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PASSOVER
SPECIAL PARASHA "SEGMENTS" =
EXODUS 33:12-34:26 and
NUMBERS 28:19-25
SHABBAT CHOL HA MOED PESACH
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, SC
"Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem Dried Bones"
"God ...set me down in the valley, which was full of bones...they were
very abundant... they were very dry...Oh dry bones, hear the word of the Lord:
I will bring spirit into you and you shall live. I shall put sinews...and
flesh...and skin over you. I open your graves and raise you from your
graves...and I shall bring you to the Land of Israel."
This quotation is from this week's Haftarah found in Ezekiel 37:1-14. It was established as this
Sabbath's reading from the Prophets due to its parallel to Passover, our
redemption from Egypt and the promise of being brought to the "promised
land." The Talmud Bavli in Tractate Sanhedrin 92B says that this was a dream
about a parable. The later Midrashim say it was a
miracle that actually did occur. Since miracles are what our traditional
teachings say Pesach is about, there is this additional theme as well in this Haftarah.
Because this Shabbat falls on the intermediate days (chol ha moed) of the
seven days of Passover, the Torah portion that would normally follow last
week's parasha is not read until next weekend. We read two sections from
the Torah that relate to this holiday as well as the Haftarah described
above.
Rashi sites an overlooked verse in the Chumash that he says states that
200,000 members of the tribe of Ephraim left Egypt early under the
leadership of a false savior. They were killed by the Philistines as they took a
direct route along the sea to Israel. Rashi says that these bones are from the
tribe of Ephraim and when resurrected will complete the Passover redemption.
Since Ezekiel wrote this during the exile in Babylon and after the First
Temple's destruction, a rational interpretation is that it is a tale to inspire
national hope to our dispersed and depressed people.
"In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, shall be a
Pesach-offering to God" (Num. 28:16). This refers to the roasted lamb
that we are to cook over a fire, not to boil in water and not to keep any
leftovers. "The fifteenth day of this month is a festival; for a seven day period
matzoth shall be eaten" (Num. 28:17). This of course refers to a
second holiday called the Festival of Matzah or the Spring holiday (Ex.
34:18).
Pesach as a spring festival is very old, and Hebrews observed a spring
holiday long before our deliverance from Egypt according to Rabbi Hayyim Schauss.
When Moses asked Pharaoh to let the Hebrews leave Egypt, he first asked
permission for them to go and celebrate the spring holiday and sacrifice
(Ex. 3:18, Ex. 10:09). When some of us were nomadic shepherds and our flocks' lambs and kids
were born we observed a feast at the time of the spring's month full moon
(circa 14-15th of the month). Every member of the family took part. We
sacrificed a lamb or kid before nightfall. It was forbidden to break any bones or
leave any part uneaten. The chief of the tribe daubed the tent posts with blood
of the slain animal as an antidote to illness and plagues. Some Bedouin
tribes do this custom today. Anthropologists posit that holidays start as
nature festivals, and as cultures' mature people give a deeper meaning to the
festival.
The meaning of the name Pesach remains obscure. Exodus 12:13 says it
means to spare, while Exodus 12:23 says it means to skip, to pass over. Perhaps it
alludes to the skipping spring lamb that is the zodiac sign of the
Jewish month of Nissan. The zodiac signs certainly predate the holiday of
Passover.
When others of the Hebrew tribes lived by tilling the soil, they
developed another spring holiday called the "the festival of unleavened bread." The
grain harvest began in the spring with the cutting of the barley and
ended with the reaping of the wheat. This season lasted about seven weeks.
Before the start of the barley festival the Hebrews would get rid of their sour
dough, which was fermented dough used instead of yeast to leaven bread.
They got rid of any product connected with last year's crop. This was done as
a talisman of their faith that they would be granted a good crop in the
coming season. In the Midrash the rabbis teach that while Lot was
living in Sodom, he served the angels matzah because they visited him
during the unleavened bread feast.
Pesach and the Feast of Matzot were originally two separate and distinct
holidays as indicated by the verses quoted above . The were both celebrated in early spring.
Pesach is the older holiday. It was from our desert shepherding customs. The holiday of the unleavened bread is
the newer of the two, developed after we had settled in Israel and began to
farm.
