March April Tablet - Flipbook - Page 1
APRIL 2022 I Adar ll/Nisan 5782
VOLUME 88 NO.7
TBITablet
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Torah For the Heart
Rabbi Perlman
Passover Supplement
The Meshugganah Meal
Mark Schneider
Directly from Me to You
Brett Parker
RS What we are Doing
Bat Mitzvah
Simone Gordon
TBI Garden
Tributes
Friday
Night
Live
April, 8th
6:15 p.m.
Passover Supplement
inside with service times
and Pesach guidelines for
this year’s holiday.
.
online
Shalom friends,
I can’t wait for Passover. For me, it’s one of the highlights of
the year – sitting down at the Passover seder, with all of the
sights, smells, sounds, and tastes. What’s the most central
task of the Passover seder? It is the part of the seder called
magid – which means “one who tells” – it refers to the telling of the story. The
word Haggadah comes from the same root letters: mem, gimel, dalet. Haggadah
means “the telling.” So we tell the story, and all of the foods and other rituals are
present to embellish the story and help us reenact it. So far, so good. But what
story are we telling exactly? The Mishnah (Pesachim 10:4) says that we begin
the story from the point of genut (degradation), and we finish the story at the
point of shevach (glory). So it’s the story of going from slavery to freedom. That
is a foundational story and it reminds us of many of our most important values:
human dignity, the importance of freedom, the scourge of oppression, and that
God is a God of morality and justice. However, it’s not the only story in the Haggadah. The Babylonian sage, Rav, says that we begin the story from the time
that our ancestors were enslaved to idol worship, and we finish the story after the
Israelites received the Torah at Mt. Sinai. The Haggadah preserved both stories,
because they are both important.
We need to reflect on what it meant to be slaves, to have no political power, and
to be exploited. By telling this story and reenacting it, we are meant to recommit
ourselves to maintaining our freedom and the freedom of others. This story is as
relevant today, as it has ever been. Within the United States, we must be vigilante in protecting our democracy and working to help it thrive. And tragically, in
many places around the world, there is slavery and oppression. There, too, we
can support groups and organizations that are working to free those who are enslaved and fighting against terror and injustice. But Rav’s story is important, too.
In many ways, it applies to us in a more personal way. It’s about spiritual and
psychological challenges. One way of telling Rav’s story is to put it within the
framework of the Egypt story. As Rabbi Arthur Green writes:
“Mitrayim (Egypt) is derived from the word meaning, ‘(narrow) straits’ . . . When
we speak today about ‘coming out of Egypt’ or the liberation we are to seek on
Passover, those ‘straits’ are usually reapplied to our own spiritual situation. What
is it that is closing us in? In what places in our lives are we too tight, too constricted, unable to see or experience life broadly and open-handedly? Our Mitrayim is an ‘Egypt’ of the mind or soul from which we need to make the long trek
to freedom,” (Siddur Lev Shalem, pg. 43a).
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