Treasures of the Heart: Holiday Stories That Reveal the Soul of Judaism - Couverture rigide

Chapter 1

passover

About Passover

Passover (in Hebrew Pesach) is celebrated in the spring on the full moon of the first month of the Jewish calendar (March or April). The first of the three Jewish pilgrimage festivals, it commemorates God's redemption of the Hebrew people from slavery and their birth as a nation.

Birth is a terrifying and joyous event. The Hebrews were slaves, yet they were afraid to leave Egypt-which is called in Hebrew Mitzraim meaning "narrow place"-to follow their leader Moses into the wilderness. God had to create plagues-great, horrific signs and wonders-to convince them to leave slavery. It was the last and tenth plague that gave Passover its name, for God "passed over" the Hebrews and struck down the firstborn throughout Egypt. God commanded: "You shall tell this story to your children," and since then, as we tell the story, we continue to give birth to ourselves and to freedom, both physical and spiritual. The act of reliving the desert experience continues throughout the eight days of the holiday (seven days in Israel).

During Passover, tradition requires that Jews refrain from eating chametz (leavened foods), which means that all grain products that can rise-bread, cake, even pasta-are replaced by matzah (unleavened bread). In a wish to eat the same food that our ancestors took with them in their rush from Egypt, we make matzah from grain that is prepared and baked too quickly to rise. Matzah, the simplest and humblest of food, is known as the bread of poverty and also as the bread of freedom.

Wanting to live in a new way, as the Hebrews did in the desert, many Jews use Passover preparations as a time for a thorough spring-cleaning. In a traditional household, as the holiday approaches, a sense of urgency builds. All chametz food is eaten, given away, or sold to Gentile neighbors. New food is bought for Passover. Pots and dishes used throughout the year are put away or purified with boiling water to take away all traces of the old. The night before the eve of Passover, a search for the smallest breadcrumbs is conducted throughout the house by candlelight and all crumbs that are found are swept away by a feather. This intensive and thorough search is the culmination of an interior spring-cleaning. We look for and expel those inflated, puffed-up parts of ourselves that enslave us and take up space that might be made available for experiencing a new freedom.

On the eve of the first day of Passover, family and friends gather in their homes to retell the Passover story with a ritual meal called the Seder. On the table is a large Seder plate on which are arranged examples of ritual food as well as other symbolic objects to be used during the evening. The exact choices vary according to the family tradition. They include a lamb shank or a beet to symbolize the blood of the Passover sacrificial lamb that was placed before each door so that God would "pass over it," a green vegetable representing spring, bitter herbs for the bitterness of slavery, an egg for rebirth, matzah for the unleavened bread, haroset (walnuts, wine, apples, cinnamon, and honey) for the mortar used in making the bricks, and a cup to welcome the prophet Elijah. Two recent additions are a cup to represent the well of Miriam, Moses' sister, which supplied the people with water in the desert, and an orange as a response to the rabbi who declared that it was as unlikely for there to be a woman rabbi on the pulpit as an orange on a Seder plate. As the wine is sipped and the ritual food is eaten, each person at the table reads, in turn, a part of the story of the exodus from Egypt.

The story of Passover has roots that go back to God's warning to Abraham that his descendants would be enslaved in a foreign land for four hundred years. It involves hundreds of stories, legends, and traditions. From as early as the second century c.e., the rabbis debated how to bring order to the story of the formation of the Jewish people. An anthology of stories and traditions was agreed upon and written down in the eighth century in a specific order in a book called the Haggadah, meaning "story." Each generation has revised the Passover Haggadah according to its own understanding of liberation.

The story and the ritual of the Seder invite the participation of all generations. In many ways, it is a children's holiday. Often, the holiday takes place in the home where the grandparents, rather than the rabbis, are in charge. There is a lot of singing and eating ritual food with the fingers. The children are allowed to stay up late and encouraged to ask questions. The youngest child's asking of "The Four Questions" starts off the Seder.

Passover is fun! I was taken to my first Seder before I could speak. My earliest memories are of a table that stretched into two rooms, candles, delicious smells, many languages, many children, laughter, and singing. The white tablecloths always got dirty. Drinks spilled and no one worried. My grandfather spoke in Yiddish and read in Hebrew. I didn't understand his words. But from watching my older cousins, I knew that one day when I was grown up (five or six years old), it would be my turn to ask "The Four Questions."

At the Seder, "hide and seek" is played by the leader and the children. At the beginning of the meal, the leader holds up a piece of matzah called the afikoman (meaning "dessert"), and says, "I'm going to break the afikoman into two halves and hide one of the halves. Whoever finds it can claim a prize, but we cannot finish the meal until the missing half is found."

"Prize" is a magic word for the children. Its promise draws them to stay close to the table even though the Passover meal with its readings, songs, and discussions may go on for three, four, even five hours. At the end of the meal, when the long-awaited moment arrives, the leader fusses over the child who has found the afikoman, thus making it clear that the children are essential and that the ceremonial meal cannot be completed without them. The afikoman is then broken into small pieces and all the generations "eat" part of the story.

At one Passover Seder, my rabbi, Shlomo Carlebach, said, "Knowledge doesn't come from the head. It must be tasted. We need teeth to cut the infinite and make it finite."

