicked, sometimes in contrast to human beings and the administering angels.

And we recite "Praise the Lord, for his loving kindness endures forever". Said R. Yochanan, Why are the words "for it is good" omitted from this praise? Because the Holy One, blessed be He does not rejoice in the defeat of the wicked, as Shmuel b. Nahmani said in R. Yonatan's name: How to understand "and they did not approach each other all through the night" - the administering angels sought to sing praise, said the Holy One, blessed be He: My creations are drowning in the sea and you sing praises before me?! Said Yosi b. Hanina: He does not rejoice, but He causes others to rejoice, and this proven by the wording of the phrase "so will He cause to rejoice"; it does not say "He will rejoice".

(Yalkut Shimoni, II Divrei Hayamim, Chap 2)

 

 

Does not rejoice etc. The explanation for this is that joy is present when the joy is complete, and God desired their creation because He is the cause of everything. And it is written that when the world was created, (Psalm 104) "May the Lord rejoice in his creations" because when God wants and desires his creations, how then can He rejoice at their loss, as they said "My creations are drowning in the sea and you sing praises before me?!" Therefore He does not rejoice, but He causes others to rejoice because the wicked oppress them and oppose them, and it is proper that others rejoice in their defeat, and this is explained.

Does God rejoice at the defeat of the wicked etc? Said R. Yose b. Hanina: He does not rejoice, but He causes others to rejoice, and this proven by [close reading of] the wording of the phrase "so will He cause to rejoice"; it does not say "He will rejoice"...‎ [The Maharal proceeds to strongly rejects the possibility that God causes others to rejoice at the defeat of the wicked; he finds grammatical justification for interpreting the text to mean that it is rather Man who causes others to rejoice].               

(Maharal's Novellas for Aggadot, Part 3, p. 157)

 

Recites the Hallel with omissions, etc" - Because on the seventh day of Pesach, the Egyptians drowned, the Holy One, blessed be He said "My creations are drowning in the sea and you sing praises before me?" and since on the seventh day we do not recite it [the complete Hallel], therefore on Chol HaMoed - the intermediate days - we also do not recite it, lest they become more important than the final day of the festival.

(Mishnah Berurah 490, 7)

 

 

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