Hol Ha-Moed Pesach

Margaret Holub - April 27, 2024
Exodus 33:12 - 34:26 / Ezekiel 37:1-14

Last Friday night before Pesach Adina was laughing about the funny Pesach contradiction of taking matzah, which is supposed to be flat and simple and poor, grinding it up, mixing it with beaten egg whites and sugar and nuts, putting jam between the layers and chocolate glaze on top and turning it into the most delicious, and specifically the tallest, cakes possible. And then she stopped herself and said something like, “Well isn’t that a good idea, actually? Taking the bread of affliction and making something beautiful out of it?”

I’m always struck at the seder by how things get mixed together: parsley and salt water, matzah and horseradish, charoset made of apples, nuts and wine:

Sh’b’kkol ha-laylot ain anu matbilin afilu paam achat — ha-laila hazeh sh’tey f’a’mim — on all other nights we don’t even dip vegetables once; tonight we dip them twice.

This year my revelation at the seder was the Hillel sandwich: Rabban Gamliel would say: Those who have not explained three things during the seder have not fulfilled their obligation. These three things are: the Pesach offering, matzah and maror.

So we read a paragraph about each. And then we follow the recipe of Hillel and combine them into a sandwich. It not being the practice for most of us these last two millennia to offer a Pesach lamb as a sacrifice, we make our sandwich instead with matzah, horseradish and haroset. At our table Monday night we were making our sandwiches, oohing and ahhing about how great they taste together, and why don’t we make these other times in the year, and I suddenly said aloud: Oh! Integration… We layer the symbols and their stories and eat them together! We layer the bitter and the sweet. We layer the biblical account of Mitzrayim with the words of Hillel and Rabban Gamliel. Layers!

There is that wonderful debate in the haggadah about where the story of Pesach begins: Shmuel begins in the obvious place: “Avadim hayinu l’faroh b’mitzrayim…” We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. But Rav begins earlier: Mitchilah ovdei avodah zarah…” In the beginning our ancestors worshiped idols…” I really love this narrative ambiguity.

And then there is the equally perplexing question of where the story ends… With the splitting of the Red Sea? At Mount Sinai? Dayeinu, which sort of tells the story in order, concludes with the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. But then the whole second half of the seder points us forward into another kind of time entirely: the lost piece of afikomen is found, reunited with its smaller half and imbibed, Elijah the prophet (and at many tables Miriam the prophet as well) are welcomed. The epic last verse of Had Gadya is sung: Then came the Holy Blessed One and slew the Angel of Death who killed the shochet who slaughtered the ox who drank the water that quenched the fire that burnt the stick that beat the dog that bit the cat that ate the kid my father bought for two zuzim— had gadya had gadya.

I must be into verticality these days because I remember that in the last drash I gave a couple weeks ago, talking about Moses and Aaron in Shemini, I asked us all to visualize a 3-D map of their various journeys. And today I am realizing that one way to think about Passover is that it tells a story. But another way is to think of it as a sandwich. Or a very fancy and delicious layer cake. It’s about layers. Verticality.

All of this to bring us to the most delicious and complex layer of the whole cake: the haftara read on Shabbat Hol Ha-moed Pesach, Ezekiel 37:1-14.

Today is the Shabbat in the middle of Pesach. We are about to read the fantastic special Torah reading for the Shabbat of hol ha-moed of both Pesach and Sukkot. It comes immediately following the catastrophe of the Golden Calf. Moses has just intervened with HASHEM and prevented the destruction of the Israelite people. Now he demands a more personal encounter with the Divine. This is the mysterious and magical moment of God hiding Moses in a cleft in a rock, covering Moses’ eyes, as it were, with the divine Hand, and passing by, showing God’s back, as if such a thing could be, to Moses for a moment.. Then Moses ascends the mountain again with two new stone tablets in hand. And God passes before him calling out ADONAI ADONAI EL RACHUM V’CHANUN…

Another incredibly cosmic layer of the Pesach cake! Our teeth don’t even sink into it until the middle of the holiday. And then, after that… the haftara (read Ezekiel 37:1-14.)

We could think and talk about this passage forever! Let me say just a couple of things that seem important to me on this particular Shabbat hol ha-moed Pesach in this particular year, 5784.

First this passage also contains a narrative sandwich: first the bones come together, then they are knit together with sinews, then comes skin and only then spirit. Layers.

Second there is a debate in the Talmud, in Sanhedrin 92b, about whether this is an actual prediction of something that will happen or whether it is a parable. And then, if it is a prediction of something that will happen, what exactly will happen? And to whom? Specifically, is this about techiat ha- metim, the resurrection of the dead at the end of history? Is it about individual people or about the whole Jewish people? Or is it about the resurrection of a specific category of people (it lists a number of interesting and surprising possibilities, including Shmuel suggesting that maybe it would be exactly those people who denied the resurrection of the dead who would one day be resurrected! God as jokester for sure!)

All of this is part of the sandwich, of the layer cake of Pesach. And the reason that it is important to see Pesach as a layer cake instead of as a story is because in a story one thing happens and then the next and then the next. But in sandwich or a cake, all the ingredients are present at once. You may not taste every one in every bite, but they are all there at the same time.

And this is how I am understanding the hope of Pesach this year. The seder includes the remembrance of idolatry, the bitterness of slavery, the flat bread of flight, the sweetness of liberation, the saltiness of bitter water, the rock of Torah, the faint fragrance of the Divine Hand and Face, the remembrance of the Temple, the teachings of the rabbis, the terrible cycle of smiting, burning, hitting and slaying, its eventual end in the elimination of the Angel of Death and even the reconstituting of all that has been lost and broken and destroyed throughout the millennia.

It is all present at once.

And so when we hear tell of any of the terrible events of today or see any of the Pharaohs and taskmasters on the horizon, we have this remembrance imbedded in us that there are many more layers to the cake than just the bitter one. And all are present at once.

It is confusing. It is confounding. It is so hard to hold all of it in your mouth, or your consciousness, at once. But that is the training, the practice of Pesach — to hold in our mouths, and in our consciousness, not only the bitterness of Mitzrayim and the rather horrible story of how we got out, but also the end of a seemingly endless cycle of violence and the coming together of long-dead bones and the breathing in of spirit and the possibility of repair and renewal. Is it a parable, or will it really happen? We don’t know, any more than we know the beginning of the story. But it is present with us right now. And we can taste it.