Pesach - Enjoying the Journey
As we retell the ancient story from the Haggadah, we not only tell of our ancestors’ exodus, we make the journey ourselves. Through the opening part of the seder ritual, we take ourselves back in time to re-experience the bitterness of slavery. Collectively, we make the statement Avadim Hayyinu – “We were slaves.” Think of it! It is an incredibly radical act. We begin the story of the history of our people in a way quite unlike that of other ancient peoples. We claim no high family descent, no history of proud kings or great riches. Instead, we say, but without shame – we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.
Afterwards, we taste the bitter herbs and eat the lachma anya, the bread of affliction. This symbolic act has two important functions. First of all, the recollection of what it means to be oppressed calls upon us to identify with all those who are downtrodden. Although this night is about our struggle, our journey – it is implicitly also about the struggle of all those who suffer from injustice. It is no accident that the Exodus story was taken up by the African peoples who were sold into slavery in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, as a narrative of hope for the future. They saw in the journey of the Jewish people the very journey to freedom that they longed for – and would eventually make. It is in recognition of this experiential connection that many Jewish communities now sing “Go Down Moses” as part of their seder ritual, from the tradition of the Negro spiritual.
The second function of symbolically internalising the bitterness of slavery is to place us in a better position to appreciate what the whole idea of redemption might mean. Most of us, born into the privileged, developed world, understand freedom only in terms of what might be called “freedom to.” We have the freedom to speak our minds; to live our lives as we choose; to pursue individual happiness. Few of us have any real, lived experience of “freedom from”: freedom from arbitrary abuses of power, from fear, or from poverty. Thank God that this is so. But our ancestors understood that only a person who has had some taste, however symbolic, of the reality of suffering can feel the true joy and relief at the message of deliverance, of being redeemed through grace. Only someone who grasps the concept of “freedom from” can say, with a full heart, the famous first lines of the Dayyeinu prayer – “Even if you had only brought us out of Egypt,” and done nothing else for us – it would have been enough- Dayyeinu. The jolliness of the tune we use rather masks the serious message of the words. I believe we are really meant to feel the sentiments the song expresses. Freedom, freedom alone is enough.
By this understanding, of course, the Promised Land becomes little more than the icing on cake. Contrary to the thinking of the modern day Jewish zealots who prioritise the land even over basic ethics, the land does not constitute the redemption – it is rather simply the logical outcome of it. A free people needs a place in which to be free. And that is as true for Israel as it is for any other people. All the same, I find it significant that “the arrival,” per se, is not such an integral part of the quintessential Jewish journey. The Exodus is what has shaped Jewish consciousness – not the Conquest. The Torah itself ends before the people enter and take possession of the land. Equally, the primary reference to land in the Haggadah is only the final line, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
In both cases, our forbears who shaped these texts actively decided where the focus should be. And in both cases, the focus was not on the end (however wonderful we might hope that it will be), but on the process of getting there.
‘The journey’is a metaphor for life, and I personally find this Jewish emphasis on the process of the journey, rather than on the destination quite helpful. So often in life, we think we know where we are going when suddenly, a single event occurs that changes the course of our lives irrevocably. We cannot ever be certain that we will reach a particular destination or goal in life. Even after our deaths, Jewish tradition makes no unequivocal claims about where we will go or what our end will be. The wisest of our sages counsel us not to preoccupy ourselves with the subject. They say we should focus rather on making sure that we prove ourselves worthy of the redemption we have already experienced. They encourage us to live up to our freedoms - and to grow into our responsibilities.
In this season of our redemption, on our festival of freedom, may God grant us the strength and courage to keep moving along our collective and individual paths - and bless us with the ability to enjoy the journey.
Rabbi Janet Burden
West Central Liberal Synagogue
Ealing Liberal Synagogue |
