Beyond the Four Questions: A Grown-up Seder

This year, our family’s three youngest children could not make the seder.  But even they are adults in their very early 20s.  Their older cousins and siblings, ages 22 and 23, were the babies present.

Coincidentally, in preparation for Pesach, I had studied Rambam with my rabbi, Andrea Merow.  I came to appreciate that the emphasis is not on the traditional four questions, but our goal is inquiry that leads to the telling of the exodus story.

So I prepared for a more grown-up seder.  On March 30, I sent an email note to our seder’s attendees:

Hi, all.  The four questions are not a seder requirement.  However, according to Rambam we need to raise questions that would lead to the telling of the story--with it feeling as much like a reliving of the story as possible.

So, in preparation for this year's seder, please send me some suggested questions that might get us there--in as serious or as silly a manner as you like--and I'll do my best to weave them in.  Please get  them to me by April 10.

My family stepped up to the plate (an apt metaphor, given that the Phillies ended up playing an extra-innings game on seder night… one that, sadly, they lost in the  12th …making many of our group’s attention to the seder an extraordinary testament to their engagement in the story-telling that resulted from their input). Here is the discussion guide from which we narrated the exodus:

Questions / Telling the Story – Part 1

Why were the Jews slaves in Egypt to begin with?

[Answer/Discussion]


"As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent." -Martin Luther King, Jr.

With this in mind…how did the Jews gain their freedom, and at what cost to others?

[Answer/Discussion]

At the time of the Exodus, was the land of Israel uninhabited?  How were the Israelites “directed” to deal with whomever was there? Are there any lessons to be drawn regarding how Israel is today dealing with new settlements on the West Bank and around Jerusalem?

[Answer/Discussion]


Return to the Hagaddah for The Ten Plagues

Questions / Telling the Story – Part 2

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." -James Baldwin

Considering Baldwin’s words, why do we read the Haggadah every year?  Why tell the story?

Why don’t we tell new stories?

[Answer/Discussion]


Connecting the story to history: Should we try to reconcile the Exodus story with archaeological findings/historical reporting?

Connecting the story to modernity: Many use the story of the Exodus as a template for understanding the modern world, e.g., American Slavery as Egyptian Slavery, Miriam as feminist symbol, etc. What risks do we run when we map the Exodus story onto present-day narratives?

[Answer/Discussion]


Connecting the story to contemporary issues :  What does the ancient history of the region, beginning with the story of the exodus, teach us about current events in the region and inform US policy, e.g. on Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq?

[Answer/Discussion]


Connecting the story to our personal experience:  Why on this night are the youngest children not present? Their freedom to be who they want to be?

[Answer/Discussion]


Taking inspiration:  Tell about a person, living or not, most embodies freedom for .
[Answer/Discussion]

The meal

In preparation for the meal:  Why on this night do we restrict what we eat even more than usual and is God really that interested in what we eat?

[Answer/Discussion]

In the past, we’ve sought to keep the seder within the confines of children’s attention spans.  Each year, we’ve incorporated a new, creative addition—for example, decorating our own reclining pillows before sitting down at the table (we still use those pillows 10 years later)—but never had we purposefully lengthened the requisite elements.

Our seder—the discussion around our questions, the remaining required components and the festive meal—lasted 3-1/2 hours.  We loved every moment.  The conversation went in many directions, touching on the holocaust, American slavery, Jewish slave holders, the civil rights movement, military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya…and more…and in the process we did tell the full exodus story. Participants ranging from age 22 to age 86 shared equally in the discussion, sometimes sparring though always with mutual respect and open to learning from each other. In appropriate Pesach parlance, this year was different from all other years.

Our 20-somethings reverted to childhood when it came time to hunt for the afikomen (anyone without progeny was qualified to search).  When the time comes again that there are young children at the table, we will take joy in encouraging them in the traditional four questions and will happily keep the seder short enough to meet their needs.  But for now, it’s fun being grown ups.

The Original Capital Campaign

(Sacred Deeds, Sacred Time and Sacred Space)

D’var Torah for Parashah Va-Yak-Hel
February 26, 2011

In the Etz Hayim commentary before T’rumah, the parashah we read a few weeks ago, we learn that we can maintain the feeling of Sinai through a combination of sacred deeds, sacred time and sacred space.
 
Sacred deeds are the stuff of our reading four weeks ago, in Mishpatim.  There we learned how to treat a slave; the consequences of assault, murder and kidnapping; the responsibilities for animals, assets and people under our charge; the expectations for appropriate sexual behavior; how to treat strangers; the rules of fair lending; the requirement to speak justly; laws that provide for the needy…in short, we learn how to act under a legal construct that helps assure a people that carries out sacred deeds in its daily living.