Exodus

I Will Become Who I Will Become

At the Passover festival the rabbis remind us that "in every generation each of us should see ourselves as if we had come out of Egypt." If we imagine that at the very moment that we are leaving Egypt (three thousand years ago) God is commanding us to tell the story of what is happening to us to our children when we arrive in the Promised Land, we realize that through stories and storytelling God is linking us to our ancestors and to our descendants. Let there be memory and awareness. God is telling us. Let there be stories! What follows is the full story of Passover, beginning with Jacob and his family going to Egypt because of the famine in Canaan (around 1450 b.c.e.) and ending with Moses leading the Hebrew people out of Egypt (around 1250 b.c.e.).

This is a story of birth and transformation. An entire people moves from slavery to freedom. The everyday world splits apart, and raw energy pours out in unexpected forms-visions, snakes, parting of the seas.

In the story, I refer to the Red Sea as the Reed Sea, which is the translation of its Hebrew name. And from the moment God appears as the burning bush, I follow the tradition of the rabbis of the first century by often using the name Shechinah for God's feminine presence on earth. As for the sources of the story, the elaborations on Moses' sister, Miriam, are mine; the other legends that I've woven into the biblical text are the rabbis'.

Before the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt, their ancestor Joseph had been governor of Egypt. He had advised Pharaoh to store grain when it was in abundance so there would be food in times of famine. Pharaoh had followed Joseph's advice and when the famine came, and spread to Canaan, Joseph asked Pharaoh to allow his father, Jacob, to settle in Egypt. Pharaoh agreed.

Jacob and his seventy relatives went down from Canaan to Goshen. There, they tended their flocks, lived peacefully, and had children-and more children. But after Joseph's death, a new pharaoh ruled Egypt who was afraid of Joseph's relatives who were becoming numerous and powerful. He spoke to his advisor Balaam who offered the Hebrew men large wages to give up shepherding and build pyramids.

Within months, Balaam reduced their wages and then took away their land. Every morning the men mixed water, sand, and straw to make bricks. All day they carried, loaded, and set bricks. At night they were so tired they nearly fell asleep in the fields. Their wives brought their husbands dinner. And after the men ate, the women held mirrors in front of their husbands and whispered, "Look into the mirror. Oh, who is that beautiful woman next to you?" The men turned to their wives, and the Hebrews continued to have children.

When Pharaoh saw that the number of Hebrew children was increasing, he summoned the two most powerful Hebrew midwives, Shifrah and Puah, and said to them, "When your women give birth, let the girls live. Throw the boys into the Nile." The midwives feared their God more than Pharaoh and let all the children live. Pharaoh summoned the midwives again and said, "Your people are continuing to multiply."

"What can we do?" they protested. "The women are so lively they give birth before we arrive." Pharaoh then ordered any Egyptian who found a newborn Hebrew boy to throw that child into the Nile.

During this time, a young Hebrew midwife named Miriam went to her father, Amram. After Pharaoh's decree, Amram, a righteous man and the great-grandson of Jacob, separated from his wife, for he did not want to cause the death of a newborn child.

Mi...

"In Treasures of the Heart, Diane Wolkstein writes with grace and
power, seamlessly weaving midrashic traditions into the Biblical
narratives. She illuminates her texts with profound spiritual
understandings of the past, nuanced so as to address the contemporary
reader. A master story-teller."
-- Avivah Zornberg, author of The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis

“Diane Wolkstein brings her poetic insight to the bible stories. We are present with Hannah, Judith, and Ruth, as we were with the stories of the forefathers. In her commentaries, she argues with God and faces the terrible questions of war and violence. Like Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth, which changed our perceptions of the ancient world, Treasures of the Heart is a daring and important book.”
--Grace Paley, author of The Little Disturbances of Man

"Diane Wolkstein's Treasures of the Heart is a heart opener -- authentic, current, and available to readers of all backgrounds. An inspiration!" -- Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Author of Wrapped in Holy Flame and Lecturer, Naropa University
"Diane Wolkstein has woven biblical, rabbinic, Hassidic, and feminist Jewish stories into the cycle of Jewish festivals to give new energy and life to both the stories and the celebrations."
-- Rabbi Phyllis Berman & Rabbi Arthur Waskow, authors of Seasons of Our Joy
"Treasures of the Heart will be treasured by all those who seek to join the temporal with the spiritual in Jewish tradition. With her bold and deep understanding of our most compelling Biblical and rabbinic stories, Diane Wolkstein lets Jewish holy days shed a new light on how we live now -- and how we can live in the future."
-- Alicia Ostriker, author of The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions


"This book is aptly named -- Diane Wolkstein skillfully interweaves biblical text, midrash, Kabbalah, and her own inspired insights to reach into the heart of these stories that are the precious legacy of the Jewish soul. Wolkstein retells them to delight the spirit of young and old, beginner and scholar. These are stories to read aloud, to share with our children, to hug to ourselves for inspiration and comfort. Each generation is commanded to create its own midrash. Treasures of the Heart is a marvelous fulfillment of that mitzvah."
-- Professor Diane Sharon, Department of Bible and Ancient Semitic Languages Jewish Theological Seminary of America