D'var Torah

Adar One 5765

LATE, BUT ON TIME – THEN WHAT?

This is a leap year in the Hebrew calendar. We add an extra month to the calendar. Purim is celebrated in the second Adar – this year March 24 and 25, just before the weekend during which Christians celebrate Easter. A month later, we celebrate Passover – just about as late as Passover can ever get in the calendar. Late, but on time. In anticipation of Passover let me ask four questions about Purim:

(1) Aside from being a month part from one another, how are Purim and Passover connected and what can we learn from this connection?

There are some very real shared moments between Passover and Purim. In a seventh century piyyut, a liturgical poem by Yannai still recited on the first night of Passover (after the third cup and before the fourth), we read a series of 12 miraculous revelations of God that occurred at midnight of the first night of Passover – and of a 13th miracle yet to occur. Among the miracles that came to pass at midnight, in addition to the slaying of the first born of Egypt, also came the destruction of Jericho’s walls, and the feast of Esther, during which Haman’s plan is thwarted.

The revelation of God in Egypt was public – God’s involvement in history was up close and personal, open to the Israelites and to the Egyptians. Nowhere in the megillah do we find the name of God. God’s actions in history are behind the scenes, revealed only after Esther and Mordecai sent out their own declaration countermanding and revising Haman’s earlier proclamation sealed with the signet of the king. These similarities and differences between Passover and Purim have been expressed in two stories from the religious school.

First, there is the familiar story of the young child who comes home from school. The parent asks, "What did you learn in school?" The child proceeds to tell how they learned how Moses and the children of Israel built a large pontoon bridge across the Red Sea, and then drove tanks across the water to the other side. Are you sure this is what you learned? Well not exactly, but if I told you what they taught us, you’d never believe it!” The second story is a current Internet rationale for all Jewish observance: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat.”

(2) To which we can then ask the second question: “If they tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat” – then what? Faced with the mystery, the awe and the wonder of the world we inhabit, confronted with the reality of the ongoing continued existence of the Jewish people despite those forces both external and internal that should have made us extinct generations ago, then what? Ages ago, when ritualized sacrifice was part and parcel of Jewish worship and connectedness to God, when there was an hereditary priesthood that would represent us before the Almighty, we would seek God’s presence and answers to our questions from the oracle of the arba’ah turim, the four-tiered priestly breastplate.

(3) With the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem and the ability to demonstrate dedication to God through sacrifice and pilgrimage no longer possibilities, how do we indicate our connection and attachment to God and to the Jewish people?

One possible answer was proposed some seven centuries ago, but a young German Jew whose family had sought refuge in Spain from persecution in the Rhineland. Jacob ben Asher saw the need to consult God in the everyday and in the day to day. He composed one of the earliest law codes in Judaism, to which has been given the name arba-ah ha-turim, a guide to everyday life and practice – detailing virtually every aspect of life, asking us to recognize the presence of God in every dimension of our lives in mitzvah moments, times when we put our prayers into action.

(4) In ancient times, it was the priests who taught us how to worship, how to serve God, and it was (and is in some places) through their fingers opened up in prayer over the heads of those assembled that were (and are) transmitted the priestly benediction, as according to Tradition, the Divine Presence rests upon their fingertips. In the absence of such ongoing ritual, where does the Divine Presence rest today? How do we experience God in our world and in our lives?

The psalmist teaches: “Atah kadosh yoshev tehillot Yisrael” [Psalm 22] – “You God are holy, sitting on the prayers of Israel.” The purpose of prayer is to raise our consciousness-sensitivity to world around us – to all that we take for granted – all that we do not see as miraculous – to the miracles that are daily with us:

Sunrise and sunset
A physical system that works
Love, marriage, delight in one another
Healthy children
Loving families

Those who reach out to comfort the ill, suffering, the dying and the bereaved
And the miraculous, everyday-new opportunities given us to transform the world – one mitzvah at a time:

Bless your children; touch their heads and their hearts with your fingers lovingly placed on their heads
Visit the sick Comfort the bereaved – assure minyanim at the homes of those sitting shiva and ensure that there will be a minyan for those reciting kaddish each and every day of the week
Make a meal for a family struck by illness
Open a broken heart to let in God Be a friend
Pray
Study
Watch out for the world

A mitzvah is a prayer put into action - let’s get going!

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