Asking Hard Questions - a passover reflection
I have no idea what to write. This month, as Passover was approaching, I really really struggled to write a holiday reflection (as is my custom). I sat at my computer and scheduled time to write and nothing . . . I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say or how to say it.
Passover is the holiday where we celebrate the Jewish Exodus from Egypt, a journey from enslavement to freedom. We commemorate this day of freedom for our ancestors thousands of years ago. We are invited to notice our own freedoms and celebrate them.
But how does one write about freedom when every time I read or listen to any news I am faced with the reality that more and more people’s freedoms are being taken away? This is happening weekly, daily, and hourly. How do I speak of freedom when our country is once again blatantly not giving due process to some individuals? How do I speak about personal or collective freedom when thousands around the world are being killed in their homes by bombs and invading armies? When children are dying and aid is denied?
How do we connect to our individual and collective purpose at this moment? How do I try to make sense of a world that is burning both figuratively and literally?
As a child, growing up my family was very close to the Rabbi of our community, we spent many holidays with him and his family and he was more of an uncle to me than the Rabbi. When I think about Passover, I often remember the first seder we spent with him and his family. It was warm, it was intimate, it was special.
Many a year when we came to the four questions, after the young ones had recited the questions in Yiddish, he would say, “this is the time we get to ask God questions, we get to ask about our doubts, about the things we don’t understand in our own life. As we recite these questions together in Hebrew, I invite you in your heart, to ask God the questions that are sometimes difficult to say out loud.” He would say this in Yiddish (our first language) so that all of us around the table would understand and incorporate it.
So . . . I thought, why not write a Passover reflection about asking the hard questions. The questions that we struggle to ask – and the ones that are so very hard to answer.
Last week, as I watched snippets of Senator Cory Booker standing in front of the U.S. Senate, I thought of the verse in pirkei avos — (Ethics of our fathers 2:5)
וּבְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:
In a place where there are no men, strive to be a man.
And there he was . . . in a place where there are few men and women, being a man.
He stood for hours. Despite cramps in his body, he persisted. He spoke with passion, he talked with sincerity, he invited us all to take a stand, to own this moment, to make “good trouble.”
What is good trouble, and how do we make it?
This Passover, as many of us will sit around the Passover seder - some of us will simply notice the day and honor it - and others will ignore it.
I invite us all to ask the hard questions.
What does this moment ask of me?
What would it mean for me to be (a man) a person in a place where (there are few or no men) there are few or no people?
What does “good trouble” entail?
I bless us all to figure out what “good trouble” is for us and to do it - to find or create community to do it with — and to step into what this moment is calling of us — to invite us to bring freedom to all.
Many blessings and Chag Sameach,
Chani
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