“K A H A N E”
The magazine of
the authentic Jewish Idea
Nissan -5749
April-1989
D I V R E I T O R A H
THE GREAT SABBATH
It is the necessary, the indispensable preface and
introduction to Passover. It is the
explanation that cries out the ultimate message of the holiday, the basic
lesson of the feats of our freedom. It
is the foundation of foundations that raises Passover from an insipid,
saccharine social custom beginning and ending with recipes printed in the New
York Times women’s section; from a golden opportunity for Manischewitz to
return to Jewishness through capitalist Passover profits even as the truly frum,
raise their level of religiosity by raising the level of prices; from a Jewish
people that marches on its Seder stomach even as it moves on to the
annual national lie. “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
It is the Great Sabbath, which attempts to save Judaism from myopic
ritualism, to make the Jew, Jewish and the Orthodox, religious.
Sabbath Hagadol, the great Sabbath. The Sabbath preceding the Passover, the
Sabbath that cries out the basic, the ultimate message of the enormous Exodus
from Egypt, of Passover itself. Sabbath
Hagadol that gives us the lesson without which Passover, the Jewish people
itself, lose all reason for being. Sabbath
Hagadol commemorating the basic lesson of Judaism: Faith, real faith, faith
in G-d who really is greater than the mighty Pharaoh, or the regal
Reagan or the burning-less Bush – Sabbath Hagadol. The great Sabbath,
that began more than 3,000 years ago on a Sabbath in Imperial Egypt.
“Speak unto all the congregation of Israel, saying: In the
tenth day of this month, they shall take to them every man a lamb…”
It is a special, an awesome commandment, one that is given
to every Jew, hence the unique words “Speak unto all the
congregation.” Take a lamb and bind it
up for four days.
You believe that this is a simple commandment. Hardly.
The lamb is more than an animal; it is the very god of Egypt. It is a deity, a hallowed creature before whom
the Egyptian bows and whose meat dare not touch his mouth. And the Jews, “every man” thereof, are
commanded to take this lamb, this Egyptian god, the deity of their masters, and
tie it to their beds, to their posts, bind it up. And when the astonished and outraged Egyptian
masters will ask: “What are you doing? The answer shall be: We shall soon
slaughter this lamb, the deity, your god, and eat it.
Do you still think this is a simple, bland commandment? It is a commandment fraught with danger to
life, a commandment that surely sent fear down the spines of the Jewish slaves,
that, without a doubt, led scholars to rush and ponder whether pikuach
nefesh, danger to life might perhaps demand the postponing of the dangerous
commandment.
Nor does the Almighty stop there. He insists on a policy of extremism, of
goading the gentile. Not content with a
commandment that cries desecration of the Egyptian god, that taunts him with
the sight of his deity bound up, the G-d of Israel insists that the Jew add
salt to the wound.
“And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roasted with
fire… eat it not partially cooked, nor boiled in water, but roasted with fire,
its head with its legs and with its insides complete.”
Awake and consider!
This is what Passover is all about; only this! This is Judaism what
Judaism is all about; only this! This is
what the duty and the role and the essence of the Jew is all about; only
this! To affirm to the world, but first
to ourselves that the L-rd, the G-d of Israel, is. That He truly does exist, that He is the One,
the only One, that He, only He, directs the world, the fate of man, the destiny
of His people. That whatever will be for
the Jew will be only because He so decrees.
That the gentile has no relevance to the Jewish fate, that the Pharaohs
of all time, the ones in Egypt and the ones in Washington are utterly
irrelevant to what will be with the Jew.
On the Great Sabbath in Egypt, the L-rd taught us the lesson
that we trampled in the dust, the dust of secularism and the dust of the
yeshiva world alike: The lesson that the Jew must raise high, must flaunt the
glory and Omnipotence of his G-d. That
the world must be compelled to see their deities, their gods and idols, bound
up and humiliated and destroyed. That
one must goad the gentile in order to raise high the banner of the L-rd. That Kiddush Hashem, the
sanctification of the Name of the G-d of Israel, demands an open, fearless,
flaunting sacrifice of the idols and deities of the gentiles that deny the
uniqueness of the G-d of Israel, His exclusiveness, His Oneness! The lamb is openly tied and those who tremble
and whisper: “But we dare not goad the gentile,” are silenced with thunderous
contempt. The lamb is slaughtered and
roasted whole and fully and openly. It
cannot be hastily covered in a pot where it will not be seen. Its identity cannot be disguised by cutting
its body into pieces. We cannot escape
the danger of the gentile by avoiding confronting and goading him. No.
Precisely the opposite!
The same gentile who thundered and thunders: “Who is the
L-rd? I know not the L-rd and will not
let Israel go!” must be taught the eternal lesson of: “The L-rd is G-d, the
L-rd is G-d!” The gentile does not wish
to “know” G-d, to acknowledge His exclusive kingship. He must be taught that lesson in an open and
bold and humiliating way. He and his
idols must be humbled and broken. The
lamb is taken openly. The lamb is
slaughtered openly. And those
who cringe in populism and whisper: “But
one dare not goad the gentiles…” are silenced by the thunder of the L-rd, whose
commandment is eternalized by the Rabbis of the Great Sabbath, Sabbath
Hagadol. So, let that Sabbath be
understood and appreciated and embraced.
For without it, there cannot be a Passover, an understanding of what
that Passover really is. And without
that, when the Jewish child asks for the meaning of this night, the pathetic
father who knows not what to tell him will doom his child to become a pathetic
as he: practitioner of Jewish ritual, but never, never a religious Jews.
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