Rabbi's Derasha

Mah Nishtana HaShana Hazot?  This is not a year like all of the others.  But it’s not as though we’ve never seen it.  This configuration of the calendar happens roughly 11% of the time, but in the last 31 years, it’s happened six times.  It occurred only once in the 80s and once in the 90s.  But they can come in clusters, and there can be a long gap.  The gap after this year is 20 years.  

It happens infrequently enough for people to forget what to do.  And the last time was still Covid time, so no one remembers anything.  It changes a few things, like the day of Bedika, and the day of the fast for the first born.  It even changes which Shabbat is the long Derasha.  

But the most complicated thing it changes is the challenge for meals on Shabbat itself.  The Shulchan Aruch says that one should burn whatever is left of the Chometz on Fri.  And that’s what we will do -- we’ll burn at Mitchell Park next Friday at 11 am.  But the Shulchan Aruch also says to leave over some for Chometz meals for Shabbat.  I want to speak about how to time these meals but first I want to discuss how they work.  

Understandably, people are sometimes nervous about how these meals work in terms of location.  It’s not a time to risk having Chometz spread out over the house.  When there were only two kids and they were young, in 1994, we ate on a blanket and then just flung the crumbs outside into the wind.  We also ate Pita because it had very few crumbs to begin with.  In Palo Alto, we have said HaMotzi on Chometz outside and then come inside for the meal.  That works out pretty well as long as it’s not raining.

In terms of timing, the night meal is OK.  But Shabbat is supposed to have three meals and the deadline for eating Chometz is 10:59am.  Something has got to give -- either there is no Seuda Shlishit in the afternoon or there is no Chometz.

One approach is to sacrifice Seuda Shlishit with bread.  That is, you can do it in the afternoon, but have meat, potatoes, fish.  If it’s enough, you can even just have fruit.  These are not preferable options on other Shabbatot but this is a special circumstance.  The Zohar says that R’ Shimon bar Yochai learned instead of eating Seuda Shlishit.  Some do that every Shabbat but it’s certainly an option for this Shabbat.  The Mishna Berura mentions eating Matza ball soup as an option in the afternoon if one wants something more substantial.  

Another approach is to have Seuda Shlishit with bread by having it in the morning instead of the afternoon.  Just split the morning meal into two pieces.  This is the approach of the Vilna Gaon and it’s very popular because the Mishna Berura follows him.  If you’re hungry in the afternoon, you can always eat other things.  But this option ensures that bread is eaten at all three meals.  After all, the original source for the obligation for three meals comes from the Mahn in the desert and that was called Lechem.  

In order to make sure a meal or meals can be eaten in the morning, we’re going to Daven early.  We will start early enough to finish by 9 am.  That way, people can get back home and have at least one meal with Chometz by 10:59 and anyone who wants to split the meal in two can do so.  

I have to mention one other option which I didn’t mention last Tuesday night.  It applies to all Sefardim and it could come into play for some Ashkenazim.  Sephardim can have Seuda Shlishit in the afternoon AND have bread by eating Matza Ashira, where the dough was made from grape juice instead of water.  It is not real Matza that you can eat for the Seder -- which is the Matza that is forbidden on Erev Pesach.  Yet it is bread on which you can say HaMotzi. 

In the Shulchan Aruch, the Rama interjects and reminds everyone that Ashkenazim don’t have Matza Ashira on Pesach and he extends that to the day before.  The reason for this is that it is, after all, called Matza.  But there were those who disagreed.  The Noda B’yehuda, R’ Yechezkel Landau in Prague, didn’t understand why the Rama was extending the prohibition to Erev Pesach.  He concludes that if there is a need to have something more substantial in the afternoon, Matza Ashira should be an option.  Our Mechutan, R’ Herschel Schachter, agrees with the Noda B’Yehuda and says he will be having Matza Ashira in the afternoon.  That’s not the prevalent Minhag, but it is an option.      

If there are any questions, one can be in touch to clarify this week. 

