pesakh
sholem aleichem,
With a break in the parsha cycle for Pesach, I thought I would share a vort I gave at my shul’s community seder.
freedom together
A midrash based on a tradition from the school of our teacher, Yishmael ben Elisha, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing.
In the beginning, there was water, and a wind of haShem was fluttering over its surface. And haShem created an expanse to separate the water: upper waters from lower waters. The expanse she called Heavens, and the lower waters she formed into Earth.
Now imagine. The children of the god-wrestler and their comrades are fleeing the Narrow Place. They reach the Sea of Reeds, with the armies of Par’oh arrayed behind them. And then! A wind from the Beginning stirs, fluttering over the sea, separating waters once more, creating land, for them to walk to liberation.
But the wind from the Beginning is no ordinary wind: it is the breath of Creation, and the expanse it creates in the Sea of Reeds separates not just the waters of that ocean, but all the waters of the cosmos, the waters of creation. The upper waters are separated from the lower waters once more. And the entire world is made anew.
You will know for yourself the power of liberation. Come and learn from the children of the god-wrestler and their friends: when any one people is liberated, the entire world is remade. When any one people is liberated, the waters part before us all: an invitation to join them in the journey to freedom.
A mayse from the Gemara: it happened once, many years later in Eretz haKodesh, that a certain Jew was hurrying with a fellow traveler, an Arab merchant, to deliver wheat to make matzah for Pesach, when they came upon an impassable river. Our teacher, Pinchas ben Ya’ir, of blessed memory, happened upon them, and told the river to part, as the two men were hurrying to perform a mitzvah! The river parted for the Jew, but then closed again. Our teacher, Pinchas ben Ya’ir, spoke in rebuke to the river: “Part your waters for him likewise, for no one should say this is what we do to those in our company. We leave them and go?’”
It isn’t easy to hope for a better world, right now. But this is the essence of that hope: that the liberation of one contains liberation for all, that the liberation of any one people contains within it the breath and breadth of creation, the power to rebuild the world. This is the power we are working with, and when Palestine is free, when all in the Holy Land are free, we will be living in a new world. Not a perfect world, not the world to come, but a world breathing its first breath, God’s breath, again.
You will know for yourself the power of liberation: we can cross the water together.
(sources: Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael, Vayehi Beshallach and BT Chullin 7a with Rashi's commentary. I taught — and so learned — these texts in Shel Maala’s Torah for Palestine shiur. I am grateful to everyone who attended for learning them with me.)
good shabbos and a zisn peysekh,
ada