Yesterday I had the privilege to join an amazing operation that is held every Thursday morning in Jerusalem. It is an operation for packing and providing generous, full baskets of food to victims of terror and their families. There were many dozens of empty baskets on the floor, waiting to be filled, and a handful of volunteers worked hard to put bags of vegetables, fruit, meat, bread, juice and other groceries in every basket in order to enable those families to enjoy rich Shabbat meals. What is nice about this charity organization, Ohr Meir & Bracha, is that the manager does not take any salary to herself from it. She does this for free. What's even nicer is the possibility for all the donors to see with their own eyes how their money turns into food baskets and then being delivered to the victims homes. Many of these donors come to help with the packing, which makes it doubly meaningful for them. You can hear there a blend of languages, including American English, as some of these volunteers are new immigrants from America. Next Thursday this operation is going to be much larger than usual, since it would be just before the holiday of Passover, to enable those families to have proper Passover meals. Here are a few pictures I took there:
This coming shabbat is the shabbat before the holiday of Passover, and it is called "Shabbat Haggadol", "the Big Shabbat". This is a very special shabbat, and all around the world, but especially in Jerusalem, there are special, festive sermons given on this occasion in synagogues. Why is this shabbat called shabbat Haggadol? There are a few reasons for it, but the main one is the fact that on this Shabbat a miracle happened to the People of Israel in the year of the Exodus from Egypt: they took lambs and sacrificed them as the Passover sacrifice (Exodus 12: 3,6). What makes this a miracle? This is so if we realize that lambs were considered to be gods in Egypt. Just as in India cows are considered holy animals that should not be harmed and are believed to be gods by the pagans, so in Egypt lambs and cows used to be gods. The Israelites were poor slaves in Egypt. It was inconceivable that such miserable, defenseless slaves would take the sacred animal, the god of their oppressors, hold it for four days in their homes, kill and sacrifice it, and then should emerge unscathed from it. But this is exactly what happened. It was on this Shabbat, many many years ago. Shabbat Haggadol is a symbol of faith, and this is a lesson to learn again and again in every situation in our lives.Today we don't sacrifice a lamb, but we have a piece of meat on the Seder table as a reminder of that lamb.
The Torah Portion this week is that of Metzora (Leviticus 14:1 - 15:33). In it is detailed the (humiliating) purifying process of a person who was inflicted with the spiritual and physical disease of Tzara'at, a disease that used to inflict a person who spoke slander against others in the community. After sitting outside the camp for seven days in isolation, the person comes back into the camp, sits for another seven days outside his tent exposed to all, and shaves his head. There are more details, but the bottom line is that it all makes him conspicuous, ashamed and isolated for a couple of weeks, so that he would feel on his own flesh (literally) that which he wanted to cause to others with his slander. The sin of the evil tongue is so prevalent in our day and age, that such a purifying process wouldn't help. The majority of us would have to sit outside of the camp and then outside of our 'tents', hence the effect of isolation and shame would lose effect.
Passover is just around the corner, and it is already felt here. School children are already off from school for their 2 week Passover break, and many parents take days off to be with them (in some work places the organization gives days off to all the employees. In other organizations, people may choose whether to use their yearly paid-leave days now or at some other point during the year. The supermarkets are having big sales of Matzah bread, and soon they will be made Kosher for Passover, with large sections of non-Passover products covered with plastic bags to avoid the selling and buying of Chametz (leavened bread and similar products) during the holiday. Many products have the stamp of "Kosher for Passover" on their packages. The radio commercials try to allure us to buy all sorts of things with Passover sales and invite us to participate in tempting leisure activities during the holiday. People keep asking each other: "So, where will you do the Seder this year?" (Seder is the festive Passover meal in which we retell the story of the Exodus from Egypt). Most people do it with their families, but in recent years Hotel Seders have also become popular.
The most important aspect of Passover is to preserve the national and religious memory of the events that took place so long ago, but have affected the entire world - the Exodus and the receiving of the Torah. So many nations ever since wanted to see themselves as the Israelites leaving Egypt. The American pioneers wanted to name America as the new "Cana'an" and wanted to have the parting of the Red Sea (so called erroneously - the true name is the Reed Sea but at some point one 'e' fell...) as their national symbol. Like them, many still like to use images and concepts from our Exodus story to model their own struggle for freedom, however defined. So in a way, we don't only keep this memory alive for our own sake, but for the entire world. I want to wish all of us a meaningful Passover, and a successful exodus from our own personal "Egypt"s.
Shabbat shalom and Happy Passover,
Revital
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