Miryam's Space

A tale is told of two very cranky men, Schlemeil and Schlemazel who left Egypt during the great Exodus. They became very weary what with all that marching, and at one point noticed that their shoes were being muddied, as they slogged along. “Ugh”, complained Schlemeil, “my sandals will be ruined with much more of this, can’t we rest already!” and “are we there YET?” They never noticed the sea was parting beyond their heads. They continued to look downward as the trumpets blared and the mountain smoked. “How rocky this road is, and all that noise blaring!” whined Schlemazl. “Are we THERE yet?” The never noticed the revelation at Sinai! “Oh, my aching feet!” they both declared. Time passed and there was lots more marching. Eventually, exasperated they both shouted “ARE WE THERE YET!?” and never noticed the sight of the promised land.  Where we look determines our experience, not where we go. Miracles could be happening around us, but if we don’t look up every once in awhile, they don’t happen for us!
I’ve just been watching this eye opening series called “Brain Games” on National Geographic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xia09Ix-NJs&feature=em-subs_digest
The limitations of our brain makes us blind to MOST of the things going on around us. We focus, quite efficiently on what we think’s important for our survival, They call it “inattentional blindess”. So what do we focus on? Problems! As Rachel Barenblat wrote this week: when’s the last time you were sleepless thinking about something awesome? What if our worst blindness was ourself: that we couldn’t see the goodness, the powerful potential within to do great things? It’s an easy trap to fall into: when I was a student, the really good grades made no emotional impact, but I’ll always remember that first grade math test I failed (arithmetic eluded me, I was too scared of my first grade teacher).

This week’s Torah portion is a favorite of mine, Shelach L’chah was my son’s Bar Mitzvah portion and it contains the stories of the twelve scouts. Each scout representing a tribe of Israelites, leaders all, took the same trip and were in the same places, but saw different realities. For ten of them the land of milk and honey was scary, full of man-eating danger. The natives of the land were so enormous that we were, in our own eyes, as tiny grasshoppers, and so we must seem in their eyes. These tiny grasshoppers, chagavim, are edible, by the way. To see yourself as a grasshopper is to lack the self love and respect of a creature who is forged in the divine image. Newly liberated slaves failed to hold on to faith in themselves and in God in a scary, new world of independence.  In the classroom, one of the best predictors of a child’s failure is a self fulfilling prophecy of I don’t have what it takes, I’m not college material. So powerful, it may be an insurmountable barrier blocking success. All tries to help become diffracted through this lens. Our brain is hard wired to focus on those pieces of our life that threaten our survival – they become the all we see. Perhaps it’s why elections are won by fear mongering. But there’s a better way to live: “We pray to live, not by our fears, but by our hopes” expressed in this line of the Modim (prayer for thanks) in the reform prayer book.

But where do we find the strength to live by our hopes, and, recognizing our fears, put them in a place that does not paralyze? Family? Possibly, but having a family to care for can make us even more fearful, for good reason. The Israelites response to the spies reports is to cry out: Why is God bringing us to this land to die by the sword? Our wives and children will be captives! It would be best to go back to Egypt!’  Maybe for strength we can lean on some sweet spot of inspiration,  for perspective, and to help us raise our eyes out of the mud of fear.   For much of the history of the Jewish people this strength that lifts our eyes has been Torah. Chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek, is traditionally chanted upon completing a book of Torah. But I like it here for these verses too, and so I sang Dan Nichols’ interpretation  to my son after blessing him for his Bar Mitzvah. It means: “Be Strong, be strong, and let us strengthen one another” Here are some of the lyrics:

We have come from near and far, to raise our voice in song;

The more we join in the refrain, the more we feel strong: chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek.

There is a power in this place and time, to shape the rest of our lives

As we return each year we fine a truth we can’t deny.

Be strong, let us strengthen one another! Be strong let us celebrate our lives!… chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek!

As we sing we link ourselves, to those who came before,

and we’re one with those who’ve yet to come, our strength it will endure. Be strong!….

