RABBI ARTHUR SEGAL:JEWISH SPIRITUAL RENEWAL:JEWISH RENEWAL:CHUMETZ IS EGO
Jewish Spiritual Renewal:Shabbat 4/11/09:Torah, TaNaK, Talmud, Ethics, Spiritual View Point
Shalom Chaverim v' Talmidim:
I am writing this a few hours before sunset on Shabbat Ha Gadol. It is called such because this is the Sabbath immediately preceding Passover, when we became a free people, and seven weeks later, received our Torah, our way of living. Our last week's class, always a week ahead, discussed these aspects and the parasha for this Shabbat, Tzav.
The Shabbat of 4/11/09, falls in the middle of Passover 8 days, or 7 in the Land of Israel. Keep in mind that the first two days and the last two days, are treated as Shabbatons, regarding work and other prohibitions. The intermediary days are call Chol Ha Moed. But since the Shabbat is a Shabbat, its is still treated as a Shabbat. We have special readings on this Shabbat, and hence do not read the parasha following Tzav. We will do such on 4/18/09.
So there are many things we can learn about Passover. For example: in the Talmud, the 4th question about reclining is not there, but rather a question about why we can only roast lamb on 'this night.' When the Babylonian Jews celebrated Passover with what we call a seder still not set down into a Hagaddah, and the Hebrews were celebrating it with a Pascal offering in Ezra's "second Temple' in Jerusalem, Jews ate roasted lamb. It was only after the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE that this question was replaced in what we now call the Hagaddah, although it remains in the Talmud, and a shank bone ended up on our seder plate. And Jews don't eat lamb at seders. As far as mint jelly, consult your Rav.
But for those of you who have been to a real seder, and not the so many abridged ones that are occurring, you have learned that similar to Purim, being kind to the poor is a part of Passover as is hospitality. We know that Elijah will return as a beggar looking for food. If we turn him away, we are not ready spiritually for the Messiah. This is why we open the door for him and have a glass of wine for him.
Some Talmud Bavli Pesachim 10:1: We need make sure every poor person has enough wine for 4 cups.
And we all know the Hagaddah's cry, taken from Rabbi Huna's of the Talmud daily cry at dinner time, 'Let those who are hungry let them come and eat!.' The Talmud tells us we are to say this not in Hebrew but in the vernacular, which in Babylon was Aramaic, so that everyone could understand it. For our seders this coming week, we would say it in English in America, and since we have international students, in the language best understood by your town's people.
Some TaNaK: "You are defrauding Me!" says God, "because you fail to share My abundance with the poor and landless, you will not bring the common wealth into the common storehouse. Only if you turn back to My teaching will the locusts vanish from your fields. Only then, if you will share My rain of blessings on your harvests, will I pour those blessings down from Heaven." (Malachi 3: 8-11)
Some Torah: "And he (Lot) prepared a banquet for them, and baked matzot, and they ate" (Gen: 19:2).
Some Rashi: "And it was Pesach."
Now how was it Passover when the Children of Israel hadn't even gone to Egypt yet, and Israel (Jacob) hadn't even been born? The Radak [Rabbi David Kimchi circa 1200 France] says it wasn't Passover. This is a lesson in hospitality. That when one has hungry guests, serve them 18 minute matzah first, and water, and then take time to bake bread. My d'var below shows how the festival of unleavened bread was a Semitic grain holiday long before the Exodus took place. And the spring harvest festival of killing a lamb pre dated our Exodus as well. This should come as no surprise as when in comes to synchronicity, borrowing from other cultures, and putting a Hebraic or Judaic spin on it and making it our own, we win the prize.
But it we look at Genesis Chapter 19 and compare it to Exodus Chapter 12 we see parallels.
Gen. 19 tells of a ''house that is closed up'', in which the family and the guests have just completed a meal with matzot. At the ''doorway to the house'', the ''angels'' save the family members, ''strike' the people of the city (Sodom), and then ''bring'' Lot's family ''out'' of the city, by virtue of the hospitality shown to them.
Gen 6: And Lot went out to them at the entrance, and shut the door after him.
Ex. 22: And none of you shall go out from the entrance of his house until morning.
Gen. 11: And they struck the men that were at the entrance to the house with blindness… and they wearied themselves to find the entrance.
Ex. 23 …God will pass over the entrance and will not allow the destroyer to come into your houses, to smite you.
Gen 3: And he made them a feast, and baked matzot, and they ate.
Ex. 8: And they shall eat the meat on that night, roasted with fire, with matzot; they shall eat it with bitter herbs.
Ex. 27: It is the sacrifice of Pesach unto God, Who passed over the houses of Bnei Yisrael in Egypt, when He smote Egypt, and delivered our houses.
Gen 13: For we will destroy this place, for their cry has grown great before God, and God has sent us to destroy it.
Ex.(12) I shall smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt…(13) … when I smite the land of Egypt..(29) … God smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt.
Gen. 14: …Get up; get out of this place, for God is going to destroy the city…
Ex. 31: And he called for Moshe and Aharon by night, and said: Get up; get out from among my nation – you and Bnei Yisrael…
Gen: (15) And when the dawn came…(12) …whatever you have in the city, bring it out of this place.
Ex. 51: And it was, on that same day, that God brought Bnei Yisrael out of Egypt by their hosts.
Gen. 16 And he lingered… so they brought him out…
Ex. 16 And he lingered… so they brought him out…
Gen. 24 And God rained down upon Sodom and Amora brimstone and fire from God out of the heavens.
Ex. 9: 23: And God sent thunder and hail, and the fire ran down to the ground, and God rained hail upon the land of Egypt.
