Shabbat Hagadol (Archives)

Sabbath and Passover Eve

As I did on Shabbat Purim, I present here a kind of Shabbat Hagadol lesson, divided in two parts: halakha and aggadah. This year we have the rather unusual juxtaposition of Shabbat and Passover Eve, the 14th of Nissan, with the Seder being celebrated on Saturday night. This presents certain halakhic difficulties and questions. In particular: how does one balance the prohibition against eating or even owning hametz from mid-morning, and the requirement that one must eat three (or at least two) meals during the course of the Shabbat, at which one must eat some form of bread, presumably hametz, in order to recite hamotzi and Birkat Hamazon. Since this problem has been written about and discussed extensively in many public forums, I will not repeat what has already been said by others.

A second problem involves the procedure for Kiddush on Seder night, in which one needs to combine the sanctification for the festival with Havdalah for the departing Shabbat. The Talmudic discussion (Pesahim 102b-103b) suggests no less than seven different permutations and combinations of the blessings constituting this Kiddush; the accepted solution, printed in every Haggadah, is known by the acronym Yaknahaz. An interesting sidelight is that many illuminated haggadot from Medieval Europe contain a picture of a rabbit hunt on this page, replete with horns, hunters mounted on horseback, etc. What does this have to do with Passover? The answer lies in a pun on the old German word for hare hunt: “Jagenhas.” But David Moss, a contemporary artist who has created a beautiful Haggadah rich in carefully worked-out original symbolism, suggests that there may be more to this than merely fortuitous word-play. The hare hunt may be seen as symbolically akin to the drama of the Jewish people in exile, persecuted and pursued by enemies, but always persisting, sustained by the vision of redemption symbolized by the Seder. (And, taking it one step further: this theme is particularly apropos to a Seder held at the departure of the Shabbat, when we reenter the week-day world, which likewise is seen as corresponding to Galut).

Hillel the Elder and the Passover Offering

All of which is perhaps an overly verbose introduction to my real subject here: the classical Talmudic problem of what one does with the Korban Pesah, the “Paschal lamb” or Passover offering, when the 14th of Nissan falls on Shabbat. Does the performance of this offering in fact override the Shabbat, so that one is in fact required to bring it on such a Passover? And, if so, what are the parameters: what labors relating to it may be done on Shabbat, and what is postponed till after the Shabbat?

The discussion concerning this subject, on Pesahim 66a, relates that, because this happens so infrequently, it happened once in late Temple days that the people forgot the law since the last occurrence. Suddenly they remembered that there was a man named Hillel, who had recently come from Babylonia, and was reputed to be very learned. Hillel gave two separate answers: one based on a gezerah shavah, a comparison between two verses using the same word, and one based on a kal vahomer, a logical inference “from minor to major.” As a result of his lucid and self-confident erudition, he was then and there named Nasi—“Prince,” i.e., chief religious and political authority of the community—and thus began his public life.

They then raised a second question: how is one to behave if one forgot to bring a knife to slaughter the lamb? It was forbidden to carry any object through the streets on the Sabbath, and the solution used today, of the eruv, was not yet widespread in those days. Hillel’s answer was unexpected: to observe the popular custom. “See what the people do. If they are not prophets, at least they are sons of prophets!” The rabbis go out and see the sheep being led through the streets of Jerusalem with the knife stuck in their fleece (a rather macabre solution, if you think about it). He then adds a brief but significant remark: “Now I remember that I learned this halakha from Shemaya and Abtalyon!”

Many years ago I taught this passage publicly in my old shul in Ramat Eshkol. I suggested then that this passage may be read as an object lesson in the methodology of halakhah. Hillel appears here as a virtuoso of halakha, utilizing all possible methods of learning Torah: application of traditional hermeneutic rules; invocation of tradition received from past generations, whose roots ultimately lie in the oral tradition revealed at Sinai; and minhag, actual folk practice. These methods roughly correspond to the classical functions of the Sanhedrin described by Maimonides in Hilkhot Mamrim 1.1: namely, tradition; logical inference; and legislation of edicts and regulations (this last rubric also includes minhag; i.e., the ordering and giving of some sort of Rabbinical stamp of approval to popular custom).

I would like to return to the substance of Hillel’s answer. He argued that, “Is there only one Passover during the year? Are there not more than 200 Passovers during the course of the year!” The reference here is of course to the public burnt-offerings offered routinely on each and every Shabbat of the year: two lambs for the regular daily offering, and two lambs for the Musaf, multiplied by 50-odd weeks in the year. Just as these override the Sabbath, so too does the Paschal sacrifice override the Sabbath—and he brings a gezerah shavah, two parallel verses using the same word, mo’ado, “in its time,” to clinch the point.

