Tag: Had Gadya

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Festivals Sermons

The Seder as a Model for Resilience – First Day Pesaḥ 5783

Last Wednesday, I was working out on an elliptical machine at the JCC when I received a text message. It was an EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION, in all caps, from the Jewish Federation Security Team. When I clicked on the included link, I landed at a page which screamed in red letters, “***This is a CRITICAL Notification***,” and explained that there was a BluePoint activation at Central Catholic, and that police were on the scene, and students were being evacuated to Rodef Shalom.

I figured that there was not much I could do, being there at the JCC in my workout clothes and all sweaty, so I went on with my workout. About a half-hour later, I received a notification that the event was a hoax, and as the day progressed, we all learned that a bunch of schools were targeted across Pennsylvania, and that they fell victim to a particular kind of terror attack known as “swatting.”

Of course, it was quite frightening for the students who were evacuated, or who were in lockdown in the building. The next day, I spoke to our friend Rev. Canon Natalie Hall, the rector at Church of the Redeemer on Forbes, and as it turns out, two of her kids were actually in locked-down classrooms. Her teenager was texting her from a closet, and as you can imagine, she was terrified. (A similar event happened at Beth Shalom a few years back when a 3-year-old accidentally hit the panic button and activated the system. Everybody in the building went into lockdown.)

I am grateful that we have systems that are designed to protect us. I am grateful that the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh has poured money into setting up these security systems; you should know that if you trigger one of the BluePoint alarm devices in the building, for Police, Medical, or Fire, not only do the emergency responders know where you are located within the building, but also everybody else who works in a Jewish institution knows that something is happening at Beth Shalom. I had no idea that we were also connected to the system at Central Catholic.

For the children who had to go into lockdown, what happened on Wednesday was completely real. They did not know, at least for a certain number of minutes, that this was a hoax. They were told that it was an active shooter. 

In our zeal to prevent terrorists from actually (God forbid) attacking people, some bad actors have discovered that they do not need to actually attack anybody (God forbid) to cause very real fear and harm. The police were tied up for hours. (Even so, somewhat ironically, I still managed to get a parking ticket, because I forgot to pay for parking at the JCC lot that morning.)

And unfortunately, it seems like fears are multiplying upon each other these days. Parents are afraid of what ideas their kids might encounter, or not encounter, in schools. Religious groups are afraid of growing secularism. Everybody’s afraid that they may be called out online if they say something that contradicts contemporary orthodoxies. Great anxiety now surrounds any type of election. We are all afraid of the water and the air and what might be in it. 

And, of course, here in Pittsburgh, some of us are quite anxious about the upcoming trial for the person who murdered 11 precious souls down the street from here on October 27, 2018. And not just for the details of the testimony, which, I am certain, will be quite unsettling. 

I am personally concerned that one unpleasant sight to which we may be treated will be people from extremist groups protesting the trial outside the courthouse. I hope those people do not show up, but as detestable as they are, they of course have the right to parade their hatred and anti-Semitism before us all, and they may just do that.

Fear, persecution, anxiety, terrorism, hatred, violence, genocide. Sadly, none of these things are new to Jewish life. We acknowledge the many ways we have suffered throughout our history at multiple points on the Jewish calendar, and Pesaḥ is a time that is especially heavy in this regard. The fear, and ultimate triumph, of our people is found all over the haggadah. Just a few examples:

  • In telling the story, the extended midrash on “Arami oved avi,” (“My father was a wandering Aramean,” Devarim / Deuteronomy 26:5-8) details the affliction, misery, and oppression which our ancestors suffered at the hands of the Egyptians. The midrash offers descriptions of the work as futile and the taskmasters as brutal oppressors who beat and terrorized and otherwise layered cruel punishments on our ancestors to maintain the level of fear and subjugation.
  • Elsewhere in the haggadah, we sing of the “ḥad gadya,” the single baby goat, who symbolizes the poor, enslaved Jews, and suffers at the hands of various, ever-larger and more dangerous predators until finally redeemed by the Qadosh Barukh Hu / Holy, Blessed One.
  • And then, of course, there is the moment when we “pour out our wrath” upon our oppressors, indulging in a rare, “Inglourious Basterds”-style fantasy of overpowering our tormentors, as we open our doors to beckon to Eliyahu haNavi, who will redeem us from all present and future harm.

