The Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes taught a course that I took one year in college, and I still savor his exploration of magical realism with our class. One of his grand themes was the elliptical nature of time. Some cultures, he claimed, view time in cyclical terms, with each development merely a return to a former position. Other cultures are teleological, setting a distant target and placing the highest value on progress from the benighted past to a splendid future. Fuentes found both paradigms to be limiting. Life as this novelist understood it is elliptical or perhaps spiral in nature. One never returns to precisely the same location, but neither do they ever put the past entirely behind. Like an interstellar spacecraft on a vast journey, we return to circle the same planets, absorbing new energy from their gravity, and then rocketing onwards on an elliptical orbit, only to return to the region in an uncertain future.
When we return to Pesah each year I recall my old teacher, of blessed memory, and think about how revisiting our ancient story can invest us with new energy to confront a developing future. We are not quite the same as we were last Pesah, and who knows where next Pesah will find us, but the familiar themes give us energy for the journey. I find this insight also in the writings of Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz (1560-1630), known as של”ה הקודש, or the sainted author of the book, שני לוחות הברית, the two tablets of covenant. For him, Passover is always about renewal, or חידוש עולם (in this he is reminiscent of Ramban’s comments regarding Shabbat at Deut. 5:15). This renewal is not a political revolution but a spiritual one. A breakthrough in awareness happened that first year on the tenth of Nissan, which was Shabbat HaGadol. Before we get to this redemptive notion, however, we need to wade through some darker waters. Continue reading
Newborn babies are miraculous to see, and even more remarkable to hold. To let their tiny fingers curl around your pinkie and breathe in their new-to-the-world fragrance is divine, but sometimes this pleasure isn’t possible. A few days ago I met a newborn so small that even his parents can’t hold him—at just 2 lbs, this premature infant in the NICU is tethered to life support, receiving remarkably skilled and compassionate care. I pray that this boy and his twin sister, also premature but in better health, will grow strong and secure in the weeks and months ahead. Standing there by the incubator and watching this tiny, tiny person, not much bigger than a yam, I felt deeply humbled by the mysteries of physical existence. Spiritual existence is also a mystery, but first there is the guf, and to look at a few ounces of person fighting for his place in the land of the living is to remember that all of our automatic systems—respiration, circulation, digestion and more—are an enormous miracle that we are challenged to appreciate. Sure, we can stop to notice our breathing for a few minutes, but then our attention shifts. Fortunately our body’s attention does not shift. Even when we sleep, our hearts beat on, our breath remains, and our souls stay tethered to these remarkable bodies, so that we might continue to live, to grow, to love, to give.
Shabbat Parah, Cow Shabbat, is one of our more perplexing customs. We chant the passage describing the red heifer ritual in Numbers 19, and then read Ezekiel’s prophecy of a re-purification of Israel, which has been sullied in exile, and which will now receive a new heart and new spirit, returning them to their land and blessing them with peace and prosperity.