Yeshayahu Leibowitz

The last part of the weekly Torah portion of naso (Numbers 4:21-7:89), which is the longest portion in the Torah, is an elaborate and long description of the inauguration of ohel mo’ed, the “Tent of the Meeting” (the tabernacle)—the “place” where Moses “hears” the voice of God and receives the instructions.

Let’s remind ourselves: the first time we hear about the Tabernacle is in the Torah portion of trumah, which opens with God’s instruction to Moses:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:

“They shall make me a tabernacle, and I will dwell within them.” (Exodus 25:8)

As a number of Hassidic rabbis commentators remarked: “within them” should be understood as “within each and every one of them.” Thus, the construction of the tabernacle can also be interpreted as opening up a sacred space within oneself for God to dwell within (or, rather, for realizing that God has been dwelling within all along).

The very last verse of this week’s portion seems to echo this understanding. It says:

וּבְבֹא מֹשֶׁה אֶל אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לְדַבֵּר אִתּוֹ וַיִּשְׁמַע אֶת הַקּוֹל מִדַּבֵּר אֵלָיו מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת אֲשֶׁר עַל אֲרֹן הָעֵדֻת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים וַיְדַבֵּר אֵלָיו:

When Moses went into the Tent of the Meeting to speak with Him, he would hear the Voice speaking to him from above the cover that was on top of the Ark of the Pact between the two cherubim; thus He spoke to him. (Numbers 7:89)

The key words here are “speaking to him”, which in Hebrew are middaber eilav. From the context one would assume that “speaking to him” means God speaking to Moses, as indeed most translators have assumed.

But that is not what the Hebrew says. As Rashi points out, middaber (מִדַּבֵּר), while spelled the same as medaber (מְדַבֵּר), is in a grammatically different form—the reflexive form of hitpa’el. This means that the “him” in the expression “the Voice speaking to him” is not Moses, but God himself.

Here are Rashi’s own words:

מדבר. כמו מתדבר, כבודו של מעלה לומר כן, מדבר בינו לבין עצמו ומשה שומע מאליו:

“…speaking to him: Heb. מִדַּבֵּר. [This form] is [grammatically] the same as מִתְדַּבֵּר [the reflexive form, meaning] “speaking to himself.” It is out of reverence for the Most High to express it in this manner. [God] speaks to Himself, and Moses hears it spontaneously.”

One of Israel’s preeminent Judaic scholar and teachers, the late Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, noted in response: “This not an acoustic event, in which a voice [or a sound, kol] reaches Moses, but rather a process within Moses’ consciousness, who… hears God speaking to Himself within Himself.” And he also points out that with this radical interpretation of the text, Rashi preempts Maimonides’ theory of prophecy by about two hundred years.

Indeed, the tabernacle is that sacred space within where a prophet can “hear” the voice of God. And we are all called to do that. Moses said, “Would that all of Y‑H‑V‑H’s people were prophets, and Y‑H‑V‑H put His spirit upon them.” (Numbers 11:29). We each are called to erect that sacred space, that Tent of the Meeting, within ourselves.

Thus, the construction of the Tabernacle can be seen as a meditative process. We create the sacred space within oneself through loosening our grip on our thoughts, loosening our grips on the inner noise, letting everything be and just BE—thereby giving that kol dmama daka, the “sound of subtle silence” (also known as “still small voice”) to be heard.

What a perfect subject of contemplation before Shavu’ot.

* * *

Leibowitz points out that the only translator of the Bible who noted this grammatical form of middaber and translated correctly was Martin Luther. In his German Bible he translated it as “redend zu sich” (speaking to himself). Leibowitz wonders, could Luther have been familiar with Rashi?

And another German teacher, although much earlier than Luther, who understood God’s speech as an something that occurs within one’s consciousness was Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1327). See previous mention, on the commentaries of both Acharey Mot and Beshalach.

וַיִּקְרָא אֶל מֹשֶׁה וַיְדַבֵּר יְהוָה אֵלָיו מֵאֹהֶל מוֹעֵד לֵאמֹר:

He called to Moses; Y-H-V-H spoke to him from the Tent of Meeting. (Lev. 1:1)

Those familiar with the Torah and/or readers of this blog will remember that this portion follows many chapters in Exodus in which the text dealt mainly with the construction of the mishkan (the tabernacle, here referred to as “the Tent of Meeting”). As mentioned repeatedly in this blog, the Hassidic viewpoint is that the tabernacle is principally an internal structure, an inner sacred space within each person, and it’s up to each of us to “erect” this structure so that God can be realized as dwelling within.