For all the many centuries we have been telling this story, we have been subject to anti-Semitic persecution, and our current moment is no different. The Anti-Defamation League recently reported a significant jump in anti-Semitic incidents in 2022, nearly 3,700. That is a 36% increase over the year before, and a fourfold increase since 2014, when there were 912 incidents reported. 

And put in that context, the seder tells the story of Jewish resilience. We have continued doing what we do, even after the Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, after medieval blood libel accusations, after the Expulsion from Spain, after the Shoah. We keep telling the story of overcoming our oppressors. We keep welcoming in all those who are hungry. We keep singing about the poor baby goat who is redeemed by God.

Resilience is to keep doing what we are doing, and to not be afraid.

My double colleague, Rabbi/Cantor Lilly Kaufman, wrote a piece about fear and the Exodus story in which she pointed out that some fear is normal, but of course it is possible to be overwhelmed or even paralyzed by fear, and our tradition has some guidance for that. Next Wednesday morning, on the seventh day of Pesaḥ, we chant from the Torah about the dramatic escape of the Israelites from Pharaoh’s armies as they cross the Sea of Reeds on dry land. As the Egyptian armies draw near, the Israelites cry out in fear, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us out to die in the wilderness?” (Shemot/Exodus 14:11). Moshe responds by saying, (vv. 13-14):

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר מֹשֶׁ֣ה אֶל־הָעָם֮ אַל־תִּירָ֒אוּ֒ הִֽתְיַצְּב֗וּ וּרְאוּ֙ אֶת־יְשׁוּעַ֣ת ה’ אֲשֶׁר־יַעֲשֶׂ֥ה לָכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם כִּ֗י אֲשֶׁ֨ר רְאִיתֶ֤ם אֶת־מִצְרַ֙יִם֙ הַיּ֔וֹם לֹ֥א תֹסִ֛פוּ לִרְאֹתָ֥ם ע֖וֹד עַד־עוֹלָֽם׃ה’ יִלָּחֵ֣ם לָכֶ֑ם וְאַתֶּ֖ם תַּחֲרִשֽׁוּן׃

… “Have no fear! Stand by, and witness the deliverance which God will work for you today; for the Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. God will battle for you; you hold your peace!”

Rabbi Kaufman adds, 

Moses speaks about fear without . . . fear. This is perhaps the most important thing he does: he names the overwhelming feeling and confronts it directly and succinctly. He is supportive, confident, and empathic. He speaks not only about what God will do, but about how the Israelites will experience it. Moses promises that they will see God’s redemption, and he predicts a defining shift in how they will see Egypt from now on.

As we face whatever forms of ugly Jew-hatred come our way in the near future, we must acknowledge the fear, as Moshe does, and also look to the future when we will be redeemed from this fear. We have come so far, over so many centuries, and left so many haters in the rear-view mirror. And we have, all along, drawn strength from the framework of our tradition, drawn strength from each other as a community, and drawn strength from the Qadosh Barukh Hu.

Regarding the trial, let me suggest the following: if you are concerned about hearing or seeing unsettling details or extremist protestors or anything that will upset you, try to avoid watching TV news or reading those articles in the paper or online. I myself do not want to hear/see/read that stuff. But also know that, whatever happens, we as a community will of course do our best to keep everybody safe and to keep the haters at bay, to look out for each other and to keep on praying to God for our spiritual well-being.

But something that you might also do, particularly if you are gathered around the seder table tonight with family and friends, is to have a discussion about fear and resilience. Ask the question: “What are we afraid of right now, and what steps are we taking to overcome that fear?” Our tradition wants us to name the fear, to listen to the fear, to address the fear, and to understand that we will ultimately prevail.

