Happy Passover! (Reposted from 2015)

The house has been cleaned, the chametz (leaven) has been sold or burned, the charoset is being made, and perfect hiding places for the Afikoman are being scouted out. In other words, we're ready for Passover! If you, dear reader, are celebrating the holiday, I wish you a "Chag Kasher v'Sameach," a Happy and Kosher Holiday, in whatever sense the holiday feels "Kosher," spiritual, and meaningful to you. If you are not a Passover-celebrant, I wish you a wonderful Easter or simply a beautiful spring!

Wherever we are, whatever we're doing, I wish for us all peace and freedom, the true underlying hopes, prayers, and dreams of this season. May we remember and celebrate the things that unite us, and "pass over" all the things that divide and distance us. I hope you have a wonderful, tasty, and enjoyable Seder. And most importantly:

Warm regards,

Rabbi Gerber

Vayakhel-Pekudei (Ha-Chodesh): As If.

This Shabbat is the fourth (and final) installment in a series of Shabbatot meant to prepare us for Passover. For each of these weekends, we take out a second Torah scroll, and we read a small snippet of text relating to the special theme for that particular Shabbat. Tomorrow morning's theme is "Ha-Chodesh," meaning "THE Month." Indeed, this is an important month, because Pesach is just around the corner, and our special reading on this occasion informs us that God declares this to be the FIRST month of the year. Appropriate to the theme, our selected reading comes from Exodus, 12:1-20, and outlines some of the basic rituals that God prescribed for our ancient ancestors while still in slavery in Egypt. But they weren't the only ones expected to listen attentively to these new rules...

The first Passover was celebrated still in slavery. Maybe this is obvious to you, but I find that it sometimes surprises people, because we refer to it as the Festival of Freedom. Every OTHER Pesach celebrated/s our having been freed from slavery... but those very first celebrants were actually still enslaved, and were holding their breath with MUCH anxiety and concern, wondering if indeed God's plan was going to work. Knowing this about the text's original audience, we might be forgiven for thinking these laws applied mainly to them. God says, "This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it hurriedly!" (v. 11) Well sure, that makes sense. They've got to be ready to leave post haste! Surely that part of the law applied exclusively to them, to the slaves, but not to subsequent generations. Right?

Just a few verses later, God clarifies the Divine intent: "you shall celebrate it [Pesach] as a festival to Adonai throughout the ages; you shall celebrate it as an institution for all time." (v. 14) Even though subsequent generations of Jews were not themselves slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, they - and we - were expected to celebrate the festival in the very same way. Hence we make our flat, under-baked matzah, we tell the story of the Exodus as if it JUST happened, and some traditions actually paint red streaks on their door posts or physically march around the Seder table; all meant to place ourselves back in the Pesach narrative. Because God knew, and our ancestors understood, that there is great power in bringing your history with you wherever you go, and continuing to feel the power of its messages.

The ancient rabbis who established the Passover Seder felt this quite viscerally. And they enshrined this value in our Haggadah, when they decreed that every person is *required* to view themselves AS IF they too were being redeemed from slavery. If we allow this to be an ancient fairytale, then it loses some of its commanding force. It is absolutely paramount that we not only retell the story of our dead ancestors, but that we truly place ourselves BACK into our history. Feel the humility of having been a slave; acknowledge the awesomeness of God's saving power for having ended our oppression; and commit to our Torah just as our ancestors did standing at the foot of Mount Sinai. Furthermore, there is a lesson in here that goes WAY beyond Pesach or even the Torah. What might it mean to live our lives "as if"? As if we believed we could change the world, as if we cared deeply about the plight of oppressed peoples today, as if we knew what it meant to be grateful for being alive and for being free? As we all begin to prepare for Pesach in earnest, let's not become too absorbed in the cleaning and the cooking. Let's also remember to live AS IF this was our very own story, and we too were about to be redeemed. "As if" can be a tremendous force for good in the world; and we can be the ones who wield it... IF we are ready.

Shabbat Shalom.

CC images in this blog post, courtesy of:
1. DG-RA on Pixabay
2. stevepb on Pixabay
3. pixy.org
4. Adalhi Mittnacht on Pinterest

Ki Tisa: You Know Who Deflects Culpability?? Well, it Certainly isn’t ME!

In this, my 609th blog post, I would like to issue a disclaimer: I am only responsible for the ideas and the content of these blog posts. If you, the reader(s) decide to interpret/infer/deduce/conclude/assume/extrapolate something from what I’ve written, well, then I say that’s on you! I just created this forum, wrote the blog posts for 12 years, came up with the topics on which to write, and then put those concepts into sentences. I shouldn’t be held responsible for what anyone thinks or determines based on what they read here, right?? I mean, I’m not suggesting that I don’t take responsibility for what I’ve written... but am I really the one responsible? Furthermore, I know it is important to accept the consequences of our actions, and to acknowledge our own role in how things happened the way they did... but I didn’t DO anything, there shouldn’t be consequences, and if anything happened as a result, I played no role in any of it. Ok, I’m glad we got that disclaimer out of the way. Because, let’s face it, if GOD doesn’t feel the need to take responsibility for the Israelites wandering through the desert, why shouldn’t I be able to act that way too???

