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News
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Teachings from A Still
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Old City, Jerusalem — Nissan 5771 /
2011 |
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This
teaching is dedicated to the complete and speedy healing, both
body and soul, of Leah
Devora Chivitia bat Chaya—she, together with all who are
in need of healing among the community of
Israel.
And
it is dedicated in loving memory to the ilui neshama of
Miriam bas Avrohom Yisroel. “Her soul should be bound in a
bundle of life with
HaShem.” |
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--Advanced
Seminar in Prayer—Jerusalem, Thurs.
Torah
A Pesach Teaching,
5771
by Sarah
Yehudit Schneider
Based on
Zohar 2:25b-26a and R. Tsadok HaKohen, Likutei Maamarim, ot
11
The sedar
is a ritual meditation—a symbolic reenactment of our historic (and
continuous) journey from exile to redemption that began nearly three
and a half thousand years ago when we were born as a nation on this
very eve. The whole point of a ritual is to bring light, fixing and
healing into the deepest layers of the soul. Its choreography of
movements, prayers and affirmations cuts to the quick. The sedar’s
fifteen steps work on both the collective and individual scales.
The fifth
stage of the sedar is called maggid (storytelling) and it is
one of two Torah-level mitzvot that are fulfilled by the
evening’s ritual. (The second is eating matzah.)1
And
maggid is further distinguished as one of the two mitzvot
(out of 613) that are fulfilled by reciting a story. (The second
being the tithe of bikkurim). The maggid portion of
the Haggada actually combines both of these “speaking”
mitzvot. It begins with several short passages that are
directed toward the children who might not stay awake for the whole
sedar. And then it segues into a Biblical portion that was to be
spoken aloud when we offered our first fruits to the kohanim (Temple
priests).2 The speech is a brief narrative of our
exile in Egypt, our redemption, and the source of our obligation to
fulfill the mitzvah of bikkurim.3 In the
Passover Haggada, every word of
this script is unpacked and elaborated.
The Zohar
explains that the reason for this unusual mitzvah of
maggid is because it is the quintessential expression of the
inner tikun that occurred on Pesach. Yes, our bodies were
released from slavery and we literally exited the country but a more
fundamental deliverance unfolded beneath the surface. The
Zohar asserts that dibur (our capacity to communicate inner
experience through words) was also liberated when we escaped from
Egypt.
The Zohar
distinguishes between kol (voice) and dibur (speech).
Kol is the cry behind the speech, dibur is the
expression of that impulse through words. R. Tsadok HaKohen adds
that dibur always carries some imprint of its spokesperson.
Generic truths and party lines—if they are simply parroted without
also being rediscovered by the one who speaks them—are
actually in the category of kol despite their use of words.
There is always a trace of chidush (originality) in true
dibur. The Zohar informs us that it was dibbur (not
kol) that was exiled along with the Israelites in
Egypt.4
To
understand the Zohar’s mysterious teaching we have to step back and
view these events through a wide angle lens. Kabbala asserts and
reiterates that (contrary to what meets the eye) all of creation is
a single universe-encompassing Adam “who spans from heaven to
earth and from one end of the world to the other.”5 Every
creature, past present and future, is a cell in this cosmic
Adam. The Jewish people comprise its inner soul core,
its conscience (so to speak). The Biblical tale of exile, plagues
and redemption marks the bar/bat mitzvah of this mythical
Adam—the point when it finally acquires enough impulse control to
uphold a code of ethics. As below so above. Before the age of
bar/bat mitzvah a child’s frontal lobe is not sufficiently developed
to resist the powerful drives emanating from the brainstem urging
him toward immediate-gratification.
Bar/bat
mitzvah marks a quantum shift in the psyche’s balance of power.
Until then the ego rules and decisions always prioritize its
hankering for creature comforts. The neshama integrates more
slowly. Only at bar/bat mitzvah does it muster the strength to
challenge the ego and incorporate more God-centered values into our
choices.
And this
precisely is what happened on a cosmic scale at the Exodus, with
Pharaoh representing the ego and Moshe representing the
neshama coming of age and contesting the ego’s repressive
regime. Again, as below so above. The neshama’s goal is
not to liquidate the ego but to subdue it, enlighten it, and
eventually incorporate its valued perspective into the steering
committee.6
The whole
point of the plagues was to burn into the ego’s nerve net the
experiential knowing that crime doesn’t pay—that resisting spiritual
law always hurts more than it gains. If Pharaoh had simply
been bullied, his will would not have altered. But the repetition of
defiance and plague, defiance and plague, eventually sunk in.
