No Chag stimulates muscle memory like Pesach. No Chag involves as much sustained muscle work, both of the body and the brain. After many years, the grooves of memory are deep and smooth.
This is perhaps one of the reasons why we keep so many things the same in a year like this. The busiest day of the year is usually Erev Pesach. When it comes out on Shabbat, so much of what normally happens on that day must be spread out over several other days. But even amidst so much displacement, we try to keep a semblance of the way it usually is. We don’t want to mess with muscle memory. We want it to be where we need it to be in a normal year.
In Beit Midrash last Tuesday night, we tried to go through the full schedule from Thursday until Motzai Shabbat in a year like this. Much of what we talked about is at least summarized in the Pesach link on the website. We went from the Fast of the First Born on Thursday morning until the recitation of Baruch HaMavdil Bein Kodesh L’Kodesh at the end of Shabbat that allows us to prepare the house for the Seder. We went through Bedika on Thursday night, preparing items for the Seder Plate on Friday, having bread (or egg Matza) for the meals on Friday night and Shabbat morning, the different options for Seuda Shlishit, disposing of extra Chometz on Shabbat morning, and -- crucially -- the need to rest on Shabbat afternoon to set up an alert and aware first Seder.
In the midst of that list, there are several items that fall under the rubric of preserving muscle memory:
- We mark the Fast of the First Born on the Thursday before so that it doesn’t disappear altogether.
- We still meet with the non-Jew for the selling of the Chometz at the same time on Friday morning as we would on Erev Pesach. The actual sale will not go into effect until later, but we stick with the same meeting time.
- We still burn the Chometz in the fifth hour on Friday (after 11:09 am but before 12:12 pm). We’ll have a fire at the same place in Mitchell Park, next to the tennis courts. We will not say the text of the nullification of Chometz at this time because there’s no reason to move it from its normal place on Erev Pesach itself. One can nullify the Chometz on Shabbat, so we will.
The extensive Halachic structure we cover on Pesach is not just about the prep. Muscle memory reaches into the Seder as well. The choreography is as exact as it is elaborate. Even the moments in which we do things to provoke questions from the children are prescribed in advance. This structure is crucial to the learning process, and there is no learning experience better than the Seder.
But there are two sides to the learning process at the Seder, and I suspect that this year will bring the other side -- beyond muscle memory -- into play.
R' Shlomo Volbe, ztz'l, the legendary Mussar teacher in Yerushalayim, used to say that education has two prongs, which he called Binyan and Tzmicha -- building and growing. The first is the structure that we provide and the second is the growth that is guided and facilitated by that structure. It's like the way a vinter creates a vineyard: First there have to be trellises and then the vines and the grapes grow more effectively than if they just grew wildly.
All processes depend on building and then growth, even the redemption. R’ Volbe pointed out that you see this in the Amida as we Daven for the building of Yerushalayim and then we immediately ask for the sprouting of redemption.
But the most crucial process where this is in play is In education. We attempt to do this for children by building a proper structure for their learning -- a school, good teachers, a well thought-out curriculum, the encouragement of good habits. That is the trellis. If it was nothing but a building process, R’ Volbe points out, we would produce nothing but robots. As they grow, children develop individually in terms of their strengths, their interests, and their values. The trellis is there to help the growth, the sprouting, reach its maximum potential.
R' Volbe used this distinction to understand the two pillars of Talmudic education. The Talmud is divided roughly into two parts, the Halacha and the Agada. The first includes all of the discussions about Jewish law -- the rules themselves, the bases of the rules, the application and the limits of the rules. The second part of the Talmud is the non-Halachic material, the stories. These teach the Torah’s Weltanschauung, its worldview on broad issues of all sorts. The stories are often taken from the folk literature of the surrounding culture. But don’t let that fool you. Those stories are the innocent emissaries of the deepest thinking of the Sages on philosophical and psychological topics, all informing a broad theological worldview.
R’ Volbe applied his distinction between building and growth to these two aspects of Talmudic learning. The Halacha is the “building" part of life and the Agada is the "growth." The structure provided by the Halacha -- what is supposed to take on the routine of muscle memory -- is more or less static but the growth continues as our interior lives continue to evolve. People continue to grow in their understanding of things as they go on in life, and so the Agada continues to fill out, piece by piece, as we grow in life.
This will of course apply to the Haggada. We review the basics of the story to make sure the muscle memory remains strong. The activity of the Seder remains largely the same. But that doesn’t apply to our understanding. That part is constantly evolving, as our knowledge expands through both book learning and through experience.
This is why the literature on the Haggada is one of the most expansive in all of Jewish learning. Everyone’s got a Haggada, and every generation is full of new Haggadot.
We have had quite a year. A trauma like this becomes part of us. As such, it is sure to inform our sense of what it is to be a Jew. And that will, in turn, inform our sense of parts of the Haggada. For example, a year ago, everyone was commenting on what staying inside during the plague of the first born could teach us about staying inside now. We had no idea. We were only three weeks into what has now lasted a year. When you stay home, we now know, these are among the several things that occur: - The commentators on the verse point out that the Jews were being told that they should not live dangerously. They were warned that it will be a destructive night, where the distinctions between the righteous and the wicked won’t be operative. They had to stay safely inside because otherwise they were unwisely asking for miracles.
The pandemic has not made distinctions either. Few have been immune, or exempt from basic protocols. The upending of life has affected everyone -- the curtailing of activity, the long periods detached from friends, the uncertainty about what things will look like “after.” Confinement acknowledged that no one is above what Hashem has wrought. For some, yielding to Hashem in this way is a new experience. Time will tell if it wears off. - A much more acute, a much more circumscribed, sense of family sets in. The Korbon Pesach was eaten in a Chabura, in a group, usually those in the same courtyard. It wasn’t only blood relations but it wasn’t a crowd either. There were far more outsiders than insiders.
During the pandemic, everyone has widened their circle to declare certain other people “like family.” But that does not include everyone, and “unfriending” is no longer rude. It’s simply a fact of life. A sense of one’s clan has taken hold, and one can only hope that Jews will still find Jews among those they hold dear.
- The flip side of isolation is the cultivation that takes place inside the Chabura. R’ Tzadok HaKohen points out that the Jewish home during the final plague became a Mishkan, a holy place. There was no Mishkan for the first Korbon Pesach; the offering was done by the families and the blood went not on the altar but on the doorposts. The home on the inside of that door was elevated, consecrated.
For many, the pandemic allowed them to spot the possibilities for spiritual elevation. A pause in the rush gives people a chance to re-prioritize. Of course, for some that will mean doubling down on the pursuit of toys. But Pesach means to “jump over,” and many Sages have said that the Chag gives us a chance to make dramatic leaps in elevation.
The “building” part of Pesach is still in place. Even in a year like this, we will pay due respect to muscle memory. But the Agada side of life is different now because we are different. That will affect our inner understanding of the Haggada. Let’s use the confinement to figure out what’s worth keeping, and especially what we can elevate, so that all of us in the “after” will be better, for each other and for our connection to the Almighty. Chag Kasher V’Sameach, and we should find ourselves together soon. |
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