According to this interpretation, therefore, when the Torah says that “Y-H-V-H spoke to him [Moses] from the Tent of Meeting”, it is a voice that Moses, who serves as a metaphor for each one of us, hears from within himself.

This is hinted at by an “anomaly” in the actual text of the Torah scroll. The first word of this Torah portion (and therefore, of the book of Leviticus), vayikra (ויקרא), ends with the letter aleph (א). This letter has the numerical value of 1, and stands for “The one without a second”–the one and only, i.e. God. But in this case, the letter is written smaller than other letters, almost like a superscript:

In the commentary on the first portion of the Torah, bereshit, I mentioned that there are a few places in the Torah scroll in which the letters are written differently, e.g., larger, smaller, or turned at an abnormal angle. These “abnormalities” are neither typos nor decorative devices. Rather, they are used to highlight or amplify important metaphysical points.

The fact that the word vayikra, which means “He [God] called”, ends with a small aleph, highlights the fact that the voice of God that one hears is not a dramatic voice from outside through “cosmic loudspeakers” but rather a “still, small voice” that one hears from within.

And indeed, one of the early Hassids, Rabbi Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl, explains this in his book Meor Eynayim. He says that the small aleph indicates that He, the Master of the world, reduces Himself in order to be present in the soul of every human, to guide us towards Himself, towards aleph, towards the One.

* * *

The word vayikra, which is translated here as “He called”, is from the root kara, which means “to read”, “to call out”, and “to proclaim”. It is identical to the same root in Arabic, qara (or kara; the use of K in Hebrew transliterations vs. Q in Arabic ones is due to differences in pronunciation).

Interestingly, the first word that was revealed to Muhammad and that started his mission was the word iqra (اقْرَأْ), which means to call out (or proclaim) as well as to read. In today’s traditional Qur’anic arrangement, this is the opening words of surah 96, but it is nevertheless understood as the first word of Allah that was revealed to the Prophet.

* * *

In traditional Jewish religious education, the first text that young students of the Torah are exposed to soon after learning the alphabet is the book of vayikra. This is because this book is almost entirely devoted to the worship of God in the tabernacle (hence its Latin name, Leviticus, i.e., pertaining to the Levites, the priestly class, and their duties). This was thought of as the purest of subjects and therefore appropriate for beginning Torah study.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

Towards the end of this portion, after describing the completion of the work, we are told:

וַיְכַס הֶעָנָן אֶת אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת הַמִּשְׁכָּן: וְלֹא יָכֹל מֹשֶׁה לָבוֹא אֶל אֹהֶל מוֹעֵד כִּי שָׁכַן עָלָיו הֶעָנָן וּכְבוֹד יְהוָה מָלֵא אֶת הַמִּשְׁכָּן:

Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of Y-H-V-H filled the tabernacle. Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled upon it, and the glory of Y-H-V-H filled the tabernacle. (Exodus 40:34-35)

But in previous portions we were told that the construction of the tabernacle was not so that God could be dwell in it, but rather in them, i.e. the Israelites. How is it that here we are told that God’s presence fills the tabernacle itself? This is also peculiar given the statement of Solomon, the builder of the first temple:

הִנֵּה הַשָּׁמַיִם וּשְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם לֹא יְכַלְכְּלוּךָ אַף כִּי הַבַּיִת הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בָּנִיתִי:

Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27)

As mentioned in the commentaries on the last few portions, one way of understanding the tabernacle is as a metaphor for an individual. The Hebrew word for tabernacle, mishkan, means “dwelling place”, and according to this interpretation, constructing a mishkan means creating a space within oneself for God’s presence, the shekhinah (a word that comes from the same root as mishkan) to dwell within oneself. The physical body can be seen as the tabernacle housing the shekinah.

When we are told that Moses could not get into the tabernacle when God’s presence filled it, we are told that in order to make one’s body the tabernacle, one’s individuality has to take the back seat. When the individuality takes the driver’s seat, then God’s presence (metaphorically represented by the cloud) moves away.