You see, in our peculiar Torah portion, that is exactly what happens. You are perhaps already familiar with the details of the Golden Calf “incident,” in which the Israelites built an idol to either replace God or just serve as a worshipable (it’s a word!) (And if it isn’t, it’s not my fault...) intermediary for the Divine. It doesn’t go well. God is furious, Moses smashes the Ten Commandments, and Aaron acted either as an accomplice to, or an enabler of the people. Yet I think one of the saddest realizations that we all get from the text, and which I strongly feel is a central lesson we’re meant to take from this episode, is about taking responsibility. Is it easy to do? No. And maybe showing us that the Bible’s highest officials ALSO struggled to accept culpability, is an admission to us all that it was tough then, and it’s tough now. But I still say we HAVE TO learn to do it.

I will say this: I think our reading shows us two ways to deflect and deny responsibility... and one way to really own it and be present to it. Let’s start with the less-great examples. When Moses is up on the mountain, God says to him: “Hurry down, for YOUR people, whom YOU brought out of the land of Egypt, are acting terribly.” (Ex. 32:7) Far be it from me to criticize God... but this sure sounds an awful lot like when a parent comes home from work and the other parent says, “Do you know what YOUR child did in school today???” Second, when Moses comes down from the mountain and smashes the tablets, he turns to Aaron and asks, “how could you do this?” And Aaron’s ‘who me?’ excuse is: “they gave [their gold] to me, I hurled it into the fire, and out came this calf!!” (32:24) I mean, how could ANYONE suggest it was Aaron’s fault, when a fully-formed golden idol just came sashaying out of the fire???

But Moses actually salvages this whole debacle for us. He first pleads with God not to destroy them, then later, when he returns back to Mount Sinai after having put the kibosh on their idol-worship-party, Moses again begs God to take them back. Moses leads by example and he leads with authority. I’m sure that was not easy. I imagine it was scary (especially confronting his own older brother...), painful, and infuriating. But there simply was *no* choice here. Were Moses to have joined in with all the finger-pointing, we might still be wandering in the desert to this day! So contrary to my disclaimer above, I actually DO take responsibility for what I say here, and I DO feel awed and humbled by the task of bringing Torah to other people. Our words matter; as much as, and sometimes even more than, our actions. We are all part of the systems that swirl around us - whether our families, our congregations, our local communities, or even broader networks. WHEN (not if) we take responsibility for our own role in the bigger picture, and we lead by example, we can truly affect change all around us. Avoid the urge to say “it wasn’t my fault!,” and to quickly find someone ELSE to blame. The shekel stops here. Say it with me: It stops with me.

CC images in this blog post, courtesy of:

1. Rabbi Gerber's iPhone

2. DarkmoonArt_de on Pixabay

3. gabrielle_cc on Pixabay

4. nlekverlaan on Pixabay

L’Chaim (newsletter) article, March, 2021 - L’Shanah Ha-Ba’ah... where?

 Rabbi’s Corner, March, 2021: L’Shanah Ha-ba’ah… where?

Every year, at the Passover Seder, towards the end of the evening, we sing together, “L’Shanah Ha-Ba’ah Birushalayim!” - “Next Year in Jerusalem.” At last year’s Seder, it felt weird saying that, because it was the first holiday that was truly impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. We still sang this line… but I think in our minds we were really just thinking, “Next year, let us just be out of quarantine!” Sadly, that has not come to fruition.

It is strange to be coming around the corner to another Passover, and to still be talking about Zoom Seders and socially distanced holiday celebrations. We didn’t believe it would take this long (or longer), and we certainly hoped and prayed it would be a bizarre and unpleasant memory that we’d already be ready to leave behind us. And yet, this particular “plague” has not ended yet, and we still feel enslaved to our face masks, our hand sanitizers, and yes, our zoom gatherings.

And yet, a lot has indeed changed in a year. The government has gone through a massive change, to be sure, but also our own abilities to persevere through hardship have proven quite strong. We can do this. A year ago, the frightening prospects of what the pandemic would bring were hard to fathom, yet we have adjusted. Life has gone on, and while this is sometimes excruciatingly hard, we CAN do this. There are vaccines now, and more yet to come. Treatments have improved, protective equipment is more readily accessible, and we know now how much we are reliant on one another to follow the guidelines and rally together to protect our community. 

I would like to say that at least THIS year we can confidently say the pandemic will be in our rearview mirror by next Pesach! But you and I both know we can’t say that and be sure it’ll happen. We pray that it will, and we will do everything in our collective power to make it so. But we don’t know what “Shanah Ha-ba’ah,” “next year” will bring. That is daunting, certainly, and it is absolutely true that we are tired of the quarantine, the distancing, and the restrictions. But please, please always know that your community is here for you through all of this. We have one another, we have resources to help us endure and persevere, and we will face whatever this year and next year have in store for us united!

I’m still going to sing “L’Shanah Ha-ba’ah Birushalayim” at this year’s Zoom Seders. Because it isn’t really about Jerusalem, and it isn’t about KNOWING where I’ll be next year at all. It is about hope, optimism, and faith, no matter what lies ahead. Friends, we can do this. We can. No matter what.

Warmest regards,

Rabbi Gerber