Red light, green light, one, two, three! -a  kids’ game with clear signals, and a clear aim – to reach another person, the caller. We long for clear signs on our journey – of stopping and starting places. Well, this past week ended the school year for my sixth and fourth graders, our journey ends, and we say goodbye, I’ll miss you! I know they will grow and change – they won’t quite be the same in September. Last week were commencement exercises at the community college where I teach. I guess it’s a green light, but it ends a journey, and many relationships that were forged. In this week’s Torah portion are interesting traffic signals for our journey in the wilderness. A cloud over the Tent – that portable sanctuary, meeting place, during the day – to comfort, cool and surround. Pillar of fire at night to enlighten and warm. These are the times to linger in the wilderness, to experience what it has to teach you, not to move on in your journey. When the cloud lifts from the tent, we know it’s time to move – but what will we do on the move? Well, Moses then instructs the Israelites to fashion silver trumpets, instruments for us to listen to, whether it is to fight our battles, or to celebrate our joys. Either way, the blast of melody can help us to respond with a full heart. But perhaps the real aim, of commencing summer vacation, or a job search, or other battles and joys, is to stride with our hearts trumpet-inspired and reach another soul. Red light, green light, one, two, three. Miriam, sister of Moses, must battle illness – snow white scales. Her journey stops, and she waits, on the outskirts, for the week. Her brother reaches out to her, and to God, with a heartfelt prayer for healing “El na r’fah na la” God, please heal her, please! And then the journey can continue. Perhaps that’s the real meaning of the cloud of vapor and pillar of fire while we must wait: Cooling vapors surround us in the heat, fires warm away the chill so we can refresh and heal. The enclosures of childhood: family, teachers, friends are these clouds and flames,  lifting to release us, so we can move forward. Melodies inspire and guide which way we’ll go . I offer this song for healing by Beth Schafer, because she urges that the power to move forward, out of the darkness is deep within us all along

El Na Ra fa na la (playing as a rhythmic chant throughout)
It’s in you, it’s in me
The power to emerge into the light from the dark, it’s in you…
Talk to every fiber of your being with your heart, It’s in you
Oh God, give me the strength
I am tired but I’m listening
Is it in me? The answer’s in me
Oh God give me the courage
To risk battling my brokenness
Is it in me? The way is in me
El Na Ra fa na la
It’s in you, it’s in me,…

.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loBl3DkEAF4

“May God bless and Keep you always, may your wishes all come true;  May you always do for others and let others do for you; May you build a ladder to the stars, and climb on ev’ry rung; and may you stay forever young”

Youth – grace of body, openness of mind and heart, perhaps. We were of a generation coming of age in the 1960s and 70s that mistrusted the older generations, and hoped not to become them, like Peter Pan. In truth there is something precious in remembering the child within us. One illusion of youth, though, is invincibility and immortality. Perhaps it’s what Adam and Eve lost in the garden, this illusion. But there is a grace and beauty in aging and perhaps even in facing our mortality. In the move Troy, Achilles says the gods envy this about us: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dulxL0t5l7U

All I know is that when threatened by age’s infirmities, and loss of time, a sense of urgency can prod us to make it count, to find meaning in small and large gifts and acts. So maybe grownups need that blessing as much as kids.

Debbie Friedman in “Youth Shall See Visions” (1981, quoting from the prophet Joel) Sings “childhood was for fantasies, for nursery rhymes and toys… when I grew up I came to know that life was not a game; that heroes are just people that we call another name;…I cannot have a future ’till I embrace my past; I promise to pursue the challenge, time is going fast; And the old shall dream dreams, and the youth shall see visions; and our hopes will rise up to the skies; We must live for today, we must build for tomorrow, give us time, give us strength, give us life.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wt_uaTrDtc

So the blessings of the Torah are for all of us, young and old, and I’m not sure if I agree with Bob Dylan, that we should add “forever young” to those blessings. What do you think?