Both episodes last all night. One produces two nations, Moab and Ammon and the other Israel.
What the Torah is trying to teach us, that it is through the merits of our hospitality and chesed , loving kindness to others, is how Lot was redeemed, how Israel was redeemed, and how each one of us redeems ourselves.
Some Talmud Bavli Pirkei Avot 1:2 2. Shimon the Righteous was one of the last survivors of the Great Assembly. He used to say: On three things the world is sustained: on the Torah, on the (Temple) service, and on deeds of loving kindness.
Well we have been taught that all of Torah can be summed up into love of one's fellow, and that the Temple service has been replaced with a service of the heart (prayer and self spiritual growth). So our entire Judaism is learning how to truly love, be free of resentments, and be altruistic.
Treat everyone you meet, or email, or on the phone, with kindness, as you can never know if that is the last time you will have an opportunity to be nice to that person.
Again, if anyone needs a seat for first night seder, or knows of someone, please contact us, at
RabbiASegal@aol.com. Conversely, we are sederless for the second night.
The Talmud tells us we are to be simple and plain and humble like matzah, and not puffed up with ego, like fancy bread with chumetz."Leaven represents the evil impulse of the heart (Talmud Bavli Tractate Beracoth 17a)." This is why matzah with honey, or onion flavor, etc, is not kosher for pesach.
The days preceding Passover and the 8 days of it, are an excellent time to begin your journey of Jewish Spiritual Renewal, to learn to rid yourself of ego, of dishonesty of commission and omission, of fears, of grudges, and learn to live a life of happiness, joyousness, and freedom. Check out www.JewishSpiritualRenewal.org for our ''Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew,'' and I will work with anyone who wishes to, for gratis. It has helped countless others change their lives and many of them are your fellow Talmidim, from the most liberal of Jews, to members of Chabad.
Shabbat shalom and a sweet Pesach.
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
Selected Readings:
Exodus 33:12-34:26 And
Numbers 28:19-25
Shabbat Chol Ha Moed Pesach
"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 Ezekiel 37:1-14. It was established as Shabbat Chol Ha Moed Pesach'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 the previous week's parasha is not read until the following 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 month's full moon, around the 14th or 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 earlier. Both were 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.
Around 500 C.E., when the Talmud was written down, after being oral for at least 1,000 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 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, 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 lamb rules is the prohibition against 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-living animal that 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 mother's sustenance, into 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, self-centeredness, resentments, and fears that it carries with it.
The time-honored tradition of helping those in need on Pesach is called Ma-ot Chittim. Those of us who 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.
Shabbat Shalom and Happy Pesach,
Rabbi Arthur Segal
Via Shamash Org on-line class service
Jewish Renewal
Jewish Spiritual Renewal
Hilton Head Island, SC, Bluffton, SC, Savannah, GA
Short Snap Shot of Rabbi Arthur Segal
- Rabbi Arthur Segal
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- I am available for Shabbatons, and can speak on various aspects of Jewish history, (from the ancient past to modern day, and can be area specific, if a group wishes), Spirituality, developing a Personal Relationship with God, on the Jews of India and other 'exotic' communities, and on Talmud, Torah and other great texts. We have visited these exotic Jewish communities first hand. I adhere to the Mishna's edict of not using the Torah as a ''spade'', and do not ask for honorariums for my services. I am post-denominational and renewal and spiritually centered.
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- I am available to perform Jewish weddings, and other life cycle events, ONLY IF, it is a destination wedding and the local full time pulpit rabbi is unavailable, or if there is no local full time pulpit rabbi, or it is in my local area and all of the full time pulpit rabbis are unavailable.
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- My post-doc in Psych from Penn helps tremendously when I do Rabbinic counseling. My phone number and address will be made available once I am sure of one's sincerity in working with me.
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- Rabbi Segal is the author of three books and many articles on Torah, Talmud and TaNaK and Jewish history. His books are : The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud, and Spiritual Wisdom of our Talmudic Sages. The first two are published by Amazon through their publishing house, BookSurge.
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- Todah Rabah and Shalom v' Beracoth. Rabbi Arthur Segal ,( Dr. Arthur Segal )RabbiASegal@aol.com .
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Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice into a step-by-step process to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality in a concise easy-to-read and easy-to-follow manner.
If you find yourself wishing for the strength to sustain you through the ups and downs of life; if you want to learn how to live life to its fullest without angst, worry, low self-esteem or fear; or if you wish that your relationships with family, friends and co-workers were based on love and service and free of ego, arguments, resentments and feelings of being unloved...this book is for you.
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Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us. This companion to The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew brings the Torah alive with daily relevance to the Modern Jew.
All of the Torah can be summed up in one word: Chesed. It means kindness. The Talmud teaches that the Torah is about loving our fellow man and that we are to go and study. The rest is commentary. This compendium clarifies the commentary and allows one to study Torah and Talmud to learn the Judaic ideals of love, forgiveness, kindness, mercy and peace. A must read for all Jews and deserves a place in every Jewish home.
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In The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal: A Path of Transformation for the Modern Jew, Rabbi Dr. Arthur Segal distills millennia of sage advice to reclaim your Judaism and your spirituality.
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A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud dissects each of the Torah's weekly sections (parashot) using the Talmud and other rabbinic texts to show the true Jewish take on what the Torah is trying to teach us.
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The Handbook to Jewish Spiritual Renewal and A Spiritual and Ethical Compendium to the Torah and Talmud. Purchase both books as a set, and I will donate a portion of the sales price in your name to the tzadakkah of your choice. -- Rabbi Segal
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