Originally the spring holidays were a deliverance from
nature. They later became associated with our deliverance as a nation.
Finally the two merged with spiritual connotations for the symbols that presently
adorn our seder plate.
Further development in the Passover holiday came when we were ruled
harshly by the Romans and our second Temple fell. Pesach became an allegorical
holiday for a future redemption from Rome just as Ezekiel's book was a
parable with hopes to release us from Babylon. We discarded our nomadic
customs and inserted the Greco-Roman rites of reclining sofas and of
drinking many cups of wine. We also began to eat our meal leisurely and not in the hurried
manner commanded in the Torah.
We reformed the injunction to eat the Pesach lamb with "loins
girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and...eat
in haste" (Ex. 12:11). Our Karaite cousins who do not accept any Talmudic
laws, still eat their meal in this fashion. Their matzah is made only
with barley flour. We even took the Greek custom of the afikomen and
incorporated it into our seder.
We tend to teach our children that afikomen means dessert in the Greek
language. You will not however see it on any menus in Athens's Plaka.
The famous sixteenth-century grammarian, Elijah Levita, discovered that the Greek
practice of drunken, sometimes orgiastic revelry that followed their academic
symposia was called an epikomon. What we might not have learned in our
university symposia is that in Greek, the word means an entertainment
characterized by drinking, music and intellectual discussion. Syn means
together and pinein means to drink in Greek. Since we could not eat
chometz desserts, we ended our meal with a piece of matzah that took on the name of afikomen.
In circa 500 C.E., when the Talmud was written down, after being oral for at least 1000 years, long after the Greek Empire had fallen to the Romans, the question of the origin of the afikomen was still debated
in Talmud Bavli Tractate Pesachim, daf (folio) 119b.
"You shall not break a bone" of the Pascal lamb (Ex. 12:46). Rabbi
Chinuch says this alludes to kings and queens not breaking bones to suck out the
marrow of every hidden piece of meat, as they had plenty to eat. But as
we learned from above, the idea of us relaxing and reclining like royalty is
a Talmudic one, not a Torah one. We are given a glimpse into why this rule
is given, especially when we are commanded to eat the whole lamb before
sunrise of the next day without keeping leftovers. Stuck in the middle of the
Passover "bbq'ed" lamb rules is the prohibition of cooking this lamb in
its mother's milk (Ex. 34:26). Clearly, this is part of the Passover rules.
It refers to the Pascal kid and not other meats cooked at other times. If
we combine the idea of an ancient spring holiday during which we thank God
for his continued blessings of a successful harvest and a good flock, with the
idea of a national redemption with His promise to continue to protect us, we
can arrive at a possible answer.
We can see how we are taught to respect the life forces of marrow's blood
and mother's milk as symbols of the spiritual, physical and national life
that God graciously bestows upon us daily. By giving up eating the blood in
the marrow of broken bones we remember that we are eating from a once-live
animal which we have sacrificed to sustain us.
By refraining from boiling a kid
in its mother's milk we remember that life is precious and fragile. God
granted us life. We are obliged to remember that we are our brother's
keeper. That is part of the covenant. God brought us out of captivity and "sustained us
through our festive seasons." Our job as good people is to help bring others who
are held captive, who are having their spiritual marrow sucked from their
bones, and who are having no mothers' sustenance, into a redemption as well.
While every piece of food on the Passover seder plate has meaning, the Rabbinic sages wanted to understand about matzah. We should learn to be like matzah, humble and not puffed up with chometz (leavening, ego). As modern spiritual Jews searching our homes for crumbs of chometz, we need to instead be doing an accounting of our lives to rid ourselves, with God's aid, of ego, and the selfishness, selfcenteredness, resentments, and fears that it carries with it.
The time-honored tradition of helping those in need on Peasch is called Ma-ot
Chittim. Those of us that are lucky enough to celebrate the Passover can surely find
time and resources to help lift up those with dried bones, to breathe spirit back
into their lives, to feed their weak flesh and to put clothes over their
naked skins.
A Joyous Pesach To All !!!
Shabbat Shalom,
RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL
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