Final link is Peri Smilow’s beautiful melodic version of the blessings: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93O5JAYGH4s

Numbers and Wilderness – do they have anything to do with one another? My son recently told me he was “very, very, very, very, very, very, very hungry” That’s seven veries, I counted, because Numbers matter.  Math and science speak to us in the language of Numbers, and Numbers is the name of this past week’s Torah portion. But it’s also named “In the Wilderness”, With quantities and equations we can understand both ordinary and extraordinary phenomena of our universe. Equations like E = mc squared, give us insight to this wild universe.  But technology has used numbers to mechanize our piece of the universe, and, perhaps, to dehumanize each other. Numbers names this portion, because the Israelites take a count of themselves, well, not all, just men of fighting age. This evokes some troubling images: the names on the Vietnam memorial wall, the numbers of the draft, the numbers on the evening news of the wounded and dead and captured of today’s warriors. It also separates those who are counted from those not counted. And we are told Abraham’s descendents would be as the stars: too numerous to count But we do count: check out the population clock http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
7.1 billion and counting on this precious planet. What are the implications of an ever more crowded world? Do we devalue people in the crowd as being in our way? Will there be enough resources for us all? Can we value the tiny lives born into poverty around the world as much as they deserve? And many move out of rural areas into megalopolises, where there is little of the wilderness, and less humanity. And we live mechanized lives in polluted areas. Out of touch with nature our souls are impoverished. Albert Einstein, composer of the equation above was devastated to think that the numbers and the science he loved were being misused to threaten the natural world and people he loved. This clip from a wonderful PBS video on the scientist’s views – check it out here at about 3 minutes in:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dB6_0pcUfBc&list=PLK1jVke6c4kZttMPXE9IPeVqxu2hh8bur

Wilderness served as a crucible for the Israelites, a place they find Heaven meeting earth and themselves.
So perhaps numbers threatens wildness, and the best things are beyond counting? what do you think?
I think this song “Seasons of Love,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmlj2JF5yLk has the best advice for what counting’s best.
I had this running joke going with my Grandma, all we had to say was “how many legs does a chair have?” and we’d laugh. You see once, when helping her to buy those little pads for the feet of a chair, she insisted we must buy multiples of three, because in her imagination, for that moment chairs had three legs. She didn’t realize her error until asked “and how many legs does a chair have?” And the whole world rests on three things, says tradition -truth, justice and peace. Or maybe just one thing? – the whole world is sustained by the breath of children!  (Talmud)  Numbers matter, each child counts!

“Remove your shoes, for the place on which you are standing is Holy ground” God said to Moses. We must take our shoes off, if only to feel more intensely that we are earth-connected.
Jacob similarly was shaken by his vision of the ladder: “This is the very gateway to heaven… God was in this place and I, i did not know it.” Consider: every bit of ground on this planet gifted to us is Holy ground, a place where heaven and earth can meet, or be severed depending upon our actions.
In the Torah portion Behar, meaning “at the mountain”, God speaks to Moses, not from the tent, but from Sinai itself, because crucial insights are coming: the land is alive! It must be, because it requires a Shabbat after six years in the same way the human spirit does after 6 days. The land further requires a Yovel, or Jubilee after fifty years, just as humans do, for the Yovel demands release of humans in bondage, and debts which bind us are released. Keratem d’ror – proclaim release throughout the land, and blow the Shofar and celebrate! And we really can celebrate, because we are free from the burden of Adam’s curse, to work the land for sustenance. We are in synchrony with the land, and we can never really own landa, as we can never own a human soul, a slave. Both belong to God. This release, the Jubilee, is proclaimed on Yom Kippur, when we remind ourselves that our lives and souls are in God’s keeping, releasing our egos to this reality. Furthermore, the land must never be sold beyond reclaim. Our fate, our lives are tied up with the land.