Our traditions, our textual framework are there to help us navigate what has always been a frightening world for the Jews. Take these opportunities, on this ḥag ha-ḥerut, this festival of freedom, to demonstrate to each other that we shall overcome. אל תיראו. Al tira-u, said Moshe. Have no fear. 

חג שמח!

~

Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, first day of Pesaḥ 5783, 4/6/2023. A version of this sermon appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on 4/9/2023.)

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Festivals Sermons

One Vulnerable Goat (and Two Zuzim) – Pesah Day 1 5780

When I look at the Pesah seder with my rabbi-glasses on, of course I see all the great opportunities to discuss, all of the ways in which the story is relevant to who we are and how we live today.

But when I look at it from the perspective of one who has been Jewish my whole life, and for 34 of those 50 years NOT as a rabbi or a cantor, I see a totally different thing. I see family dinner, with great food and good company, with people noodging each other around the table as they have always done, silly dad jokes and older siblings who have not seen each other in months falling into their regular patterns. I hear the family stories – the time that I dissed my grandmother’s home-made gefilte fish in favor of Mrs. Adler, the time so-and-so actually drank four cups of wine and was clearly drunk. I hear the music of families singing old seder standards together: Mah Nishtana, Dayyenu. 

The family sedarim of my youth were not about discussion. We generally read the Maxwell House, and maybe later the KTAV haggadah, in English, one paragraph at a time, and I don’t think we really understood it that well. We did not know, for example, that the five rabbis – Eliezer, Yehoshua, El’azar ben Azariah, Aqiva and Tarfon – were plotting rebellion against the Romans in what would be the Bar Kokhba Revolt, and that the line, “Rabboteinu, higi’a zeman qeri’at Shema shel shaharit” / “Our teachers! The time has come to recite the morning Shema,” may have been the code phrase for, “Quick! Hide! Roman soldiers are coming!”

We did not know that the seder is an imitation of the Greek symposium, in which Greek men of leisure would dine and philosophize and dip their food whilst reclining to the left, and then go out partying from house to house in what was known in Greek as “epikomion,” a word that entered Mishnaic Hebrew as “afiqoman.”

We did not understand the fuss made over small textual issues, like interpreting “Kol yemei hayyekha,” (Deut. 16:3; literally, “all the days of your life”) or how ten plagues became 250. We did not know that the standard Four Questions are not the same Four Questions asked in the Mishnah, and we failed to notice that they were really only one question with four elaborations on that question.

We were, however, singers, and so we have always enjoyed singing along together at the end of the service. And we have always enjoyed getting a little crazy with songs toward the end. Fine, so I didn’t know what “Shishah sidrei mishnah” (six are the orders of the Mishnah) exactly meant. I didn’t really know what the Mishnah is until my 30s. But who cares?

One of the songs that we have always sung is Had Gadya. It’s a fun song, and fits neatly into the other seder songs in that it is repetitive, and designed to last a while to extend the evening’s festivities. Anybody who has been to the congregational sedarim that I have led in recent years is familiar with the Moishe Oysher melody:  

וְאָתָא הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא וְשָׁחַט לְמַלְאַךְ הַמָּוֶת, דְּשָׁחַט לְשׁוֹחֵט, דְּשָׁחַט לְתוֹרָא, דְשָׁתָה לְמַיָּא, דְּכָבָה לְנוּרָא, דְשָׂרַף לְחוּטְרָא, דְהִכָּה לְכַלְבָּא, דְנָשַׁךְ לְשׁוּנְרָא, דְאָכְלָה לְגַדְיָא, דְזַבִּין אַבָּא בִּתְרֵי זוּזֵי. חַד גַּדְיָא, חַד גַּדְיָא

Then came the Holy One, blessed be He and slaughtered the angel of death, who slaughtered the shohet (kosher slaughterer) who slaughtered the bull, that drank the water, that extinguished the fire, that burnt the stick, that hit the dog, that bit the cat, that ate the kid that my father bought for two zuzim, one kid, one kid.

Not a song that you might ordinarily think about too deeply – it’s not too different in spirit and structure from, “I Know an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly.” 