This comment about how the mishkan was used comes at the end of five weekly portions dedicated to its construction. It suggests to us that the whole purpose of these five portions is to instruct one regarding the proper mode of worship, through bitul (ביטול)– the surrender of the individuality in order for God to take over and for one’s body to become a living, breathing, walking and talking tabernacle.

As St. Paul says in his epistle to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

In our age, the age of the individual, such a bitul, such a surrender of one’s individuality, may sound very scary, or at least alien. It would take a long discussion to show that it does not refer to the surrender of one’s free will or personality. I am traveling through Israel at the moment, and don’t have time to explore this topic in detail, but look forward to doing so in future posts.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

A few verses into the portion, the Torah specifies the effect of building the mishkan:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם:

And they shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them. (Exodus 25:8)

The verse seems to suggest, that the tabernacle, the mishkan, will enable God to dwell (lishkon) among the people of Israel. But that is absurd: God confined to a tent? And does that mean that before the construction, God is not able to dwell among them?

As King Solomon said in his prayer after completing the construction of the first temple:

הִנֵּה הַשָּׁמַיִם וּשְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם לֹא יְכַלְכְּלוּךָ אַף כִּי הַבַּיִת הַזֶּה אֲשֶׁר בָּנִיתִי:

Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! (1 Kings 8:27)

And as the prophet Isaiah declared:

כֹּה אָמַר יְהוָה הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי וְהָאָרֶץ הֲדֹם רַגְלָי אֵי זֶה בַיִת אֲשֶׁר תִּבְנוּ לִי וְאֵי זֶה מָקוֹם מְנוּחָתִי:

Thus says YHVH: Heaven is my throne and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is my resting place? (Isaiah 66:1)

But the verse may be saying something else. Firstly, the Hebrew word for “among them” is betocham,( בְּתוֹכָם), which means “within them.*” And it does not say betocho (בתוכו), which would mean “within it”, referring to the mishkan; it says within them, referring to the people of Israel.

The mishkan spoken of here is primarily a structure within the psyche. Each one of the people of Israel was enjoined on building a space within themselves, open themselves up in such a way so as to allow the divinity within them to shine through, to occupy the psyche. And then, God will dwell within them, within each and every one of them.

Some midrash commentaries support this understanding. We are told by the midrash hagadol that the structure of the mishkan parallels the structure of the cosmos as well as the structure of the human. It is not talking about the physical structure of the human, but the interior one: the one that is made of 248 limbs and 365 tissues, which parallel the 248 positive mitsvoth (commandments), the “do’s”, and the 365 negative mitzvoth, the “don’ts”.

Thus, the mishkan is truly an interior structure that comes into being when one lives according to YHVH’s will. And then YHVH is found to be dwelling in that structure. Even if an exterior, physical mishkan exists, it was only a sensory representation of the internal structure.

This is very reminiscent of the ideas of sacred architecture of both the Hindu and the Buddhist traditions: both model their temple according to their understanding of the human psyche, with the idea that the structure of the temple mirrors both the structure of the psyche and the structure of the universe.

According to these traditions, the actual physical experience of walking into the temple, from its outer boundaries into its sanctum, is said to be a mirror of the process of meditation, through which one realizes the divine Self within. Said differently, the structure of the temple points one to the fact that through meditation one creates this structure within one’s consciousness.

This Torah portion further describes the function of the mishkan:

וְנוֹעַדְתִּי לְךָ שָׁם וְדִבַּרְתִּי אִתְּךָ מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים אֲשֶׁר עַל אֲרֹן הָעֵדֻת אֵת כָּל אֲשֶׁר אֲצַוֶּה אוֹתְךָ אֶל בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל:

There I will meet with you, and I will impart to you—from above the cover, from between the two Cherubim that are on top of the Ark of the Pact—all that I will command you concerning the people of Israel. (Exodus 25:22)

These words are addressed to Moses, but Moses is a metaphor for each and every one of us. For each of us to “hear the voice of God” within us, we need to construct this structure within ourselves, to created that sacred space within us through meditation so that we can be in tune with our deepest interiority—which is not different from the interiority of the universe.

