Shabbat HaGadol: When You Cut Off More Than Just the Turkey
Rabbi David Baum, Parashat
Tzav 2013/5773
Congregation Shaarei Kodesh
Passover
is one of, if not the most widely observed Jewish holiday during the year. During these two nights, families gather
together, usually with a Maxwell Hagadah, to engage in the ritual of the Seder. Often times, your family who you might not
spend much time with or even speak to for months or even a year, come together
and we are a bit nostalgic with this notion.
But
there is the other side – the stress of family.
There’s a reason why almost every mother and father tells their child,
“you can pick your friends, but you can’t pick your family,” because sometimes,
they can really bother you. Family
tensions during the holidays are a part of almost all religions. Here’s a quote from Judith Johnson, an
interfaith minister (for the full article, please
click here):
“Below
the surface of many family holiday gatherings are mini dramas playing out,
contemporary grudges and resentments and unresolved childhood issues. Nothing
hurts with such emotional depth as these familial battles. For the tender-hearted,
this can be a psychological mine field while self-righteous bullies reign
unchallenged. Many silently suffer through these events while dutifully and
unconsciously assuming their childhood role as the family black sheep or
underdog. Those in secondary roles are often either complicit or oblivious,
leaving the underdog to fend for his or herself.”
What’s
an example that you might be familiar with?
Remember the movie Avalon? There
was a scene[1]
where the family is about to sit down for a Thanksgiving meal and they are
waiting for Uncle Gabriel who is late every year, and the debate happens –
should we wait for Gabriel to cut the turkey?
Every year, they wait, but this year the kids were more antsy than usual
and they said, “Ok, we are cutting the turkey without him!” They are eating, he comes in, and says the
famous words, “You cut the turkey without me!”
Then immediately Uncle Gabriel storms out. “That’s it, I’m leaving and I’m never coming
again. Now that you are rich in the
suburbs, you have changed. In Avalon,
the old neighborhood, we waited until every relative is there until we
eat!” And like that, the family is
fractured. Let’s take a step back – the
fight is over turkey! But these fights
over the little things can lead us to take steps back and abandon these family
meals. But we cannot let this happen
with Passover.
Judith
Johnson gave tips on how to save your family holidays, and now I’m going to
give mine.
Today,
I will give you some tips on how YOU can truly make this night different than
ALL other nights.
I
want to focus on one part of the seder, the four sons, specifically, the wicket
son.
The
wicked son says, “What is this service to you?” “Mah HaAvodah Hazot
Lachem”? Here is how the Hagadah answers
this question, “To you” and not to him.
And since he excluded himself from the community, he is a heretic. And you should blunt his teeth and say to
him, “It is because of what Adonai did for me when I went free from Egypt
(Exodus 13:8); “for me” and not for him – if he had been there he would not
have been redeemed.”
The
problem with the Rasha’s question is that he excludes himself. He commits the cardinal sin of the Passover
seder – he takes himself OUT of the story.
The word Hagadah comes from the root Le’hagid, and it comes from the book
of Exodus 13:8: 8 “V’Higadetah L’vincha” And you shall explain to your son on
that day, 'It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from
Egypt.'
When
he didn’t like what was going on in the meal, he took himself out of it, like
uncle Gabriel. Exclusion and
excommunication can go both ways. In our
parashah this week, we are introduced to a new term that some of you might have
heard about – Karet. And no surprise,
the excommunication has to do with what else: food!
“7:20
But the person who, in a state of uncleanness, eats flesh from the Lord’s sacrifices
of well-being, that person shall be cut off from his kin. 21 When a person
touches anything unclean, be it human uncleanness or an unclean animal or any
unclean creature, and eats flesh from the Lord’s sacrifices of well-being, that
person shall be cut off from his kin.”