Why has the text now veered away from sacred deeds for several parashiot?  I believe that we need more than rules to govern our actions.  We need a context.  This is where time and space come into play.

Parashah Va-yak-hel begins with sacred time, the text reading: “These are the things that Adonai has commanded you to do:  On six days work may be done, but on the seventh day you shall have a sabbath of complete rest, holy to Adonai.” (Exodus 35:2)  This identifies Shabbat as sacred time and, almost paradoxically, instructs that the building of the Tabernacle—of sacred space—may occur only outside of that sacred time.

We then move on to a painstakingly detailed description of the materials required for building the Tabernacle and the process of gathering those materials and constructing what is to be God’s home in the wilderness.  I believe that the level of detail indicates the tremendous importance of sacred space.  What’s more, the narrative tells us that the creation of such space was a deeply emotional experience.  The project called for an extraordinary amount of finery, yet the people—who brought their most beautiful possessions of their own free will and not under compulsion—gave even more than was required.  In repeated instances the text tells us of an impassioned response with phrases such as:
- Everyone whose heart so moves him,
- Everyone whose spirit moved him came,
- Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, and
- The men and women whose hearts moved them

In his book The Everyday Torah, Rabbi Bradley Artson sees in Va-yak-hel an affirmation of the important role of art in Jewish tradition.  He writes:
“God directly inspires the artist, so that sculpture, architecture, music, and other forms of artistic expression provide a privileged path of religious expression. … Art gives voice to those mute, inaccessible parts of our souls.”

In November, my husband Brad and I enjoyed the privilege of visiting the Amano Museum in Lima, Peru, a small but extraordinary private collection of pre-Incan ceramics and textiles dating from several thousand BCE to about 800 CE.  To see the artistic, whimsical, creative pieces from those periods makes it clear that aesthetic appreciation and creativity are fundamental to being human; this collection is the best answer to those who would argue to cut public funding of the arts because it’s not a basic necessity…or that we need not invest in maintaining the beauty of our surroundings as an integral element of our religious experience.

But, as Rabbi Artson points out, this human passion for art is not necessarily holy.  Last week, in Ki Tissa, we learned about the passionate, artistic expression that became the unholy golden calf…while now that same impulse brings us the space of the mishkan. Of course, the Israelites created the golden calf before they had the law—the context for sacred deeds—and their sacred time had been disrupted by the long absence of Moshe and the extended encampment at Sinai, with no knowledge of when their leader might return and bring them back to a sense of God’s presence.

Thus we see the critical combination of the three sacred elements of deeds, time and space in the Israelite community.

It is no different in a contemporary Jewish. We have all been asked to participate in capital campaigns that to
help raise capital funds for the future of our congregations. The very premise is that by attending to sacred deeds, sacred time and sacred space we can make a long-lasting impact on our community and establish a legacy for future generations.  The current effort for meeting my synagogue’s needs seeks to assure our strength into the future through:
- Sacred time by providing funding for innovative expansion of our religious and educational programming;
- Sacred deeds with endowments to help perpetuate tuition subsidies and with investment in accessibility; and
- Sacred space to ensure the ongoing beauty, safety, security and longevity of our spiritual home—a physical context that helps nurture our religious life.

Sometimes we may find ourselves arguing about which is the right—or perhaps righteous—target for our funds.  But our text teaches us that there is no choice to make; we need all three, united, in order to function as a holy people.  And, it teaches that women have a critical role in helping meet that need.

In The Women’s Torah Commentary edited by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, Rabbi Nancy Weiner writes that this parashah is the only one in which “women… are identified as a significant group within the larger whole” and that “gives us a taste of the variety of ways that women contributed to the vitality and maintenance of the people’s material and spiritual life.”

In Va-Yak-Hel we hear of women with—yet independent from—men, with references to their talent, their participation in the community, and their free will in their choice of bringing their possessions for the tabernacle; and we hear of them having their own possessions.  The women essentially form a donor group within the Israelite people.  Just as women’s auxiliaries raise funds for their congregations.  Just a Jewish Federations develop women’s philanthropy groups.  These are not contemporary phenomena, but part of our tradition as Jewish women, reaching back to the capital campaign that made it possible to build the mishkan.  With that in mind, as our own communities of women—collectively and as individuals—passionately invest in the sacred deeds, sacred time and sacred space of their congregations, they do so in sisterhood with those at Sinai who led the way.

