Hagadah: freedom vs entitlement

Hagadah: freedom vs entitlement

The hagadah, the guide through the seder, an ancient ritual, emphasizes a concept that we translate as "freedom."   But the liberation, the emancipation that the Hagadah refers to, is not the contemporary  idea , a condition that is better called entitlement, the sense that a person may do whatever she likes, as long as it does not directly and obviously hurt another person.  Until the current generation, life was too hard imagine such a freedom. 

When the wicked child asks :" What does this mean to you", she is criticized for excluding himself from the community.  The phrasing of the question  reveals a problem with freedom.  It is wicked to interpret freedom as a gift to the individual; it is the hard-won legacy of those who joined together and sacrificed for the privilege of moving forward together. 

The hagadah is about the formation of that community and its continued progress, through hard times to better times. The community means members respecting and forgiving one another.  It means a constant re-interpretation of  the past to fit the needs  of the present and the future.  

At the very beginning of the seder we say: All who are hungry, come eat, all who need to Pesach, join us.  Pesach is a need.  The Torah describes it as the most  communal of rituals: If the family was too small to consume the lamb, others must be invited. 

 Pesach means to skip over.  To make the community, we all need to skip over things.

I need Pesach 

Tzav: Fire

Tzav: Fire

The parsha tells of the initiation of Aaron and his sons into the  sacrificial rite.  The parsha outlines the sacrificial rite and its component offerings and then describes the sanctification of its components: the altar and the priests. 

This service, the offering of animal parts, wine, grain, and oil on the altar, which stood in the courtyard outside the sanctuary is separate from very private activities inside the cedar  walls.  The flames of the altar, that were not be extinguished, was a public production, any person, whether sinful or grateful, could participate, and thereby interact with the Divine. 

The fire that must always burn on the altar was a key part of the service.  The fire was fueled by wood that burned the daily olah offering.  All subsequent contributions were burned on this base. 

Fire is an insubstantial reality.  It is the paradigm of  energy utilization , both in a historic-scientific view,  and in a symbolic approach. 

Visible fire is the light emitted from cooling of gases produced when matter is heated sufficiently to overcome the activation energy barrier to oxidation with air.  In a fire, the oxidation reaction releases energy, recruiting additional matter into oxidation.  The cooling gas results in a decline in the energy state of electrons.  The change in the quantum state of the electrons produces visible light. 

 And there was light. 

Fire, an energy under human control creates light.  Humans can do a Gd thing, they can create light - and heat ,and ash.  Fire is power. 

Fire has a mind of its own.  Without careful control, this beautiful multicolored  thing of light, consumes its surroundings.  It is the archetype for passion. It is an insatiable appetite, looking for partners, consuming in a moment of splendor and leaving behind ashes.  

 And it was passion that brought the supplicant to the  altar. 

Vayikra: Mystery (a+bi)

Most of the parsha, Vayikra, is a catalogue  of details concerning the sacrificial rites that were performed on the alters that were in, or associated with, the Tabernacle.  These became the Temple  service, when the Temple was built, centuries later. Now that there has not  been a Temple for millenia,we recall the service.  

These details  about  which animals are to be used for which offerings,  and how to deal with their blood and innards, are a continuation the repetitive detail that ends the book of Shemoth.  Shemoth ended with a  description and accounting of the structure of the tabernacle and the priestly vestments.  Now we get a depiction of the activities these elegantly attired priests performed  in the glittering structure. 

Why do we preserve these details?  Even when the Tabernacle functioned, why should there be a public reading of the minutiae of the inner workings? This material is esoteric, useful to a  very small number of people.  Yet, it has been preserved and announced on a regular basis for millenia .  There is a rational component to this diligence: transparency.  The public knowledge of the activities involved in the sacrificial rite removes the possibility of the occult.  It removes the magic, it prevents idolatry.

But there is an astonishing aspect to this process. How can this clearly depicted activity, killing an animal and burning parts of it, expiate? How does this work to preserve the order of the world?  That part remains a mystery, and as such, a reminder of our limited understanding of the world. Even in mathematics, there is an implicit understanding that every number has a potential otherworldly part (i). 

I do not imagine that the supplicant walked away from the animal sacrifice experience feeling totally cleansed, but it did offer some relief.  The component of error that is hidden from ordinary view, the damage that a transgression inflicts on the hidden web of the fourth and higher dimensions, is handled, to an extent. 

Often, I do not know how it works, I just follow the instructions

Vayakheil- Pikudei:  Tribute

These two parshioth, for the most part, repeat the details of the construction of the Tarbernacle, its vessels and the priestly garments.  These two parshoith are different from Terumah and Titzaveh.  They describe the construction, whereas the earlier parshioth were the instructions.  Vayakheil- Pikudei contain more accounting information: the amounts of gold, silver, and brass that was used,and some information about the source of the materials and labor. 

