Mazal Tov! We’re celebrating Noam Morris’s Bar Mitzva at EB this week. It sparks memories for many in the community. The first time we hosted Robin for Shabbat dinner, we were living on College Ave. and a significant segment of EB was at the very least not yet familiar with the alphabet OR the Aleph Bet. We also recall the Shadchan, Veronique’s cousin Bruno (a three-time member of EB) who made the suggestion in the back row of the Shul (yet another reason why that row is so popular). Hosting the Bar Mitzva is part of the brokerage fee (Shadchanut) for EB -- it is our privilege.
This Bar Mitzva was scheduled to take place in Eretz Yisrael. We all know why we ended up at the number two venue. (We did try to arrange for it to be as hot as it would have been in Israel but I think we went a little overboard in that.) Noam might always remember this occasion for its connection to Covid 19. For children, the impression this epoch will leave is hard to anticipate. They will recall the long hours at home, the mixed success of Zoom school, the respite but also the monotony offered by media. They will also recall the days when this experience started to fade into whatever the world after the pandemic will look like. They will remember when human contact became normal again, when travel returned, when masks were put away for good.
Noam’s memory of this will include both of these experiences, and in so remembering he has a chance to understand a great lesson of this Parasha. As he finishes the description of Shavuot, Moshe Rabenu reminds the people to “remember that you were a slave in Egypt.” R’ Shimon Schwab points out that this recollection of servitude is mentioned at the end of the festival when the redemption reached its climax. The four languages of redemption ended with “V’Lakachti,” which refers to the experience of receiving the Torah at Har Sinai -- the final stage. But even then we are enjoined to remember the servitude -- the suffering, the sweat, the losses, the anguish. Because the suffering is not a mere prelude to the redemption, an accident we had to endure. It is part of the redemption experience, part of what Hashem has framed as our experience from beginning to end. At Pesach time, we eat Maror too, and the Pesach sacrifice is not correctly brought unless Maror too is there.
The Chagim recounted in the Parasha, the full gamut from Spring to Fall, are lessons in both sides of human experience because they are lessons in what Hashem has taught us both in the sweet and in the bitter. It is tempting to see the rough sides of experience as times to merely endure; to hold our breath and see if the scene can improve before we have to exhale. But that would be to waste the suffering as a lesson, as a chance to develop the grit that overcomes calamity and misfortune, as a chance to see Hashem as truly everywhere. Nothing deepens one’s sense of Hashem like painful experiences. By strengthening our sense that He can be present in the midst of pain, we strengthen our sense that He is surely present everywhere.
Yes, for Bnei Mitzva it’s a loss to celebrate this day in a way that is less than what was dreamed of. But in that there is also a gift, a chance to understand the real sense of redemption, which arises out of travail, in the fullness of time, Bimheira Biyameinu.
Congregation Emek Beracha 4102 El Camino Real Palo Alto, CA 94306