But is this not begging the question? After all, it seems clear that the main premise of the question was that the Passover is an “individual” offering, one owned by a havurah, a group of people, usually members of a clan or some other family unit, who bought it with their own money. As such, it was hardly comparable to the fixed public offerings, the Temidin and Musafin offered in the name of entire Jewish people, which served so to speak as the back-bone of the Temple service. These latter were purchased from funds collected from the half-shekel, so as to represent all Israel before their Father in Heaven in an equitable way.

Hillel’s answer is that these, too, are “passovers.” Or rather, to invert the formulation, that the Passover is analogous to them. True, it is not a public offering, purchased with common funds. Indeed, it is not even a burnt-offering, one consumed entirely on the altar and as such given over entirely to God—both of which factors were ordinarily required in order to justify a given sacrifice overriding the Sabbath. It is more like the shelamim, the “peace-offering” eaten by its owners in a celebratory mode (see HY 5760: Vayikra, on these concepts). Nevertheless, in essence, the Passover is an offering of entire Jewish people. Clearly, Hillel agrees here with those who claim that “All Israel are fit to eat one paschal lamb.” What is the meaning of this rather bizarre statement? To translate it into conceptual terms: the reason so many pesahim are offered is not an essential one, one inherent in the nature of the offering, but a technical reason: that there is just so much meat on any one animal, so that perhaps 20 or 30 people can partake of any one lamb (or goat). Hence, the need for groups. But these groups, viewed collectively, constitute the entire Jewish people. Thus, in a certain almost metaphysical sense, the Korban Pesah is a public offering, consumed collectively by all of Knesset Yisrael, “Collective Israel.”

It seems to me that one can draw an analogy between the role of the group “counted” for each individual korban pesah, and the institution of the minyan, the traditional prayer quorum. A minyan gathered for prayer is not just the people present—the ”ten ordinary Jews,” as the Rav once put it, “who gather together… perhaps on a rainy winter afternoon”—but is theologically a microcosm or “embodiment of the entire Knesset Yisrael… past, present, and those yet unborn.“ Unlike other private offerings brought during Temple days: the todah, the thanksgiving offering brought in gratitude for personal joys; or the sin-offering, brought to atone for personal wrongdoing, the Pesah is by its very essence related to the idea of Jewish peoplehood. The event it comes to commemorate—through the eating of the Passover lamb, the singing of hymns of praise, the narration of the story— namely, the Exodus from Egypt, symbolizes the crux from which the people emerged. Hence, it is treated as a “public offering writ small”—and thus overrides the sanctity of the Shabbat.

Aggadah: Passover as Beginnings

David Moss, whom I mentioned earlier, begins his very beautiful illuminated Haggadah with a frontispiece based upon the motif of seed. He explains that the essence of Passover is beginnings: springtime, with its sense of renewal and the beginning of the agricultural year; the Exodus, as the birth of the Jewish people; etc. This is also the symbolism of purging all hametz, everything that ferments, from our homes: food, one of the most fundamental elements of life, is subject to a kind of total renewal, a new beginning. Ones entire stock of old food is destroyed or removed, purging whatever may have had even remote contact with that which is stale, old, fermented (remember that yeast is a living, self- germinating microbe culture; in principle, the yeast used in baking leavened bread may pass on its vital, fermenting element from one batch to another indefinitely); and beginning with that which is fresh, new, pristine.

The seed is an apt symbol for this, containing within itself all that is to grow in the future the whole. Just as the seed contains in potentia that which is to become actual in the grown plant (or living creature), so does the experience of Pesah contain, in microcosm, all of later Jewish history.

This seed-like relation of potential and actual is also perhaps part of the mystery of Creation itself. The Zohar tells us that God created or “carved out“ the universe from a single point, the nekuda penima’ah symbolized by the letter yod, which was then expanded and developed in all directions and dimensions.

My grandfather once spoke of the three festivals as corresponding to the ages of man: Passover to youth; Shavuot to maturity; Sukkot to old age. Pesah is thus a return to youth, to freshness, to renewal, to new beginnings. I must admit that, as I grow older, I find this concept more difficult to realize than I did in my youth. What does it mean for a person who is in mid-life to “return to the beginning”? This is, if you like, the secret of the verse, “They shall bring forth fruit in old age; they are full of sap and freshness” (Ps 92:15). There is a certain sense of renewal, of rediscovery of youth, of freshness, of experiencing the wonder of the world, that is possible at any age. A. J. Heschel spoke of the capacity for “radical amazement” as a fundamental element of the religious personality. Rav JB Soloveitchik, too, often repeated that faith requires a certain childlike faculty.