Pharaoh’s pleasure compass reoriented—behavior previously associated
with euphoria (such as self-aggrandizement) now prompted aversion
once its inevitably painful consequences were etched into his nerve
net.6
All this
happened inside the psyche of our cosmic Adam. When
Moshe overpowered Pharaoh Adam’s conscience (or Divine soul)
surpassed his ego (or animal soul) instigating the shift called
bar/bat mitzvah. The world could now receive the Torah (which
it did fifty days later), for it possessed the strength of character
(embodied as the Israelites) to fulfill the Bible’s commands despite
the ego’s resistance to being told what to do. The Jewish people, as
the inner soul core of this cosmic Adam, accepted the Torah along
with its global mission to infuse the principles of ethical
monotheism into the whole world. Just as a person from the age of
bar/bat mitzvah gradually integrates his higher ideals into his
animal soul until, over time, his instinctive response to the world
coincides with spiritual law, so is this true for the cosmic
Adam, whose animal soul includes
all the peoples and creatures of the world and whose life span
includes the 6,000 years of Biblical history.
And the
Zohar tells us that one of the first reforms inaugurated by the
newly emergent conscience was to institute freedom of speech.
Actually, it was more organic than that. As soon as the balance of
power inverted, the gates of inspiration opened and speech emerged
from exile. The ego forbids any words (including thoughts) that
belie its claim of infallibility (and divinity). And it enforces
this ban by keeping its subjects frantic with activity leaving them
no time to collect their breath (literally and
metaphorically).
The
ultimate liberation of dibur, called Oral Torah, is when a
person speaks personal truth with such authenticity that it also
conveys precisely what Hashem sought to reveal through them.
The Talmud declares: “HaShem’s seal is truth”7 meaning
that “Where you find truth, [you find HaShem, and] there you find
Torah.”8 Yet, says the Zohar, we cannot access this
depth of truth if we cannot collect our breath (ruach), with
its two components (corresponding to the two ה’s of
HaShem’s name). We access the lower ruach by deepening our
literal breath and we access the higher ruach by listening
in. When the neshama supplants the ego it opens the
gates to free inquiry and invites people to discover the authentic
truths of their soul. And those become their contribution to
the evolving body of teachings called the Oral Torah—the sum total
of truths pressed from the hearts of Jews striving to live their
lives with integrity to the message they absorbed at
Sinai.
Since speech came out of exile when Moshe prevailed over Pharaoh on
that first Pesach eve, we celebrate our newfound freedom of speech
with the mitzvah of maggid. And though we fulfill our
obligation by reciting a script, the Haggada itself states: “To
elaborate on these ideas is praiseworthy.” R. Tsadok interprets this
is a call for chidush, that each person should have an
aha moment at the seder,9 for that is what turns
our recitation into dibur (in the mystical sense of the
term). And that requires that we make a point of breathing deep and
listening in.
I want to
bless us as individuals, as a community, and as part of the larger
world community, that our fulfillment of maggid on seder
night should empower our dibur to express the Torah locked
inside our souls. “Words that come from the heart penetrate
the heart.”10 As we step out of Pesach and into the
year, the holy dibur of the Jewish people should enter the
heart, bones, cells and spaces of the world, dissolving the power of
lie, and preempting the need for war.
--------------------------------------------
1All of the
other observances (kiddush, carpas, maror, four cups of wine,
etc.) are all presently of rabbinic status.
2 Deut.
26:5-8.
3 It is
interesting to note that there are several mitzvoth regarding
firstborns (or first-growth) but only the mitzvah of “first fruits”
includes the recitation of a narrative to explain the reason for the
mitzvah. There is 1) sanctifying the firstlings of kosher
livestock. 2) redeeming a firstborn male children 3) sanctifying a
firstling donkey by offering a substitute, or breaking its
neck.
4In fact it
was kol that initiated the redemption: “… the
king of Egypt died; and the people of Israel sighed because of the
slavery, and they cried, and their cry came up to God because of the
slavery.. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his
covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with
Jacob…..”
5 TB
Chagiga 12a.
6 Pirkei
d’rebbe Eliezer, chapt. 43 teaches that Pharaoh escaped death at the
Red Sea and made his way to Nineveh where he became king and taught
the people about the one G-d. When Yona the prophet conveyed
HaShem’s intention to punish his people for their corruption,
Pharaoh (as king of Nineveh) commanded his subjects to don
sackcloth and repent.
7 TB
Shabbat 55a; TB Yoma 69b, TB San. 64a.
8 TB RH
18a.
9 R. Tsadok
HaKohen, Amla shel Torah, 1.
10 Baal Shem
Tov, Tsavat HaRibash: Hanhagat
Hayashrut.
Blessings
(and fruits) galore…A Still Small Voice
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