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Shabbat HaGadol
Here we are, standing in the doorway of springtime,
Passover, and new beginnings -- shaking ourselves off like animals; rustling our senses
back to life from the thickness of winter; rousing ourselves to the vision
of this exquisite earth coming to life again. And if we are ever to
awaken from the slumber of our souls, (you know -- that deep sleep that we
humans fall into for lifetimes) now is the time,
because if ever it might happen, it will be in spring. I may be sleeping, says the lover in the Song of
Songs, but my heart is aroused.
I am coming to life again, I know because I can hear the voice of Dodi, the
beloved is knocking. Open the door, it says. Let me in.
The
problem is, and Jung says it well: the Unconscious is unconscious. If you
aren't awake to hear someone knocking at the door, then you wont be there to
open it when Elijah, the revealer of mysteries comes calling. It's a conundrum:
if we are unconscious to our blindspots, which of course we are, our habits,
our patterns, our automatic behaviors, (each of us individually but also as a
people) then how will we move to the next level of awareness, to the freedom when it beckons our spirits?
This is the reason that each spring,
our senses are filled up with the potent tastes, sounds and smells of Passover.
They are programmed into the hard-drive of our people to help us wake up...the
crunch and crumble of matza, the peculiar taste on the tongue of salt water
and spring greens... then there is the kosher wine -- unforgettable! Each
year our sinuses quiver at the first whiff of moror, horseradish root, and
our memories are triggered by the age old words and music of the Haggadah...all
designed to wake us up so we can pass-over into a new consciousness.
Nonetheless, most Passovers will
be celebrated this year as a nostalgic salute to some idealized event in ancient
history. Seder plates will be dragged out as table decorations and memorabilia,
relics of ethnic pride. But Passover
is deep! You can't Pass-over passively. It is simply too radical of a holiday.
It requires of us internal engagement. Scrubbing ovens, cleaning out corners and piles, bringing out special dishes, are the external
work that trigger the inner engagement. But it is easy to get lost in the
outer focus, getting obsessed with cleaning and with...kosher l'Pesach toothpaste,
glue, matches, bubble gum, etc.
If we are awake to this season,
and if the holiday of Passover is doing its job, we should feel slapped across
the face: A loving slap, but a slap nonetheless: "Wake up!" it shouts. "And don't go back
to sleep! Remember who you are and what you are here for: Your ancestors,
your parents, and now you, yes you: you are here to ask, to challenge, to
wrestle with God, to be heretical if necessary, to cross boundaries on your
own comfort, to look beyond yourself to the bigger picture. You think it was
an accident that your founding father, Abraham, was an idol smasher?
You too must question the prevailing beliefs wherever you go, be willing
to smash the false gods of your own making, and those of the culture around
you."
Historically, Passover was an
upfront departure from the "mother culture." The Egyptian culture was obsessed with death, rife
with child sacrifice, the worship of animals gods and building monuments to the
dead. The events leading up to the first Passover were an in-their-face way of
saying: we are differentiating from your way of thinking. Enough with the
death fetishes, we are choosing a life affirming deity. We'll have an ark but it wont contain
remnants of the dead like yours do, it will contain symbols of life and social
justice. We will have a priesthood, but unlike your priests who administer
death rites and maintain tombs, our priests will not be allowed to go near the
dead; they will serve the living.
Similarly, the ten elaborate
plagues did not happen only to insure the Israelites' escape from their
captors. They represented an unabashed betrayal of the Egyptian belief
system, each plague taking on and destroying another one of the Egyptian
deities and icons. And the sacrifice of the lamb at the full moon, and the
smearing of its blood on doorposts? Blasphemy! The lamb was, after all, their
most sacred god, the ram headed Khnum, creator of the universe. Passover was
about smashing the idols of the prevailing belief system.
This is a prerequisite of
freedom.
Think about the second commandment,
the prohibition of images and pictures. This commandment, and Abraham's legacy
of smashing idols, more than ever, applies to us today...because it is not
only talking about statues and forms, it is talking about how we fall into
platitudes and theories, consensual beliefs, lazy thinking that puts us
to sleep, that deadens us to the Living Mystery that, I believe, wants to
reveal itself and have a relationship with us.
Our entire history is about a people
who questioned blind faith and refused to be docile. A troublesome people
perhaps, given to a peculiar trait: iconoclasm...the breaking, smashing of
sacred images.
ICONO=sacred
images/CLASTES=smasher.
This month I read a book that
slapped me across the face hard Nothing Sacred, by Douglas Rushkoff, a
PBS, National Public radio, New York Times writer, a "lapsed Jew" who takes a
stark look from the outside at Jews and Judaism in the world today, where we
have come from and what has happened to us in this strange era in which our
sacred ideals and visions as a people, as a state, as a light in the world,
have been so badly damaged. Rushkoff asserts that we have lost the plot of
our story, that we have forgotten the core principles, which allowed us to survive and flourish for
thousands of years in terrible odds. He claims, and I agree with him, that
these basics are now in peril: Our commitment to literacy, to radical
monotheism, social justice, and iconoclasm.
All of these are critical and you
will no doubt hear me talking about them for a long time to come, but it is
iconoclasm, our ability to wake up and question, fiercely if necessary, that
Passover is all about.
The Jewish people learned the lesson of being wakeful and wary of false gods early on. Our survival depended on it. Throughout our history we learned not to depend upon riches, political power, or any possession or status that could be taken away from us. We knew that the wheel of fortune is always turning, sometimes rapidly, and that watching and studying a situation, rather than jumping into it, is critical. How did we know this? Because for two thousand years our very existence was defined by living as outsiders. In exile. Diaspora, Galut.