Midlife Crisis

My husband just marked his 50th birthday.  In preparation, he delved into a midlife crisis about 3 to 4 months ago.  It was unlike any midlife crisis I'd ever expected.  Brad sunk to no depths--of depression, crutches or unsavory activities.

Instead, he began asking and noticing. He has asked where we keep pots and pans we've had for years, rather than leaving them to wait for someone with greater knowledge of the kitchen to put them away.  He has noticed clothing he's never seen before and asked when and where I bought it (never mind that I may have worn it in his presence dozens of times; this truly was the first time he'd knowingly seen it).  He watched me apply lipstick appropriately hued to the deep red turtleneck I was wearing and asked whether I match my lip color to my outfits.  "Yes," I replied, "as I have for about 30 years."

Brad seems to have stumbled on the sweetest of midlife crises, and to make it sweeter he fails to see anything new or remarkable about his behavior.  I comprehend the sweetness, and certainly I appreciate my good luck considering the midlife crises with which many spouses contend.  In fact, I ought to be thankful for the gift of such an attentive husband.

Yet Brad's questions and obervations stop me in my tracks not because they thrill me but because they throw me entirely off guard.  I don't know how to answer a question or comment that I cannot imagine him voicing.  It's hard for me to comprehend that the man I've known since 1979 and married 5 years later is the person saying these things.  Not that he previously was insensitive; he's always been a good, kind, well-intentioned man.  He's also been entirely disconnected from a slew of things including where I keep the pans, when I buy my clothing or the color I apply to my lips.  It's as though he suddenly developed broader peripheral vision that captures a range of experiences he'd simply never seen were there.  And as nice as that may be, despite what it suggests about me I find it easier to get used to his sudden need for reading glasses (in which he looks quite distinguished, by the way)

E-Dialogue Between 40-Somethings (okay…much, much closer to 50-somethings): A True Story

Note:  This has absolutely nothing to do with the typical themes of the Baker’s Dozen Press blog.  But there’s always room for humor, right?

11am – Noon 

• While I am holding a meeting in my office, the landline rings three times; I ignore it until the meeting concludes.

Noon

• I check messages; my husband’s mobile device (I can’t call a Droid Incredible a mere cell phone, can I?) has been calling from his pocket. 
• I phone my husband, from my office landline to his Droid.
•  He answers “This is Brad,” indicating that he did not look at the device to find out who was calling. I say, “Please lock your phone.  It called me from your pocket three times while I was trying to hold a meeting.” 
• “Sorry.”

12:39-12:44 pm 

• I find a text message on my Droid (yes, his-and-hers; how sweet.) It’s from him.  It says, “You called?” 
• Me, 12:39 pm text: “I called you to say stop butt-calling me.  We spoke."
• Him, 12:42 pm text: “But what?” 
• Me, 12:44 pm text:  Calling from your butt pocket. Butt-calling. Other than when I spoke to you about that…no, I have not called since asking about your emergency blinkers.”

The emergency blinkers?  That was at 7:40 am.  As we both pulled away from the traffic signal near our home, heading to work, I saw them blinking on his truck.  I called, Droid to Droid.  I just noticed your emergency blinkers; are you okay?  Yes; the fuse is out in my left turn signal, so I needed to find an alternative signaling device.

12:45 pm 

• I realize that his original text message was time-stamped 11:33 am, ½-hour before I called him about butt-messaging (though I could swear it wasn’t there earlier). So who knows why he’d thought I’d called him.  Perhaps he was looking at his call history where our 7:40 am conversation had been documented?

Why are our mobile devices called “Incredible?” Because the makers realized just how incredible it would be if they could help near-50-somethings like us to communicate.  Sort of.

A Rosh Hashanah Lesson: T'shuvah for the Irresponsible Media (that Turns an Irrelevant Lunatic into a Global Threat)

Please click here to see my comment, # 285, posted at the New York Times website on the story Coverage of Koran Case Stirs Questions on Media Role.  Spending Rosh Hashanah with a focused intention toward t'shuvah -- a return to God (to righteousness) -- only makes more stark the complete absence of such intention in the media's attention to Terry Jones and its self-centered fascination with itself.  My prayer is that the sound of the shofar this season calls us to hear the effects of our own voices and to use them more responsibly...knowing when that means we should not be using them at all.

Family Vacation

Over the 25 years of my marriage, I have not been a great in-law.  Not that I've been a bad one (I hope), but my effort has been lacking.  No doubt I could find any number of excuses, but I cannot claim any good reasons.