The land: is it really alive? Our earthly atoms are made literally of stardust. But alive? The ancient Greeks enlivened the planet in a persona named Gaia. This is not legend, but actual Biology. The planet’s living and nonliving parts interact to keep this planet habitable. We are part of an incredible, living system, truly intertwined with the earth for our survival. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44yiTg7cOVI check out the Gaia hypothesis. In addition our spirits are in synchrony with the wild, and we suffer malaise too much removed from the forest, and the shore. “In wildness is the preservation of the world,” prophesied Thoreau, our own wild creativity, and that of the earth itself.
But the universe also pulses with time, and here too Torah links our lives and the land’s. With the pattern of counting seven we breath a sigh of relief, and so must the land. And after seven sevens, the Jubilee. The amazing thing is we are paralell-living this pattern of seven sevens right now as we count the Omer, building up to Shavuot – the fiftieth day – a Holy Day. It is a day of harvest, one in which we celebrate Ruth, whose very survival happened because we didn’t harvest everything, leaving the corners and the fallen grain for the wanderers, the impoverished, for Ruth, for us. We are making our way to Har Sinai – to receive ethical/ spiritually linked commandments. The same mountain from in this week’s verses. And Time itself is what we revel in when our spirits are released from the clock’s relentless ticking of our responsibilities when we celebrate Shabbat and Festivals.
The earth right now all around me feels like it’s being released from winter’s prison in a riot of new life and gentle breezes. How would this planet be different if sometimes we’d realize that every step was taken on holy ground, that the earth’s life is tied up in ours, spiritually and physically, and each creature and soul upon it? Wow, the possibilities! Our failings to one another and to this planet are profoundly spiritual failings. Perhaps that’s why the Jubilee was announced on Yom Kippur.
The song: Holy Ground, by Craig Taubman is here beautifully performed in Jerusalem by Abbe Silber https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBpF8W2iJao

For the past many years, I have baked two loaves of challah each week for Shabbat: one chocolate chip and one raisin. It keeps my hands in touch with reality, fills my home with amazing odors, and tastes amazing when it’s warm: they’re baking right now as Shabbat’s approaching tonight! And this week’s Torah portion is about bread as an offering to God in the MIshkan. The Kohanim (priests) would bake a dozen loaves for “show” that would stay fresh. This portion also contains advice about counting our days (toward Shavuot) and commands us to celebrate, and make some periods of time holy. But why bake bread for God as an offering -when God can neither eat nor smell the wonderful odor? A famous folktale to explain (I think I heard it first from R. Henry Weiner).  The richest man in a small Shtetl was Chayim. Though he was wealthy, he was pious, if a bit drowsy. One Shabbat he dozed off during services. The Torah was being chanted: the verse about the 12 loaves of bread, the show bread offered to God in the MIshkan. Reb Chayim in his twilight consciousness was sure he heard The Holy One commanding him to bake bread personally as an offering. He was shaken to his core, after all if the Master of the Universe cared enough to speak to Chayim , he could do nothing less than obey! So, the very next Friday, Chayim spoke with his wife and servants about preparing the extra Challahs. He brought them to the synagogue very proudly and placed them within the ark next to the Torah. “I hope you enjoy them,” he whispered to God.
The very poorest man in the village was the Shammes, the caretaker of the synagogue. Normally he would rush home on Friday eve to celebrate Shabbat with his wife and seven children, his in-laws and mother. But he knew that today there would not be much to eat and so he tarried. He approached the ark. “Dear God”, he prayed, “I am grateful for my family and the coming of Shabbat, but I’m so ashamed to see my family share so little, please can you help, show me the way?” and with that, the Shammes sobbed and hit the ark door. Well, it opened, and you can imagine the surprise and glee with which he saw the beautiful loaves and smelled their fragrance! “Master of the Universe, thank you!” he cried and carried his bundle home to his overjoyed family.
Later that evening, Reb Chayim returned early to check the ark. He was delighted to see not a crumb remained! Feeling overwhelming pride, he whispered to the ark, “I’m so happy you enjoyed my wife’s challah!” and he returned to the pews before anyone was the wiser.
The next Friday and the next the scene was repeated, each man feeling specially blessed by God with such favor.
But one Friday the Rabbi watched as the Shammas removed the challas from the ark. “What do you think you’re doing?” he asked.
“Rabbi, it’s a miracle!, I prayed to God for help feeding my family for Shabbat, and each week I come to the ark and my prayers are answered!” The Rabbi scolded “Don’t be a fool! I have just seen Reb Chayim leaving, let me call him back, and we’ll know what is really happening”.
Sadly the Rabbi uncovered the mystery. No longer did it seem a miracle, and the world seemed just a bit colder and less magical.
That night the Rabbi had a terrible dream, a nightmare. He had a bolt of insight and knew what he must do. He gathered Reb Chayim and the Shammes back to his office. “I dreamed last night that God was terribly angry with me. A miracle had been in place since creation, and I have disrupted this master plan. That miracle was you, my friend,” he explained to Reb Chayim, “and you,” he said to the Shammes. “God really did require those challahs your wife baked so lovingly; indeed you and your wife have been the hands of God!” “And God really did wish you to take those challahs to feed your beautiful family,” he said to the Shammes. This is ordained and MUST continue!” proclaimed the Rabbi. And so it did, except for the occasions when the family of the Shammes dined with Reb Chayim’s family as guests in their home.
The magic of challah, and making and baking, becomes a fragrant symbol of the holiness our hands can form in partnership with the gifts of wheat and rain and sun. We form it’s dough into intertwined shapes as we are all intertwined. There is no rushing challah, it must take it’s time to rise, just as the savoring of time itself is such an intimate part of Shabbat.
Here’s my recipe:
3 cups bread flour (I use King Arthur)
make a well and put in 1 tsp salt, 2 TBSP sugar, 1 TBSP yeast
add 3/4 cup warm water
1/8 cup oil
1 and 1/2 egg beaten. Reserving the last half egg to brush on top.
Mix and knead. It should be the consistency of play dough.
Let rise in a warm place till doubled, about an hour (or overnight in the fridge)
Break in half, and roll out each on a floured board
fill with chocolate chips or raisins,….
Roll up like a jelly roll
Break the snake into three parts and braid.