So much about us as a people—our
cultural and psychological tendencies, our theology, even the professions
we choose—have been defined by our history in exile. For two thousand
years our people lived in countries around the world, in a state of detached
readiness. Not being able to own or utilize land in most of the countries we lived, made farming, fishing, getting grounded
on the earth impossible, which, as I have written elsewhere, is extremely
hard on the feminine sensibility.
But on the other hand, just
because Jews couldn't OWN a lot of
money or land of your own, doesn't mean they couldn't become brokers of other
people's. Jews were never afraid to assist people with their assets, to invest,
lend, change and grow other people's money; to coach, negotiate, and mediate
transactions. Do that for a few
hundred years and you get good at it.
Without a home field advantage,
we became facile with languages; we had to. Being in the world but not of it,
to swipe brother Jesus' language, helped us to become arbitrators, translators,
referees, middlemen. Always watching from the sidelines; ever with an ear to
the ground for the next decree of banishment, government downfall, or other
catastrophe, we became excellent cultural commentators, and later, comedians,
film critics, photographers and journalists. Ever the watchers, the perennial
outsider, we learned the skill of living with detachment, good at gauging the
bigger picture. This was not a
God-given virtue, mind you, but part and parcel of not being allowed to take
part in the game as bona fide players. I believe it was both the beauty and
the bane of the Jew's existence, that we weren't allowed to fall asleep to the
prevailing cultural myths.
Wakefulness. It's a good trait.
It teaches you to wed yourself to that which cannot be taken away: to values
that last: the ability to think, to process information, to read the signs, to
read books, to question, to argue. Because we were citizens of no country at
all, we learned to value not the ethnocentric, flag waving that grows up inside
nationalistic borders but the commitment to humanity that transcends
boundaries.
I believe it is this wakefulness
and the non belonging, the non ethnocentrism that fueled Jews to be activists:
to launch the labor movement in this country 100 years ago, to organize strikes
against labor sweatshops, to negotiate the first modern labor laws, to help
organize and fund the NAACP. Otherwise how do you explain that the Jews, 2%
of the US population, made up over half of the white volunteers who went to
Mississippi to fight the Jim
Crow laws, and made up 50% of the civil
rights lawyers in the 1950's? I could go on and on.
But this is not a self admiration
back patting session. My dad used to do that. He had discovered his Judaism as
a young man, and took it as his premier identity, endlessly extolling the
virtues of the Jewish lineage, reminding us that most everyone who did anything
valuable in the world, from Christopher Columbus to Sandy Kofax, was a Jew.
That's not where I am coming from. I am saying, rather, that we must put
into context our legacy, to examine whether we are living or breaking with our
deepest truths. The last 40 years of relative freedom from oppression, anti
Semitism, and living, for the first time, in a culture that accepts and
promotes us. as the wealthiest, most powerful minority in the history of this
country: these have been extremely comfortable and nurturing times. But is
it possible, I ask you, that living so deeply and comfortably on the inside of
a culture makes us not more but less free? less wakeful? less committed to the
truths that are obvious as outsiders?
For those Jews who put their lives
on the line to smash the false gods that strangle life and freedom around
the world, from Czarist Russia to Selma Alabama, the goal was not Jewish at
all. Our forebears, remember, were not acting for the sake of "continuity,"
nor were they thinking about whether their fight for justice would increase
Jewish numbers. No one was looking at social activism back then as a marketing
strategy to "win back lost young Jews." Their fight, getting off
their tucheses to protest and struggle against inhumanity, was not about self
protection.It was radical Judaism, plain and simple: not preservation of
our numbers but preservation of Abraham's legacy to smash idols; it was the
living out of Moses' injunction: to remember how strangers feel in a strange
land. Our ancestors' goal was bald faced justice, unbiased compassion,
humanity that transcends boundaries.
We are still Abraham's children.
Iconoclasm is our legacy. It is
the ability to break with tradition, to watch, question, and if necessary to
smash the "sacred cows" of our comfort and our narcissism, both of the culture
within and beyond ourselves when it strangles life.
Today, tell me who are the powers
that be in the Jewish world? They are the philanthropies, the Federation, the
Orthodox rabbinate in Israel, and sadly, I believe, these leaders have lost
sight of our founding ideals. But we, each of us individually and as a
community, can remember them, must remember them.
It is not enough to preserve Passover
only to give ourselves warm fuzzy feelings and pass down warmfuzzies to our
children. Let's not say Dayenu to that. I was actually taught that "Dayenu"
(It would have been enough) should always have a question mark after it. (Would
it have been enough?) the answer being, Of course not! Would it have been
enough that we broke from the Egyptian death culture but didn't find a living
God? Of course not! In the same way, would it have been enough that Judaism
survived for thousands of years, only to see its radical, edgy spirit come
to a thud in the form of Jewish style deli and nostalgic musicals?
If Judaism has become ethnocentric,
obsessed with its own self preservation, with number counting, and flag waving,
then we have indeed lost the plot of our story and we are worshipping a false
god. The goal of being Jewish
is not to be Jewish., Rabbi Irwin Kula says: It is to become a
particular kind of person in the world. With values that train us to be awake.
And if we can pass our values
of literacy, radical monotheism, social justice and iconoclasm on to our
children, then our children might have a chance to live in this world with
their eyes open, with the ability to question, to think, to confront injustice
wherever it strikes.
This Passover, this springtime, we are invited once again, to break
the idols of our lazy thinking and rote patterns, to stand like the courageous
Jews that came before us, on the outside of the world looking in, to
disturb our comfortable patterns long enough to hear Elijah's knock on the
door and the voice that whispers: Don't go back to sleep! Remember who
you are and what you are here for: to ask, to challenge, to wrestle with God,
to be heretical if necessary, to cross boundaries on your own comfort, to
look beyond yourself to the bigger picture.
so that life on this planet, not death, be served.
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