What’s love got to do with it? We are accustomed to thinking of Passover as the festival of freedom, of liberation from enslavement, the march from Mitzrayim to Sinai, and on to the Land of Israel and national independence. The themes of Passover are those of justice, moral purpose, resilience and strength. Its foods symbolize…
Category: Passover פסח
The Festival of Education: Shabbat HaHodesh 5781
Passover is sometimes called “the festival of education” (חג החינוך). I have been unable to find this expression in pre-modern sources, but it accords with classic rabbinic approaches to the holiday. For our sages the art of pedagogy includes multi-sensory inputs of sight, sound, touch and taste, as well as differentiated instruction for various learning…
Purification after Violence: Parah 5781
Tony Hicks was fourteen years old in 1995 when he shot and killed a college student named Tariq Khamisa in a gang-related robbery. Hicks was convicted of murder, and was imprisoned until 2019, but meanwhile something quite unusual occurred. Five years after the crime, Tariq’s father Azim visited Tony in prison, and gradually the two…
Oh Freedom: Bishalah 5781
Oh, freedom, Oh, freedomOh freedom over meAnd before I’d be a slaveI’d be buried in my graveAnd go home to my Lord and be free These stirring words from the post-Civil War anthem have been recorded and performed at important moments in American history. Odetta recorded a great version in 1956. Joan Baez performed it…
Hopping Mad in Mitzrayim: Va’Era 5781
Here come the plagues: blood, frogs, vermin…. The first triad relates to the Nile, whose “bloody” waters (reddened perhaps from sediment and algae washed down by heavy rains from the Ethiopian highlands) kill off the fish and drive the frogs up on the land. The rotten flesh produces kinnim, maybe a type of fly or…
As if a slave, as if free: Pesah 5780
Pharaoh says something odd to Moses and Aaron right at the start of their confrontation: “Why do you distract the people from their tasks? Get to your labors!” The first half of the sentence implies that Moses and Aaron are not enslaved like other Israelites with “their tasks.” But by the end of the verse…
Sheltering in Place: Shabbat Tzav/HaGadol 5780
Confinement is the dominant experience of the Covid-19 crisis, whether one is healthy but avoiding unnecessary outings, or ill and under quarantine. My favorite time of day here in NYC is 7 PM when people lean out their windows and cheer for health care providers and other front line workers. From our apartment we see…
Why is this Shabbat different from all others? Shabbat HaGadol 5779
I recently noticed a curious feature of the Passover prophetic cycle. On Shabbat HaGadol, the final Shabbat before Pesah, we read the final verses of the final prophet—Malakhi 3:4-24. The next haftarah, on the first day of Passover is from the first book of the prophets, Joshua, albeit not the first chapter (which is read…
Become a Mitzvah Agent: HaHodesh 5779
Our third Torah reading this Shabbat (Ex. 12:1-20) is the fourth and final special maftir related to Purim and Pesah. As with the entire complex of Passover rituals there is an intentional blending of individual and group identity. When each individual Israelite and then Jew participates in these rituals, they gently detach themselves from their…
Stupid Anger: Shmini/Parah 5779
Anger is often an understandable reaction, and yet it can be one of the most destructive and debilitating of emotions. It is hard to imagine how Moses feels when his two nephews Nadav and Avihu are struck dead in the middle of the inaugural service for the tabernacle. Guilty? Terrified? Shocked? All of these, I…
Guns and Moses: Shabbat HaGadol 5778
Americans have become desensitized to the phenomenon of gun violence and explosives that can suddenly and indiscriminately mar and destroy innocent life. Somehow mass murder has come to seem normal, and our political class is quick to rehearse the same tired lines about thoughts and prayers for the victims, denunciation of the perpetrators, and claims…
Mind this–Intention Before Action on the Field of Sacred Play: Vayikra/HaHodesh 5778
My baseball career ground to a sudden halt 39 years ago during spring training. It was March 1979, and I was signed up to play in the Sandy Koufax division of our town’s Little League. But that month was also my bar mitzvah, which our family marked with my first trip to Israel. I was…
Rabbi Danny Nevins 