* * *

This Torah portion is the first of five that deal entirely with the details of the construction of the mishkan. In fact, from now until the end of the book of Exodus, the Torah deals with nothing else.

Professor Yeshayahu Leibowitz, in his book “Seven Years of Talks on the Weekly Torah Portions,” points out that the number of verses that the Torah devotes to the construction of the mishkan is 450; in contrast, the number of verses that the Torah devotes to the “construction” of the world in the book of Genesis is 31.

And that reveals the status and purpose of the Torah. It is not a book about cosmology, neither is it a book about history. It is a book that aims primarily at providing a map through which human awareness can align itself with the divinity within. And it is in this light that everything in this text should be interpreted and understood.

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*See a similar comment in the commentary on vayigash

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

וַיָּבֹא מֹשֶׁה בְּתוֹךְ הֶעָנָן, וַיַּעַל אֶל-הָהָר; וַיְהִי מֹשֶׁה, בָּהָר, אַרְבָּעִים יוֹם, וְאַרְבָּעִים לָיְלָה.

Moses entered the cloud, and went up on the mountain. Moses was on the mountain for forty days and forty nights. (Exodus 24:18)

The Torah specifies that Moses stayed at the top of the mountain for 40 days and nights. Since the number 40 appears as a measure of time in various places in the Torah and the rest of the Bible (either as 40 days and nights or as 40 years), it will be good to consider its symbolism.

Whenever time is measured as 40, what follows is an event of great significance. For example, in the story of Noah, we are told that the rain poured down upon the Earth for forty days and nights; the people of Israel spent 40 years in the desert; in the book of Judges, we are told repeatedly that exactly 40 peaceful years separated the rule of one judge from the next; and 40 is the number of days that Goliath kept challenging the people of Israel to find him a worthy opponent before young David rose up to the challenge.

We are also told that Elijah walked from Beer Sheba to Mt. Sinai for 40 days and nights, without stop. And even in the Christian Gospel we are told that Jesus went to the desert without food or drink for 40 days and nights.

What unites all these periods measured by 40 is that they always precede transformative events. 40 is a symbolic unit of potent time that precedes major change, a change that gives voice to the timeless. The flood precedes a new covenant between God and humanity; Moses comes down with the Torah; Elijah receives a revelation of YHVH; Jesus overcomes the devil’s temptations.

It is highly unlikely that in some miraculous way, all these important events always had a period of 40 days or 40 years leading to them. The time is not physical time, and the events are not physical events in time and space. They are symbolic. But what is the symbolism of 40?

We may find a clue in the Hebrew alphabet, in which letters are also numerals. The letter mem (מ), the 14^th letter of the Hebrew alphabet, has the numerical value of 40. In the Kabbalah, that letter represents the element of mayim (מים), Hebrew for water.

Just like the number 40, the element of water often appears in the Torah around potent transformative events: The Flood; baby Moses is saved by Pharaoh’s daughter when she pulls him out of the water (hence his Hebrew name, Moshe, word derived from the verb limshot, i.e. to pull out of the water); the people of Israel pass through the Red Sea on the way to the desert, and once again through the Jordan river on the way from the desert to the Promised Land.

But just as the number 40 in the Torah does not represent actual units of time, water (mayim) in the Torah does not actually mean what we now refer to as water. Rather, it is the principle of transformation. It is related to fecundity, to the creative feminine. It is that which brings about transformation and change. This is very similar to the Vedic literature, in which water symbolizes the feminine aspect of the divine, the principle of fecundity, as well as pure consciousness.

How are we to read these stories in which time is measured by 40? As invitations to action. When “Moses” goes up the mountain for 40 days, it is an invitation for us to go deep into our own height of consciousness and attempt to discover that the Torah is already there, alive within us.

When Elijah walks 40 days and nights, reaches Mount Horeb (Mt. Sinai) and receives the revelation that God is in the “sound of subtle silence” ((1 Kings 19: 11-12), it is an invitation for us to go within and find that sound of subtle silence within ourselves and attempt to be guided by it.

When the people of Israel walk through the Red Sea, having liberated themselves from bondage to Egypt or mitzrayim (lit. “duality of boundaries”), we are also invited to shed our investment in duality and in bound modes of behavior and thinking and embrace the unity and expansiveness, symbolized by Canaan, the Promised Land.