Let rise on a floured cookie sheet,. Flour the top and cover with a towel till double in bulk, about an hour. Brush with the remaining half egg (I refridgerate, and then warm for 5 seconds in the microwave)
Bake 350 for 25 minutes.
Write me if you Knead more info.
Shabbat Shalom

“Teach me all of Torah while standing on one foot, and I’ll engage,” challenged the outsider. Sent away by the teacher Shammai, Rabbi Hillel famously answered “What is hateful to you do not do to another. This is all of Torah, the rest is commentary, go and study.” This week the Torah challenges us all: “You (plural form) shall be holy, because I, God, am holy” Holiness, distinguished from the ordinary and profane – a noble goal, but how? By strange and mystifying rituals? By beautiful words. Those are not the pathways to holiness. As Hillel said, the pathways we must reject are those that are hurtful: don’t insult the deaf (though they cannot hear you) or fool the blind. Don’t elevate yourself on the blood of your fellow. In Boston’s tragic massacre this week, this is exactly what’s happened, and it profoundly savages our trust. If these are the “don’t” command, is there a positive path to a holy and beautiful life? Torah’s answer is among its most renown: Love your dear one as you love yourself. What’s love got to do with it? asks Tina Turner, “What’s love, but a second hand emotion?” Love is why we’d take a bullet if someone threatened our kid. Love sent rescuers running into the danger in Boston this week. Inspiring. I hope I have enough love in my little body to run to help another. I counter Tina Turner’s song with one from Jonathan Larson’s musical Rent. Although we could measure a year in our life in midnights, cups of coffee, or minutes, (525,600 of them), it’s far better to measure it in love. Maybe love really can be the answer. A community full of love is holy, much more than the sum of its parts.
Built or destroyed by the sum of our choices. I don’t know why the perpetrators of the Boston attack chose hatred and chaos, but I know that many others that day chose the incredible path of loving those near to them (just by chance!) MORE than they loved themselves for that moment. It reminds me that love can be the answer.

