FIRST SEDER
Someone said prayer can be summed up in 4 words: Thank you, gimme, oops & wow!
The Siddur, our liturgy, is the one document passed along through our ages. The poor and illiterate did not own or know from bibles and talmuds. A Holocaust survivor in the camps memorized the siddur fearing he might be the only man left alive and he wanted to have something to pass along. The siddur is our photo album that we have passed along with the story of the emerging soul of the Jewish People — a story that has evolved over time, even in the Orthodox siddur. It is the Jewish story that we have passed on — people without a story have nothing to pass on. That’s what the Seder is all about.
The story of the Exodus is an example of a story that has also evolved over time as we continue to pass it along to posterity.
Deuteronomy 26 (Item 1: lines 8-22) commands us to tell the story of the Exodus from the standpoint of a person living in the 7th century B.C.E. The farmer is told to bring his harvest and say: Abraham was a wanderer (somewhat with land); the Jews went to Egypt and were landless and are now in Israel with land. The whole story is about land. There is no mention of Sinai, the Torah, the tabernacle, the synagogue. Just farmers thinking about land and food. Another farmer’s biblical-based recitation in bringing the tithes, as referred to in Deuteronomy 26 (Item 1: lines 24-33) and interpreted in the Mishnah Ma’aser Sheni 5:10-14 (Item 2) was called the Confession and tracks the recitation of Deuteronomy 26. It is land-based; and the tenor of both confessions is “I was good; I did what you commanded. Now bless me in return.” This second confession is taken from mishnaic texts in the first or second century BCE while the Jews still had land.
Contrast this with our confessions which came into existence after the destruction of the second temple and, of more relevance to the people, came about simultaneously with war, famine, high taxation and persecution — the people lost their land. The Tachanun prayer (Item 3), first found in 9th century books and popularized after the Crusades, is much more urban and sin-based in focus from the viewpoint of a Jew under occupation.
The Dayenu composition (Item 4), which was noticed by Saadia writing in the 10th century and who referred to it as optional, ends our Jewish history with the destruction of the Temple which was said to have been originally built to atone for all our sins. Also notice the Musaf for Shabbat Rosh Chodesh (Item 5) appearing in the 9th century but perhaps several hundred years older. All of a sudden, Sinai and the Temple have entered our liturgy but still there is no mention of Babylon, the synagogue or anything new. The Talmud is absent of and careless with history; Elijah talks to King David. And so it has remained through the 1800’s with nothing new since the destruction of the Temple. The Rabbis lost faith in history and saw in it a never-ending cycle of sin and punishment through destruction mixed with hope for a better future through the performance of Mitzvot which would bring the son of david and a return to the good ole days. It is a sin-drenched negative anthropology — a full turn from the pre-temple professorial confession of a land-holding people. The Avinu Malkeinu prayer, amended through the centuries, says “we are without deeds and therefore depend on G-d’s grace.” No longer do we get reward just because we are good. [By the way, this concept of grace which is now generally regarded as Christian, originated here with the Jews.]
In the 18th century, people had begun to study history as a discipline and Jews had risen to aristocracy in their countries and the Reform movement didn’t find this message relevant in an age of self-deliverance. They thought man could bring about a Messianic age including Jews and others through social justice. We are a holy people, prophets of G-d, saving the world. Some took Tisha B’av out of the liturgy and changed the focus to temples within the Diaspora; some thought the Yom Kippur reading of the prophets in which our days of fasting are turned into days of feasting had come about. They brought the incidents of the past 18 centuries into the liturgy and today have added the Holocaust and the various events surrounding Israel into the siddur. (Items 6-11)
In the Orthodox world, at that time, Samson Raphael Hirsch did not change texts but explained away a good deal of them and could even be said to have contradicted some in his commentary. (ie: The Temple should be rebuilt — meaning someday, but meanwhile stay in Germany.) The Orthodox have also added several items on the periphery such as the prayer for the United States and Israel but by and large have stuck to the opinion of the Chatam Sofer who said there is nothing new in the Torah.
Napoleon forced the Jews to deal with an existential issue — are we a nation or a faith? If we were a nation, we had to leave France. So we voted to be a faith even though prior to that we always felt we were a nation. But the eastern Europeans didn’t know about Napoleon and so, as a nation, led by Herzl 100 years ago this year, decided they needed land. So they built Israel. Which sorta puts us back where we started.
So where does this leave us in the 20th century? Is today’s Israel a light unto the nations? Is every evil, every terrorist attack and every Holocaust a punishment for sin? If man is capable of inherently being evil and causing destruction, what does this say for the hopes of the 18th century reformists?
What is the story we pass on to our children in a comfortable age when Jews hold the power behind the throne in the US, Russia and many other countries? (Who would believe that the Russian deputy national security advisor, first deputy prime minister in charge of economic reform, foreign minister and the owners of the top 2 TV networks are Jewish? )
Whatever story we choose will have 3 components: Theology, Anthropology and Cosmology.
Theology — where is G-d in our history? Is our history part of his divine plan?
Anthropology — is man a sinner, a prophet, capable of independent creative action? Do we live in a doomsday period or a golden age?
Cosmology — Explaining the unknown: Has history ended 2,000 years ago and are we in a never-ending meaningless cycle of sin and punishment? Was the 18th Century the pinnacle?