In this manner, understanding the symbolism can enable us to make the Torah a practical guide to life, here and now.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)

I am late in posting this d’var Torah on the parashah of

During the retreat, however, the Coopers passed the mantle on to two young successors who will continue with this retreat: Dr. Jay Michaelson (who was, on that occasion, ordained as a rabbi by Rabbi Cooper) and Beth Resnick-Folk, to whom Shoshana passed on her mantle as a Sufi teacher (into which Shoshana herself was inducted by her teacher, Asha).

On Shabbat, we had a Torah reading. Beth was among those who spoke on the theme of that week’s parashah. She was the only one who prepared her notes in written form in advance, and she generously allowed me to reproduce them below.

*   *   *

In this parashah (vaei’ra, Exodus 6:2 – 9:35) God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh and to tell him to let the People of Israel go. Moses is already quite daunted by this task when God adds: Pharaoh is not going to listen to you. And I’m going to harden his heart. And then it’s going to get really intense. And I’m going to bring out all of my forces against the Egyptians, and make signs and portents. And by the end of this, even the Egyptians are going to know that I am God, when I free my people from their midst.

As I read this, I thought of the path of spiritual awakening and how, at times, it gets very, very intense, more intense that we had ever anticipated.

And like Moses learning that he has to face Pharaoh, sooner or later we have to face what is most difficult inside of us, our own conditioned patterns of feeling like a separate me. . . who has a problem. If we are serious about being awake to Presence, awake to the fundamental non-separateness of life, we have to face our inner Pharaoh.

And what does it mean to face our inner Pharaoh? It means to simply be with these painful (or maybe just unpleasant) thoughts and emotions, without suppressing them and without being lost in our stories about them. It means allowing these thoughts and emotions to rip though us, being willing to let them burn in the fire of our own simple presence. Now. . . . and now. . . . and now.

And, amazingly, any moment of simply being with what presents itself is a moment of freedom, is a moment of non-separation. It doesn’t just lead to freedom and non-separation later.

We come to the Promised Land only by way of Egypt. We discover peace only by meeting what isn’t peace within us. . . . Again. . . . And again. . . . And again.

And, over time, we get it more and more fully, that the opportunity to experience non-separation with life is always here. The gates to the Promised Land are always open. . . . Now. . . . And now. . . . And now.

May we be blessed with peace.
May we be blessed with love.
May we be blessed with clarity.
May we be blessed with courage.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations or to text contributed by others)

Up to now, in the book of Genesis, the first book of the Pentateuch, the history of the Jewish people is told through the story of one family. And indeed, the first few verses in Exodus remind us that Jacob came to Egypt with his extended family of seventy strong. But the Torah almost immediately fast forwards a few hundred years, by which time the people of Israel have become so many that the new Pharaoh is afraid of them and proceeds to enslave them as a precaution.

This is the starting point of a narrative that will unfold in the coming four books: the drama of the People of Israel’s miraculous liberation and exodus from Egypt, and their equally miraculous sojourn in the desert on their way to the promised land, the land of Canaan.

This story is the backbone of Judaism. The history, theology and modes of worship of the Jewish people can all be traced to this story. A Jew’s relationship to this story determines his/her relationship to Judaism; it is, indeed, the source of the collective memory of the Jewish people.

Which is why it is worth repeating what was already mentioned earlier in this blog: that in the Passover hagadah, the formalized recitation of the story of Passover around which the Passover Seder is conducted, we are commanded:

בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות את עצמו כאלו הוא יצא ממצרים.

In each and every generation one is obligated to regard oneself as if one had come out of mitzrayim.

And that has been understood by rabbis of all ages as an internal journey of the soul from bondage in duality (mitzrayim), the land of sorrow and boundaries, to liberation in unity (kna’an), which this parashah describes as–

אֶרֶץ טוֹבָה וּרְחָבָה… אֶרֶץ זָבַת חָלָב וּדְבָשׁ

a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey (Exodus 3:8)

 

It is a journey into the depth of one’s own consciousness, into one’s own Self, for the sake of self discovery and self purification and, ultimately, the liberation of the soul.