But what is Had Gadya about? On the old Moishe Oysher LP, The Moishe Oysher Seder, the narrator says, “If you listen closely to the words, this song tells the entire story of the Jewish people.” Although I must say that that does not quite make sense. If we consider ourselves, the Jews, to be the goat, then we were long ago consumed before the Qadosh Barukh Hu came along to redeem us. 

I would rather approach it from a perspective that Dr. Erica Brown brings in her commentary to her book, Seder Talk: The Conversational Haggada. She says the following:

We get the last laugh. We still survive to sing about our vulnerability…

Had Gadya is essentially about leaning into our vulnerability. We are the goat, the meek kid purchased for a mere two zuzim – just a few meager coins. We are the most vulnerable character in the whole scheme. Jewish history is filled with stories in which we barely survived: we escaped slavery in Egypt; we returned after the Babylonian Exile; we escaped death at the hands of the Persian Empire; we lost Jerusalem and the Temple to the Romans, and then the Bar Kokhba Revolt was crushed a half-century later; etc., etc. And all of that was two-to-three millennia ago. A whole lot more happened since. (And, by the way, what better way to remind us of our fundamental vulnerability than a world-wide pandemic?)

 Dr. Brown goes on:

What starts the entire song moving is the two zuzim used to purchase the goat, referring to the two tablets given to us at Sinai. Because we were claimed and “purchased” for this covenant, God ultimately intervenes to make sure that we are protected and redeemed… The song asks us not to fear the repetition of our hardest hours in history because God breaks the cycle of violence and we endure.

The Qadosh Barukh Hu wins. God wins. And hence we win. But we do not win by aspiring to be the butcher or the ox, but by being the vulnerable goat, the one that came from the two zuzim / tablets. Our value is that of Torah, that of covenant. Our strength is not the might of the fire or the water, but in the quiet confidence that comes from sticking to our tradition and knowing that, whatever happens, God is on our side.

Yes, yes. I know that this does not quite fit into the theological framework of Kaplan’s God as the power that makes for salvation, or Buber’s Unconditional, the kinds of contemporary theological constructs that I prefer. On the contrary, this is more of a traditional, activist God, the one that we appeal to in our tefillah, the one who is Magen Avraham (the shield of Abraham) and Poked Sarah (who remembers Sarah), who is somekh nofelim (lifting up the fallen) and rofeh holim (healing the sick). Now is an especially good time to focus on that last one – the world needs a good doctor right now.

But hey – now is the time that I need an activist God, one that will protect us and help us all come through this. And we will come through this.

Dr. Brown adds the following:

We see ourselves as fragile in this world… We ask to stay small and humble and for our humility to be the hallmark of our identity, along with the two zuzim, the laws, that keep us holy.

One of the things that distinguishes the Jewish origin story from that of many others is that we see our nationhood, Am Yisrael, as having been forged in slavery. It is the passage from slavery to freedom that enabled us to receive the Torah (there are those two zuzim again!) on Mt. Sinai, and to be a party to that berit, that covenant with God. Our strength, our protection essentially comes from that vulnerable place, that “meitzar” / narrow place that we sing about in Hallel that we associate with Egypt, Mitzrayim. We remember that we are the kid, the baby goat, and that stirs us to be resolute about the future. Redemption is coming.

And not only that, as a part of that covenant, it is up to us to bring on that redemption. So here is a discussion you can have tonight, and you do not have to wait until you sing Had Gadya at the end, ‘cause it might be too late by then and folks might already have checked out. 

Here’s the question: 

How does knowing that we came from slavery, from the place of ultimate vulnerability, lead us to be better people? How does it make us better citizens, better parents and partners and siblings and neighbors and co-workers? Discuss. 

Have that discussion right after the so-called “Four Questions.” Extra points if you can point to lines in the haggadah that support your argument, but of course the entirety of the Jewish bookshelf is also available to you if you need help. Good luck!

Hag Sameah!

~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

(Originally delivered at Congregation Beth Shalom, Pittsburgh, PA, Thursday morning, April 9, 2020.)