Today’s challenge is to decide how to pass on our story.
Tomorrow night, a more in-depth look at the Haggadah and how it tells our story through the eyes of the people who wrote it and a more detailed discussion of the challenges facing us in the year 1997.
Passover 1997 — Second Seder — The Jewish Story Via the Haggadah
What were the earliest Seders like? The Seder arose from the Greco-Roman “Symposium” involving a banquet and philosophical discussion. Instead of philosophy, the Seder discussed religion. The talking followed the banquet — look at the strange food, have Q&A, praise G-d. But the talk was moved to the beginning following evidence that people didn’t take the Seder seriously. People got drunk, they made it up as they went along; there were no 4 questions. Wine consumption was limited to 4 cups (though today we think that’s a big obligation and/or license). The food, being at the end, didn’t create questions so a more official liturgy had to be created and was, following the destruction of the second temple.
1. Laban tried to destroy all of Israel; Pharaoh only the males. (Lines 1,2)
2. The Arami sought to destroy my father. (Lines 2,3)
3. Jacob went to Egypt compelled by the divine decree and went temporarily. (Lines 6-8)
4. The Jews became a distinctive people. (Line 14)
5. Much attention to the idea that G-d alone saved the Jews. (Page 2, lines 4-12)
Fact is, human suffering affected the People in the year 90 more so than the loss of the temple. The Galilee was the country’s breadbasket. The Romans took the Galilee first and starved everyone else out. Jews left the country to find food. They didn’t go to Babylon till at least the Bar Kochba rebellion in 135 and really till almost 100 years. They went to Alexandria, Egypt where there was lots of learning, synagogues, culture — but few rabbis. The rabbis didn’t go there and wanted to discourage people from going there. The Rabbis wrote the Haggadah with this in mind.
Read it this way with historical context: Jacob went to Egypt but only because G-d told him to. He went for a short time. The Jews in Alexandria are distinctive but they’re the wrong kind of Jews. Even though there is a big community there, you should stay in Israel. The truth according to the Bible? Jacob and sons went because there was a famine; he didn’t want to go but went to see Joseph. G-d told him not to be afraid when he asked because he was afraid to go, but G-d didn’t order him to go. Jacob and sons stayed there for years and prospered; there is no evidence they went for a short period of time.
Look at the story of Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakai who was carried out in a coffin led by his students. The Romans didn’t want anyone leaving the city as they were trying to starve the Jews out. Why would they let 6 people out with a coffin that would be sure to spread disease had it stayed inside? The reality was that the zealot Jews wouldn’t let the Rabbi out. The Rabbi had made a deal with the Romans and his students snuck him out with the Romans’ permission. The Rabbis wanted to end the war with the Romans; they wanted people to live so that Judaism could survive. The zealots felt they could bring about their own deliverance and wanted to keep the war going. In return, the Romans gave the Rabbis Yavneh to set up a Yeshiva; the zealots wound up at Masada. The point of this being the emphasis on the idea that only G-d can deliver the Jews — no agents or zealots.
And what about Laban being worse than Pharaoh? Arami “oved” avi; it means to wander. The Haggadah reads it with the PE’EL grammatical form “eevade” meaning to destroy. This is a misreading. But strike the vowels and take the letters ARAMI and shift the first two letters (no big trick since people did this commonly then anyway) and you get RAMI meaning Roman. Pharaoh only wanted to kill males; the Romans want to kill everyone. Just like Haman through the ages stands for our most recent enemy, Laban was taken to be read illustratively as the Romans.
Some brief examples of further changes over time:
Illustrations of those tormenting the slaves in Haggadot have ranged over the years from Egyptians to Romans and now to Nazis. The reference to Ezekiel 16:7 (Addendum: lines 17-19) (the Jews were populous as pubescent women) was illustrated in the earliest printed 16th century haggadot literally; the Italian censor got rid of it and its commentary said the verse referred to men.
Is there a whole new way we, the American Jews, leading the world and even Israel in terms of inventing religious ideology for better or for worse, should look at the world in 1997? Are our prayers focused on the destruction of the temple fine as they are, or were Rabbi Sampson Rafael Hirsch’s commentaries any more or less an honest way of accounting for a change of historical viewpoint than were the Reform and Conservative changes to the liturgies themselves? Do we assume that we live in an age where the rabbis of Yeshiva University don’t hold a chanukah candle to the light of the Yavneh Yeshiva of 2,000 years ago? Can we afford to let nostalgia and self-righteousness based on a 1st century historical-based viewpoint of the world marginalize us in the face of Jews who don’t feel the relevance of a sin-drenched negative anthropology and who instead feel that we are living in a golden age unparalleled in human if not Jewish history?
So my question tonight is, given a blank slate, how would you tell the Jewish story which is what we do at the Seder? At a time when Jews want to change the rules and refuse to agree on Who is a Jew, the very definition of the subject of the story, is there a Jewish story? Or do we go around telling each other what we think and want them to believe is the Jewish story? The rest of the world appears to be fascinated with the Jewish story. We, on the other hand, appear to be torn between figuring it out, telling old stories and creating a new one that might not be real.
It is our deepest challenge among all Jews to tell our story honestly in the current era with integrity to the history that created that story without attempting to create a new story, while ensuring that the story remains vibrant and relevant worth passing along till the end of time.
