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Passover
In the Haggadah (the guide we use at our seder) it says:
In every generation, each person should feel as though she or he were redeemed from Egypt…For the Holy One redeemed not only our ancestors, He redeemed us with them.
What could this possibly mean? It reminds us of another famous midrash that teaches that all of us were present at Mount Sinai when the Torah was given: all souls past, present, and future. In the Book of Deuteronomy the same point is made when God says, “I make this covenant…not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before the Lord our God, and with those who are not with us here this day.” (29:13) Passover is not something that happened way back when that we are commemorating when we gather at our seder tables. Each year, we are commanded to tell the story of the exodus to help remind us that we are still coming out of Egypt. By commanding us to re-tell the story, the tradition is asking us to re-live the story. Michael Strassfeld writes, “Jewish history is also a timeless present…We are meant to reexperience the slavery and the redemption that occurs in each day of our lives. It is our own story, not just some ancient history that we retell at Passover.”
Judaism is a full-contact sport. If we see our holidays not simply as ways to remember and honor what has already happened, but as guides that can illuminate our lives today, season by season, then the tradition comes to life as well.
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Tu B'Shvat
Tu B’Shvat (the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat) is known as the New Year for the Trees. It is an ancient holiday that celebrates the trees, that celebrates our land, and that celebrates our relationship to that land. It is a holiday that now more than ever, is designed to raise our awareness about how we can repair that relationship -and again learn to work with the earth.
Ellen Bernstein has written “Four Questions for Tu B’Shvat”
Why do we celebrate the trees’ new year in mid-winter?
Throughout winter, the trees are dormant; the land is cold and the trees can’t absorb moisture and nutrients from the soil. In the Land of Israel, by Tu B’Shvat, the earth begins to warm, the trees draw water and nutrients up through their roots, and the first buds appear. Tu B’Shvat is a celebration of the trees and the waters they depend upon.
Why do we celebrate Tu B’Shvat with a seder?
The Kabbalists were Jewish mystics who lived in Safed, a small community in northern Israel, several hundred years ago. They developed the first seder for Tu B’Shvat. Seder means “order,” and the Kabbalists developed a mysterious order for their seder. Today, a seder provides an opportunity to come together with family and friends to learn and celebrate together.
How is this seder different from the Passover seder?
At the Passover seder we tell the story of our history and we eat foods – matzah, maror and herbs – that symbolize the experience of our journey from slavery to freedom, and from Egypt to the Land of Israel. By re-experiencing our moment of liberation, we reconnect with what it truly means to be free. At the Tu B’Shvat seder we tell the stories of our relationship with Creation, and we eat all kinds of fruits to remind ourselves of the miracle of nature, and to see ourselves within the realm of nature. When we experience ourselves as intrinsically united with nature, we are reminded that we are put on this earth to till and tend it, not to usurp or harm it.
What is the order of the Tu B’Shvat seder?
The Kabbalists taught that we live in four dimensions or four worlds at the same time: the physical world, the emotional world, the intellectual world and the spiritual world. The four worlds provide a natural order for the Tu B’Shvat seder: Earth for physical, water for emotional, air for intellectual, and fire for spiritual. The elements are integral parts of many Jewish rituals. We acknowledge fire, air, water, and earth every Shabbat, when we light candles, say Kiddush, wash hands, and break bread.
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Simchat Torah
Simchat Torah means rejoicing with the Torah. The Torah is compared to the Earth, to the Land. At every bar or bat mitzvah, each child is given a piece of the Torah, of the land, to care for. Diana Wolkstein compares this to Aboriginal people in Australia, whose lives are bound to the guardianship of the land. They are instructed at birth to return to and care for their birthplace by singing its songs. They do this for themselves and the community. It is their belief that if each person is given a part of the land to look after, the entire land will be cared for. Our land is the Torah – each of us has a piece of the Torah that is ours to caretake. And on Simchat Torah, when we read the very end and the very beginning of the Torah, all of its many stories come to life.
And on Simchat Torah, we dance. We take out all the Torahs and we dance with them, since this is the most time-honored way of bringing stories to life.
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