The Tabernacle was a project supported by a combination of taxes and contributions. The tax was the half shekel poll tax  described in Ki Thissa ( just before the golden calf rebellion).  We are told that the silver collected from that tax was recast into the sockets for the boards of the sanctuary.  This silver was used to plant the boards in the ground, a hardly, if at all, visible role.  Other boards  were socketed with copper, but the wall that  kept the public out of the sanctum had a hidden luxury. 

We are also informed that the laver, the wash basin for the priests entering the service, was constructed from mirrors.  This seems to have been a voluntary offering, perhaps a fad, an activity that went viral through a certain part of the population.  These people had a material, some kind of brass, that was most suitable for the task of constructing the basin, and they gave it up.  

Onkelos reminds us that the owners of these mirrors were female.  That evokes, the  presumably contrasting story , of the gold broken off the women's ornaments  to make the golden calf.  The details are not given here, but presumably these mirrors were given voluntarily by these women.

The source of  the remaining precious materials is not specified, except that they were a contribution, a  tribute .  This trumah, restated in Vayakheil  is very deeply connected with all of the nuances of meaning associated with the words tribute and  contribution.  Clearly, a contribution is a "tribute" together (con). The donations for the Tabernacle are given for common goal and a large part of that goal is the unification brought about by working together and having something that represents the group together, the Union

Tribute itself comes from the word tribe.  The tribal nature of the Temple is represented by the precious stones worn by the Cohen on the shoulders of the Ephod and the 12 stones in the Choshen, both having the names of the tribes inscribed on them. 

Tribute comes to mean, in medieval times, the payment given by the vassal state to the empire for 'protection.'  An important aspect of the Tabernacle is protection from both the wrath of Gd and lethal consequences of Gd's intimate presence, in the absence of the prescribed protection: the coverings, partitions, curtains and smoke of the sanctum and the altar service. 

My friend Chuck Broches died this week. His life was a tribute to the Jewish community of Seattle.  He protected. He unified.  He appeased the Lrd. 

His legacy is bound up in the concerns of the living

Ki Thisah: Crux

This parsha seems most crucial.  It contains:

• the story of the tablets, Gd's instructions set in stone,
•  coming down form the mountain and shattered because of the golden calf party,
• the threat to destroy the Israelites
• Israel's contrition 
• the core text of Gd's merciful forgiveness, 
• the exaltation, and consequent separation , of Moshe through Gd's epiphany
• ...

I feel that if I only understood this parsha, I would know how to behave, I would understand what Gd demands of us, of me.  Alas, I do not understand. 

The  golden calf seems to be a paradigm of  the sin that must be avoided. I am an American. I think that is why I do not understand the sin. What was the big deal? The people felt they needed a symbol.  They recruited the highest level leader they had, Aaron, to find something to fill the void.  Aaron gets off with a mild scolding. The people are punished with plague, civil war and the promise of future destruction, when the time is right. 

I live in a place and a time of visiting museums. I have seen images- moving, talking images, holograms.  If this had some effect on my course soul, I am insensitive to it.  Am I so corrupted that these grievous violations, these objects that anger Gd to the point of destruction, are nothing to me? Or has there been a change in the nature of the world.  Most likely, I do not understand the nature of the sin at Sinai. 


I will try, again. 

The people had been liberated from centuries of slavery ( meaning unclear) in Egypt.  They were embarking on a new life of liberty.  Prior to the assemblage at Sinai,  the problem of law had  become obvious.  Jethro saw the people consulting Moshe from dawn till dusk to answer their questions and settle their disputes.  The new law was transmitted by Moshe from the Gd that had liberated them from the Pharoah's wild and arbitrary law (note the use of the word in our parsha: 

וַיַּ֤רְא מֹשֶׁה֙ אֶת־הָעָ֔ם כִּ֥י פָרֻ֖עַ ה֑וּא כִּֽי־פְרָעֹ֣ה אַהֲרֹ֔ן לְשִׁמְצָ֖ה בְּקָמֵיהֶֽם׃

Moses saw that the people were out of control—since Aaron had let them get out of control—so that they were a menace to any who might oppose them.

out of control).  The Ruler of the World had replaced the greatest ruler of the known world. 

The law needed to be democratized, accessible to all the people, and uniform and eternal. The tablets, the law set in stone, was the symbol of this uniform and unchanging law.  For emphasis, the people heard first two commandments - including the prohibition of images- with their own ears.  Forty days later, they violated the one law heard directly from Gd.  They were stiff necked, they could not be turned from their old ways. 

I still do not understand.

Let us work on it.