A quick first-night-of-Passover post, on a Passover that is both strange and good--and, so, exemplifies the holiday's central feeling: the goodness of openly expecting the strange. How could it be otherwise in history, that is, in life as the experience of 'what comes to be in time,' when that by definition, 'becoming,' is different from 'being,' from 'what is'?
In Judaism, the former, 'becoming,' is human while the latter, 'being,' is divine. 'What is' or 'that which is,' is G-d: when Moses hears, out of the burning bush, "I am that I am" (אֶהְיֶה אֲשֶׁר אֶהְיֶה, ’ehyeh ’ăšer ’ehyeh; Exodus 3:14), the Hebrew verbs pun on one of the repeated names for G-d, YHWH, which can also be related to other forms of 'to be.'
(Hebrew for "I am that I am," with niqqud or diacritical marks for vowels; Monozigote.)
"G-d is a verb." With G-d thus named--although not 'defined,' not 'limited'--as a verb of 'being,' small wonder that Jewish thought is interested in the relationship between the timeless, the divine, and the bound-by-time, human lives. Essentially, if G-d is not of time, why becomes history?
In a more concrete form, that question is central to the Passover ceremony: at the ceremonial meal or Seder, traditionally the youngest person--the person with the least knowledge of history and experience of time--asks, "Why is this night different from all nights?" (?מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה הַלַּיְלָה הַזֶּה מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת; it's called the ma nishtanah after its opening.)
There are several answers (unleavened bread, etc.) but in general the difference is because Passover commemorates difference--or strangeness, including both strangers and metaphysical oddities or 'wonders' (הַמֹּֽפְתִים֙, ha-mophethim). Indeed, those two categories meet in the story of Exodus, when Moses, who 'has lived as a stranger in a strange land' (2:22: גֵּ֣ר הָיִ֔יתִי בְּאֶ֖רֶץ נָכְרִיָּֽה) meets YHWH, the G-d of his ancestors previously unknown to him and, in this story, the source of wonders as eternity intervenes in history.
(The Prince of Egypt [Chapman, Wells, and Hickner 1998]: Moses at the burning bush.)
The Exodus story, and with it Passover, centers on 'wonders'--'miracles,' the presence of the divine in human time. In other words, the goodness of what is strange: if lived experience in history is both ordinary and full of suffering, then--the argument can go--what is outside of time is both not-ordinary, or extraordinary, and a source of goodness.
For the Hebrews in the story, that irruption of strange goodness into familiar awfulness could not have come soon enough; and yet it can only come when it does. Thus, to continue the depiction, a young Moses' intense emotion at the moment of discovery--strictly an epiphany, a 'sudden appearance,' if not quite yet a theophany, 'appearance of the divine':
((The Prince of Egypt [Chapman, Wells, and Hickner 1998]: Moses discovering historical records of the sacrifice of Hebrew children.)
The Passover ceremony builds that, call it, possibility of impossibility into the proceedings. For example, a traditional approach to the ma nishtanah is to address answers to different types of people, one of which is stubborn of understanding: they must be shown the way, the door metaphorically opened.
At a different point, the door is literally opened, in case someone needs to come in--and in the hope that it is Elijah, who as prophet or 'speaker-for' (נְבִיאִים, Nəḇî'îm) represents the divine. In many ancient traditions, strangers are to be treated with respect because they might well be the divine in human guise.
Hence the importance of 'hospitality,' that is, 'relating to strangers'; for example, with food:
Pictured here is Jenny's and my Seder for the first night of Passover, parts of which fudged a little--or rather, in the ancient spirit of the holiday, substituted signs and symbols for what might otherwise have been more literal. There is a particular strangeness to Passover this year, since it is precisely the shared feast that cannot be shared.
And so we felt we could honor that strangeness, in that the holiday itself does, by making good on it. I switched out some of the walnuts for local pecans in the charoset, and with the further addition of bluebonnet honey, suited it to Texas' cHill Country. We opened the door, but Faust didn't deign to come in.
And for our maggid, our 'storytelling,' we joined forces with some friends virtually and started rewatching the movie my Film students have on deck for next week: The Prince of Egypt. A strange substitution, but a wonderful one, in ways we'll go on to discuss.
Chag sameach!
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