What is the meaning, in practical terms, of the notion that the Exodus contains in potentia everything that the Jewish people were to become? I see this as true in four aspects.

1. The experience of being enslaved, of Exile, as the fundamental, axiomatic given of our historical condition. The movement from Exile to Land, the dialectic of Galut and Ge’ulah, is central to our way of being in the world; how we look at the world, at other nations, at the sense of “security and permanence.” George Steiner, and other modern Jewish intellectuals, are wont to say that the Jew anticipated the modern experience of alienation. This statement contains elements that are both truth and false: the Jew rooted in his own tradition may feel insecure and a wanderer, and socio-politically uprooted in Exile, but he never feels alienated: both the Torah and the Jewish community are powerful substitutes for a geographical home.

2. Equality. The experience of being slaves, together, led to a certain social solidarity, an ideal of a type of primitive communism, as reflected in Leviticus 25. As a result of slavery, there is a sense in which the possession of great wealth by any given individual is accidental, not based on any inherent virtue or “entitlement.” A wit once said that Jewish wealth never lasts more than three generations: either they cease to be wealthy, or they cease to be Jews (I think I first heard this remark from the late Prof. Abraham Duker). Jews can never be like the New England WASP’s or the British aristocracy.

3. Avdut / avodah. The second dialectic of the Exodus is that between servitude and the service of God. God took us out so that we might serve Him: Exodus was followed by, and for the sake of, Sinai. This is symbolized in the intimate link between Pesah and Shavuot. The purpose of life is neither individual nor collective aggrandizement, or even “self-realization,” which moderns tend to connect with freedom. “For they are my servants, whom I brought forth out of the land of Egypt” (Lev 25:55).

4. Acceptance and love of the stranger. On numerous occasions the Torah repeats such imperatives as “you shall love the stranger,” “you shall not oppress the stranger,” etc. Many of these verses appear in conjunction with the reminder, “because you were strangers in the Land of Egypt.” Admittedly, the Halakhah interprets “stranger” as ger—the convert, the righteous proselyte. (Incidentally, that mitzvah is problematic enough. Too often, the Jewish community doesn’t know how to treat gerim with the due respect.) But I read the term gerim, in addition to the traditional halakhic peshat, as more encompassing. It seems to me that, in the original biblical context, it meant “the stranger,“ “the sojourner”—i.e., the Other, especially one who dwells among you. Thus, the link to the Exodus is: we were slaves, we were the other in Egypt, so we should be able to empathize with the situation of the stranger, the outsider.

There is an interesting paradox here. Passover is the most family-oriented of all Jewish holidays; it first and foremost celebrates the group, its origins, history, and values. Indeed, there are elements in it that, particularly in a kind of desacralized modern context, can easily slide into a vulgar type of clannishness, especially in light of the Jewish historical experience of “us against the world.” (It is interesting to analyze the Seder scenes in American Jewish novels, beginning with Herman Wouk’s Marjorie Morningstar, in which the Seder becomes a focus of tensions within the family, and between the group and the outsider). Interestingly, while writing these words, I began to read Daniel Boyarin’s book A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity. He analyzes there the tension between Paul and “normative” Rabbinic Judaism in terms of there embodying models of universalism and particularism, respectively. Paul advocates abolishing all differences between people, be these based upon gender, ethnicity, or whatever: “There is neither man nor woman, Jew or Gentile…” (interestingly, Jews and women serve here as models for the archetypal other). In Boyarin’s view, both models are inadequate, each having definite shortcomings.

Yet in principle, as noted, classical Judaism contains many important elements of openness and empathy to the stranger, and tries to counter the natural human proclivity towards group chauvinism. Nowhere is this more evident than in Pesah, which contains a strong emphasis on the particular, through the specificity of the birth of the Jewish nation, and the universal, be it through the message of freedom as such, the implication drawn of empathy for the stranger and the weak, and even in the concluding hymn, “the breath of every living thing will praise you.”

The Multiple Layers of the Passover Seder

People are familiar with the “fourness” of the Pesah Seder celebration: the four questions, the four sons, the four cups of wine, the four “languages of redemption” (Ex 6:4ff.) from which these are derived, etc.—all of which, in turn, perhaps reflect the four levels of interpretation of the Torah (Pardes) and, some would say, the four worlds of the Kabbalistic world-scheme. But upon reflection I realized that there is also a basic “two-ness” to much of the Seder. This, on at least three levels:

The Haggadah relates the story of the Exodus in two parallel paths, with two separate beginnings. These are already mentioned in the Talmud: “One begins with our degradation and concludes with praise. What is meant by ‘degradation’? Rav said: ‘Originally our ancestors were idolators.’ Shmuel said: ‘We were slaves…’” (Pesahim 116a). According to one view, the narrative is to focus narrowly upon the specific events of the Exodus from Egypt, with its liberation from physical enslavement and political subjugation. The other narrative paints a far broader canvas, beginning with the pagan origins of the Jewish nation in pre-Abrahamic times, through the descent to Egypt, the enslavement, and the liberation, whose ultimate goal was, not merely political liberation, but the covenant with God and the epiphany at Mount Sinai. (Hence the well-known link of Pesah and Shavuot to one another).