The
word the Torah uses – Nichretah – he shall be cut off. What does it mean to be cut off? According to the JPS commentary, the verb k-r-t was a metaphor borrowed from the
cutting down of trees and other forms of vegetation. The idea is, if you cut off a branch, the
tree can recover, but if you cut the tree off at its root, it cannot grow back
again. There are many interpretations
for Karet – it could be death by God’s hand, it could have meant banishment,
which would have ultimately resulted in death or the extinction of a family or
clan. But if we play with the grammer of
the word, we see that it is passive – he shall be cut off – is it possible that
it is not God who cuts the person off from the community, but the person
themselves who cut themselves off?
In
the book of Leviticus, one could get this terrible decry in a number of ways,
violating the Sabbath and other holidays, violation of laws of purity, and
failure to circumcise one’s male child at the age of 8 days old. I think the holidays and circumcision have a
common theme. How do we spend the holidays
together in a Jewish way? The answer: with family, but there is a new trend – the
country club Seder. At this Seder,
strangers gather together, or sometimes a small family who doesn’t want to
cook, or they don’t have a place, or the family lives up north, and they come
for a 30-minute Seder. I do not envy the
rabbi who has to run these Seders as hundreds of people are staring at you and
you know what they are thinking – when are we finally going to eat! There are no family fights, and I’m sure it’s
as quiet as a gourmet restaurant, and it’s clean – no one gets their hands
dirty, except the help of course. But is
this right? Judith Johnson thinks so – In
strategy 7, when all the other strategies fail, she writes: Strike out on your
own for the holidays. If your family gatherings are simply unbearable for
you, don't go! There is no law that you have to spend the holidays with your
family…Maybe you just want to have a light-hearted time. If so, then give
yourself the gift of creating that for yourself with our without other people.”
Thanksgiving,
maybe, and if you want permission to not spend it with your family, ok, under
extreme circumstances, I’ll give you permission, but I cannot give you
permission to do this for Passover! In
fact, I cannot imagine a ‘clean’ Pesach like this! Sure, you won’t have stress, but you have
essentially cut yourself off from the people who might stress you out the most,
but also care about you the most. Often
times, we think that our problems are so big that they are beyond repair, like
the cutting off at the root in the example of karet.
Not
circumcising your child at 8 days as part of our tradition is even worse – the
family is saying, the covenant doesn’t matter – we are cutting ourselves off at
the root of the collective Jewish family.
Pesach
is a counter to this notion, an anti-Karet holiday. We don’t exclude people, rather, we bring them
in. It’s a great challenge to open
yourself up! To open up your table to
new people, and sometimes, to open your table to your family who you might be
cut off from during the year but you realize that no matter how serious the
disagreement, the branches can grow back.
Pesach is the time to share, to let your guard down, to bring in and
repair, rather than cut out.
Does
it annoy me that I have family members who cannot be away from their phones or
tablets for more than 5 minutes, even when I tell them, no phones allowed at
the Seder? Or when my father used to
tell the same embarrassing story of us when we were kids. Yes! But
I won’t cut them out or cut myself off because of it.
We
all have our cut the turkey moments, and it goes both ways. One year, you may be the insulted, the next,
you may be doing the insulting, but we cannot be the wicked son and separate
ourselves from our stories. Pesach is a
time to come back, and to ask questions.
All too often, we give up on Judaism, on community, and on God, because
of something we think is such a big deal, but when we look back on it, maybe it
isn’t. Maybe it was an insult from
someone at shul that you could not let go of so you left, maybe it was praying
for wealth and getting poverty in return, or maybe it was something more
serious. In the end, the solution isn’t
karet – cutting ourselves off or cutting off others – the solution is Kol
Dichvin – Let all who are hungry come and eat, Let all who are in need, come
and share the Pesach meal. The text
isn’t repeating itself – it saying, there are those who can physically hungry
who we need to invite in, but there are also those who are hungry for
relationship – who are lonely and need their family. They need to reconnect to their story, both
the story of our people, and the story of your family.
During
this Pesach, may your turkey be cut on time, however you define ‘on time’; may
the table be messier at the end than at the beginning; may your family be too
loud for you to handle because that’s the way it should be; may the stories
told be more savory than even the brisket; and may all of you have what I have
am blessed to have – a messy but perfect family that I could never have chosen
on my own because God chose them for me.
Shabbat
Shalom.
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