* * *

In the story of this parashah, we are told that God attracted Moses’ attention through the burning bush. The Torah tells us:

וּמֹשֶׁה הָיָה רֹעֶה אֶת צֹאן יִתְרוֹ חֹתְנוֹ כֹּהֵן מִדְיָן וַיִּנְהַג אֶת הַצֹּאן אַחַר הַמִּדְבָּר וַיָּבֹא אֶל הַר הָאֱלֹהִים חֹרֵבָה: וַיֵּרָא מַלְאַךְ יְהוָֹה אֵלָיו בְּלַבַּת אֵשׁ מִתּוֹךְ הַסְּנֶה וַיַּרְא וְהִנֵּה הַסְּנֶה בֹּעֵר בָּאֵשׁ וְהַסְּנֶה אֵינֶנּוּ אֻכָּל: וַיֹּאמֶר מֹשֶׁה אָסֻרָה נָּא וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת הַמַּרְאֶה הַגָּדֹל הַזֶּה מַדּוּעַ לֹא יִבְעַר הַסְּנֶה:

Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of Y-H-V-H appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a thornbush; he looked, and the thornbush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ (Exodus 3:1-3)

 

Moses had the presence of mind and the ability to appreciate the miraculous. Perhaps a modern person in the same scene would have exclaimed “wow, that is far out!”, then the iPhone would be pulled out, a few shots would be taken, and soon the Facebook universe would be privy to this fantastic experience. And life would go on.

What kind of awareness do we need today in order to look at the ordinary and see the miraculous? The same awareness that Jacob had when he woke up from his dream and exclaimed—

אָכֵן יֵשׁ יְהוָה בַּמָּקוֹם הַזֶּה וְאָנֹכִי לֹא יָדָעְתִּי

Surely Y-H-V-H is in this place—and I did not know it! (Genesis 28:16)

This is a change of awareness that we are all called to: from being caught up in the boundaries of our own mind to experiencing the liberation of our Self, here and now. We are called to leave mitzrayim behind, and start walking towards the Holy Land.

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So how does the Exodus story become a living reality in one’s life right now? How does one bridge the gap between the historical narrative, which is about something “out there”, and one’s life? In the true Hassidic manner, I’d like to illustrate this with a story of one Passover Seder celebration in our family four decades ago.

My non-observant family owned a pastry business—a bakery, a pastry shop, and a café—in the center of Tel Aviv. Passover was a very important and busy time of year for us. As you may know, Jewish dietary rules require that no leavening is used in the preparation of Passover breads and pastry, so kosher Bakeries either shut down for the holiday, or go through a grueling process of cleaning and purifying their establishment in order to get the all-important rabbinical stamp of approval, “kosher lepesach”, fit for Passover. My father chose to take the latter route, because of the brisk business in Passover. But that meant that he had to stay up all night for a few nights in a row in order to prepare his business for the holiday without shutting it down during the day.

To top it off, on the day of the Seder my parents were on their feet from dawn catering to what seemed like an unending stream of customers who came to shop until the very last minute before sunset. My parents then rushed home, exhausted, and my mother somehow still managed to put the Passover Seder together. We would recite the portion of the Haggadah leading to the meal, and the celebration would pretty much be over after that.

It so happened that in 1973 both my father and I learnt to meditate, and by Passover of 1974, we had almost a year or regular practice under our belt. Meditation had given my father an extra boost of energy and calm, and by the time we sat down to the Seder table, one could already sense that things were going to be different.

Once we started reciting the Haggadah things really got interesting. My dad and I looked at each other with glowing eyes. It was clear to us that the text was not just speaking of some fantastic events in the past that we had a hard time rationalizing. Rather, we had a visceral sense that the text was describing our experience and our own path of self purification and self-discovery in a way that made the story of the Haggadah feel relevant to our lives there and then. The excitement was palpable and infectious. This was the first time that our family we celebrated the Seder wholeheartedly, and told the story of the Exodus as if we were hearing it for the first time.

My father, Zvi Harmelin, passed away 22 years ago this week. This d’var torah—a discourse on the Torah—is in his memory.

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Note: I may not be able to publish a commentary on next week’s Torah portion, since I will be away from a computer until the end of December.

Copyright © 2014 Igal Harmelin-Moria
(Copyright does not pertain to illustrations)