On a second level, there is a duality within Maggid, the narrative or expository section of the Seder that precedes the festive meal, in terms of the experiential dimension. The first part of the Haggadah (following a kind of prelude, which concerns itself with the laws of and justification for the Seder itself) is essentially a narration, or better, a free-flowing discourse and dialogue between parents and children and among all those seated at the Seder table, about the formative events that shaped the Jewish nation long long ago. This is a kind of legend of origins, if you will, told through the medium of midrash, and focused on a series of key points. But then, at certain point, the Seder makes an abrupt turn. “In each generation a person must see himself as if he himself went out of Egypt.” From a historical, traditional narrative mode we turn to the immediate, experiential, existential mode: we ourselves want to relive the Exodus, to feel as if we ourselves were among the miserable rabble who were suddenly set free from the harsh reality of grinding, brutal slavery to… the unknown. This note is struck at the very beginning: “For if the Holy One blessed be He had not taken us out of Egypt, we and our children and our childrens’ children would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.”

In concrete terms, this experiential dimension is expressed through the act of eating the Matzah, the Marror, and (in symbolic, commemorative fashion) the Paschal lamb (this is the significance of the paragraph beginning “Rabban Gamaliel used to say…”), and by eating and drinking while reclining “like free men.” It reaches its culmination in the recitation of hymns of joy and thanksgiving, in the section beginning with the word Lefikhakh, through the two psalms from the Hallel recited at the end of Maggid, and ending with the blessing “for our redemption and the liberation of our souls” and the second cup of wine.

Then there is a third duality: that between the personal and national levels of interpretation or, put differently, between the allegorical and literal level. Do we read the Exodus only on the literal level, as an ancient historical event, or is it also a metaphor for inner spiritual processes, for the individual’s existential situation. Each person needs, so to speak, to leave his own personal Egypt. Rather than national redemption, the focus is on the redemption of each Jew’s soul—breaking the chains of the Evil Urge, of attachment to material things, so as to become truly free in the spiritual sense. This last motif appears prominently in many Hasidic and other texts, which constantly stress this theme. Thus, the Maharal of Prague, in his explanation of the symbolism of matzah (Gevurot Hashem) states that matzah symbolizes freedom because it is the only food which is completely “simple,” being made without any additives. As such, it is exemplary of the individual who seeks spiritual freedom.

Another widely known example of this line of thought is the prayer recited after the burning of the Hametz on the morning of Passover Eve, printed in many Haggadot. “May it be your will, O Lord... that just as I have burned hametz [leavened matter] from my home and from my property, so... shall You burn away the spirit of impurity from the land, and burn the Evil Urge from within us, and give us a heart of flesh… and all wickedness eliminate as smoke... just as you destroyed Egypt and their gods in those days at this time.”

The common denominator of all three levels is the tendency toward a more expansive, open-ended approach to the text. The liberation was not only political, but also had a covenantal-religious dimension; it was not only something long ago, of mere antiquarian interest, but something living and vibrant with which each person may and should identify; not only one specific event, but also an inner, personal process. In brief, the Exodus, and the Seder, is a paradigmatic, archetypal event, rich in multi-layered meaning and symbolism—and inviting each generation to add their own levels.

It is in this spirit that we find during the twentieth century that Jews of all stripes, including “secularists” of various sorts and ideological orientations, have found their own meaning in the Haggadah, filling “old barrels with new wine.” (A few years ago I wrote an article for the Jerusalem Post on this subject; what follows is a somewhat revised and abridged version of that piece.) Thus, during the period of the Yishuv and the early years of the State of Israel, many secular kibbutzim created their own, untraditional versions of the Haggadah. These generally deleted all reference to the religious dimension of the Exodus; substituted biblical passages for the Rabbinic midrash that forms the core of the traditional Haggadah (following the approach of Ben-Gurion and others, who stressed the Tanakh as against the Talmud); added passages from the Song of Songs and from modern poetry celebrating the renewal of nature at spring time, thus reviving Pesah as a nature festival; and, of course, adding passages celebrating the political and national renascence of the Jewish people in our own day (Shlonsky, Alterman, etc.) . On the visual level, these Haggadot are among the finest examples of the new style of Israeli graphic art, together with the many newly-published Haggadot using the traditional text.