My paternal grandparents came through Ellis Island around 1920. My Grandma Gussie (z”l) was 16, afraid of the journey, so she had her fortune told by a Gypsie before departure for reassurance. Crammed on a boat like so many others, she arrived in a strange place, greeted by Lady Liberty. When Ellis Island became part of liberty park, before it became the beautiful museum it is now (1990) I visited this cavernous, dark, ghost-like building with them. “So many were turned away,” they told me, “if they had a rash, or bald patches on their heads” Probably ringworm, poverty made soap and water dear. A fungus: contagious to be sure, but definitely not life-threatening. The fear of contagion that sent people back on that boat after so much effort to enter, surely was also a fear of poverty and alien cultures, and the unseen microbe. Not much has changed. We think we’re so savvy and civilized, until an infection rears its head. We need other people, and delight in them, so we gather together in larger and larger groups. We send our kids to daycare, school and camp, gather in stadiums, shopping malls, cities. We travel for vacation, business, and war, and our food travels too. With us come invisible microbes. The Spanish flu killed 25 million in 1918, a virus mutated from a pig farm in Tennessee, most likely, spread by the war. HIV virus likely existed in rural Africa for 100 years, until urbanization and travel turned the virus pandemic. The fear, blame, isolation of even child-victims of this disease  was akin to that of the middle ages, hard to believe, unless you were there… I was. Remember Ryan White?  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCMr9jbq3Tk0
This week the Torah portion gives us a window into how illness and contagion were handled in ancient times, perhaps there’s something to learn today. Illness that appeared as a rash on the skin and hair was called Tzara-at, often translated as leprosy. The person in the community asked to reach out to the patient, and when healed to return him or her to the community is a spiritual leader, the priest. In today’s society, and in medicine, we separate body from, and ignore the soul, perhaps ignoring a key part of healing. And, as Ryan and so many other stories show, we lack a clear path to return to society. In ancient times, the pathway back was to offer a sacrifice, and in one interesting verse, 14:14 of Leviticus, the priest would mark the patient with a drop of blood on the right ear, thumb and big toe, which is the same ritual as in ordaining the priest! it’s reminiscent of the blood of rebirth perhaps, with the right ear attuned, the hand doing deeds, and the foot “walking the walk”. In truth, many who recover from life threatening illness often feel they’ve been given a second chance, feel more intensely the gift of the moments of their lives. Now, I don’t want to go back to those times, lives were short, and blaming illness on moral failings is certainly problematic. I’m just suggesting there’s something valuable we can annex as patients or physicians: seeing the whole patient as one with spiritual needs, essential to healing. Seeing health care as a holy profession. In the Talmud there is a conversation between Rabbi Joshua with the prophet Eliyahu. He asks the prophet “where is the Messiah?” Elijah replies: “at the city gates” “What is he doing there”, asks Joshua. “He is changing the bandages of the lepers, one by one” “When will he come?” (to bring world peace) The reply is” Today, if we are ready to listen.”
The song I offer today is Cantor Leon Sher’s beautiful “Heal us Now” performed here by the plaintive voices of the teens of Hazamir. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qg_4uAR3gng

It’s April. Spring has arrived, soft rains and breezes, promises. But this week is a strange convergence. Sunday night is Holocaust memorial day, Yom Hashoah, day of the calamity, recalling how so many souls went up in smoke. The Torah portion read this week is one of death by fire of Aaron’s sons, very strange. These were not 2 ordinary boys, not just sons of Aaron, high priest, but among the select few who ascended Sinai, beheld the presence of God, ate and drank and survived. Select, holy men. They were consumed by flame in the tent because they offered “strange fire”. Taken too young, a warning, a sacrifice, a tragedy. Commentators suggest they were intoxicated, only because the next section speaks of such things, but the truth is unknown. Aaron was strangely silent, as the world was strangely silent for decades. As some survivors were until they could come to grips with the Shoah, until people were ready to hear. It also became April this week. TS Eliot wrote of April in his poem “The Waste Land”
April is the cruelest month, breeding
lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rains.
It is easier to sleep than to be intensely away, dealing with loss. The poet later continues
That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?