 

Nor can I explain my sudden thought, in March, to reach out.  But whatever the impetus, I suggested that my husband Brad and I pool two of our accumulated timeshare weeks to trade for enough space to house the 12 people in our family and his sisters' families for a joint summer vacation.  My thought was to find a spot in the Midwest--where Beth's and Debbie's families live--so they, with younger children, could more readily travel with their kids and paraphernalia by car while we would fly.  And that we'd land at a place with two units available, one of the few weeks all of us were free, where there'd be plenty to entertain families with children ages 2 to 23.  Everyone said yes immediately and agreed on possible weeks and geographies--and I found the place.  Close enough that my husband's parents also could drive in to join us for some of the vacation.  And only about an hour from Brad's first cousin and her family of six...who happened to have her sister's family of five visiting during an overlapping weekend.

When you reach out, it would seem, the world really can manage to reach back.

What a week we enjoyed.  The core twelve of us did things together and apart, within and in various mixes of our nuclear families, with cousins deepening their relationships with each other and with their aunts and uncles.


On August 2, my in-laws having joined us, there were 14 to celebrate our niece's birthday right on time, our daughter's about a week late, and my father-in-law's two weeks early.

We spent the final Saturday on the water:  23 siblings and cousins (the local cousin and their visiting cousin families now joined with us), ages 1 to 55, on two boats, for eight hours, with every one of us loving every minute.  How often does that happen?

Twenty-five years ago, I married into a terrific family.  I've known this all along, yet I've failed to make the most of it.  I won't look back and beat myself up about the opportunities missed, and this is a family that wouldn't think to do that to me.  But I will look ahead and help make the opportunities to come, and this is a family that will appreciatively participate in doing so.

How Weighty is the Bible?

I’m on vacation in the Bible belt.  We have two very large vacation condos for three families of four: ours and my husband’s sisters’ families.  In each unit we found a “prayer for our guests” awaiting us and two copies of the New King James version of the Bible.

I awoke on our first morning here ready to exercise.  I’d brought my favorite exercise DVD and we had plenty of space in front of the living room television after I moved the coffee table aside.  But what would I do for weights?  A quick review of the options left me with a pot in one hand and a pan in the other.  My daughter considered this a prime photo opportunity, but I’m pleased to report that she was using our old camera that can’t capture anything indoors.

The pot and pan proved sub-optimal. Unevenly weighted and rather clumsily shaped.  As I struggled along with these, the thought came to me:  two Bibles in each hand.  That’s offensive, my husband said later when I announced my bright idea.  You’d never have let me exercise with the Bible in synagogue, my daughter objected.  (My son is wise enough to stay out of these conversations and look on with amusement.) Upon reflection, I found that the only strong sensitivities I have regarding the use of sacred texts involve placing them on the floor or in the trash. The disrespect of these actions has been ingrained in me, yet the notion of exercising with them fails to jar me at all.

I’d have had no problem with you using the Bible to exercise in synagogue, I told my daughter, but I’d have had a problem with you exercising at all in synagogue.  That’s when we started to think creatively. With Humash in hand, all that standing and sitting.  All that swaying and rocking.  It could look like intense davening (prayer), all the while a front for a great workout.  Spiritual and physical strengthening together; two for the price of one.

As for my sisters-in-law, for whom the Bibles in our condos are their Bibles, they found nothing offensive in the idea and were happy to donate their bedside volumes to my cause.  Then I came to another realization.  However weighty the content may be, or the philosophical argument about its appropriate use, the hotel edition of the New King James Bible simply does not weigh much at all.  Granted it’s got twice the Bible, with both the Old Testament and the New, but only the English text.  How I suddenly appreciated the weight of my Etz Hayim (Tree of Life) Humash, with the Five Books of Moses and the weekly Haftarah portions (selections from Prophets), all in both Hebrew and English, plus considerable amounts of commentary.  It gives me plenty to lift when in synagogue—certainly physically, as I’ve noticed on those Shabbat mornings when my back is out—but also intellectually.  Then there are the precious moments when the sensations of body, mind and emotion manage to align, and the lift becomes spiritual as well.

This morning I exercised again.  As weights I used a selection of the library books we’d brought for vacation reading.  The weight distribution was not as even as the four New King James Bibles would have allowed, but it was close and the books were considerably heavier—physically, that is.  I hope that no Dune devotees will be offended by the inclusion of two in that series; I am aware of the religious fervor these books can engender.  I’m just glad to be done with the pot and the pan.