May the memories of Aaron’s sons be for a blessing. They offered strange fire, but they offered, perhaps wishing, just as Moses did in last week’s reading, only to experience God more deeply. May the memories of our families lost in the Shoah also be for blessing

The song I offer is Hannah Senesh’s poem and Jeff Klepper’s music in Yeish Kochavim: There are stars up above, so far away we only see their light, long, long after the star itself is gone; and so it is with people that we’ve loved; their memories keep shining ever brightly though their time with us is done; and the stars that light up the darkest night, these are the lights that guide us; As we live our days, these are the ways we remember…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So5VuGPPfmk

Hannah Senesh died in prison after parachuting into enemy territory for the resistance  to bravely rescue people during the war . Her poems continue to light our way.

I love Passover: it is when I get to taste springtime, and hear the voices of family, both those with me and those no longer here. It’s a time to be grounded and to remember who I am, cause it’s easy to forget. For days I am lost in the preparation, and then it stops, and the song and the candle light begin. And I taste springtime in the flavors of parsley, wine, horseradish, eggs, crunchy matzah and chopped apples.  I am tasting springtime! And I hear voices: my son’s new found base (he’s fourteen) my daughter joining in the conversation (!), my Mom blessing the candle light. Always my grandfather’s laugh and lilt of his voice, and my grandmother’s tired but comforting tones – their memories are for blessing. And this year as I cleaned up after,  I reallly heard the past voices of my children and nephews when they were younger and so excited by the energy, and others. These experiences transformed ordinary days into the freedom only spring feels like. I awoke the next morning with more than a memory, because my eating habits and even dishes are not the usual ones. The sight of flowers will come, but it’s not there yet  – vision is not a sense I associate with Passover, funny enough.

I was delighted to find in these senses a new connection of Pesach to this Shabbat’s Torah reading, which is the aftermath of the golden calf. There are some easy connections: The festival of  Pesach is in mentioned as part of our new covenant. Also, the golden calf may be about the choices that follow freedom from slavery, including the freedom to make wrong choices.  But it’s also partly about the senses with which Moses can experience God in some way. In Ex. 33: 20 Moses has asked of God “Please let me see your honor”.  God replies that vision/ seeing is not possible. God’s Goodness will wander by (connects to Hebrews – wanderers) and Moses will hear the calling of God’s name, but cannot see God and live! And there’s a Place in a Rock (both names of God) where Moses can be. And God’s Honor will wander by and then afterwards can See. Moses will feel the Rock and the Goodness,  hear the name. Just Like Pesach it’s vision that eludes. Interestingly vision is our longest range sense: taste, touch, smell are immanent and intimate.* Similarly,  it’s not through vision that I experience the  honor and goodness and spring-feeling and freedom of Passover, it is by hearing and touching and tasting.
The song and link I offer this Passover week is Circle of Life from Disney’s The Lion King. I have always had fun showing kids clips from the animated movie, and seeing how many Passover-Lion King connections they can find. OK Scar is Pharoah, Simba is Moses, who sees a vision of his father in a burning bush in the sky and returns to free his people, uh, lions. The moral which Rafiki tells Simba: Remember who you are!  Perhaps Simba and Nala’s love song (Can You Feel the Love) connects to chanting Song of Songs at Pesach. The Circle of LIfe is a lot more than welcoming a new baby lion to the Pride, it’s about the grandness of it all, and the journey through despair to faith and hope and love till we find our way along the path – to redemption. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLIVetkn6lE

My gratitude to Rabbi Rachel Barenblat for her Haggadah which I enjoyed immensely at our seder. http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2012/01/velveteen-rabbis-haggadah-for-pesach-72-abridged-and-expanded.html

The poetry for the birkat, grace after the meal, even included a favorite poem by E.E. Cummings:

i thank You God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirit of trees

and for a blue true dream of sky

and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes

(and i who have died am alive again this day,

and this is the sun’s birth day

and the birthday of life, and love, and wings)…

*Although hearing is at a distance the vibrations happen within the middle and inner ear as well, most immanently.