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The basic difference between the Chagim in the Fall and those in the Spring is in the emotion being deployed.  In the Fall, it’s mostly fear.  In the Spring, it’s love.  This is the Chag in which a love affair revives.  We read Shir Hashirim on Pesach, and the drinking of wine is meant to loosen inhibitions.  

Not everyone finds it so easy to develop love for Hashem.  But with Mazal, one can find someone through whom one can develop love for Hashem.

The Gemora says in Yoma that part of loving Hashem is that He should become loved through you.  That is, one should strive to be someone through whom Hashem is Mitahev -- Hashem becomes loved by others.  There are those who derive this from the verse.    The Rambam thinks it’s a logical outcome: the fact that when one loves someone one  wants others to love it too.  Whichever way it is learned, that is the goal, to have Hashem loved through you.  Finding people like this can help one develop a love for Hashem.

When I was in Israel, I took our daughter to Talpiot, our old neighborhood.  I got into a conversation with someone in the neighborhood about the old rabbi there, R’ Chaim Yehoshua Zemel, z’l.  R Zemel was the Rabbi in Talpiot for more than 40 years.  He was there when we were there.  He was the rabbi of David Chriki’s family when he was growing up in Talpiot.  R’ Zemel died suddenly after Havdalla 2.5 years ago.  At the Levaya, just a few hours later that night, the whole neighborhood was there.

R’ Zemel was not Dati Leumi.  He was a Charedi Jew in a neighborhood full of non- religious people.  But he captured their hearts because he was a kind, sympathetic model of a Mensch.  My wife knew a woman whom she met in the park in Talpiot.  The woman always repeated a story about R’ Zemel.  She and her husband were once driving into the neighborhood and it was raining.  They came upon R’ Zemel walking with one of his children.  They stopped to ask them to join them and to escape the rain.  R’ Zemel thanked them but he said that this was his alone-time with this child, who had developmental challenges, and they would continue even in the rain.  The woman, who was not Dati at all, would tear up whenever she told that story.  

During the Shiva, the bus drivers stopped by, both Jews and Arabs, to pay their respects.  One said that he never stopped between bus stops except for R’ Zemel.  A driver can lose his license to drive an Egged Bus, but R’ Zemel commanded that kind of respect and that kind of affection. He was the type of person about whom people would say, “if they were all like that, I would be religious too.”

In the rancorous climate in Israel, nothing is needed more.  A month ago, the women in the community had a presentation via zoom with Hadas Levenstern.  I spoke about Hadas last year at Pesach time because I had met her a few weeks before.  Hadas’s husband Elisha, HY”D, was killed in battle in the second month of the war.  In the months since then, she has shared a lot about the nature of their home.  Elisha was exempt from service because he and Hadas have six children.  But he and Hadas agreed immediately after the war began that he would serve.  That exemption is only an army rule, they agreed, but the Rambam says in such a situation one goes to war.  

Hadas is a Baalat Teshuva.  She grew up in Tel Aviv -- she told us that she learned English watching TV as a kid -- and she served in the army.  During her service, she worked in anoffice with a Dati officer and through her conversations with him, she realized that the Dati have a point.  She went off to learn and then she married Elisha.  All of this came as something of a shock for her parents, but she and Elisha strove to make sure that they had a close relationship with her parents.  Elisha came in a flannel shirt and a baseball cap the first time he met his future father-in-law.

Hadas was once asked if, after six grandchildren and countless days together, her parents had taken on any Mitzvot.  She said, “none.  Nothing at all.  But they don’t hate religious people anymore.  And that’s something.  Because all of their friends still hate religious people.”  And she is right.  That is something.  And that is the impression one is supposed to make.    

I want to share something short about the Haggada which relates to this.  We begin with Ha Lachma Anya, which is an invitation to those who are destitute to join the Seder.  It’s a little late to be sending out invitations.  The Malbim says that this was once done and the Baal Haggada incorporated into the standard text.  It’s interesting that the Mishna that tells us about the Seder also opens with a slight digression telling us to make sure the poor have basic Seder needs taking care of.  Why such an emphasis on the poor?  

The Haggada of the Aruch Hashulchan says that this is because the underlying thrust of the Seder is hope.  Hope for something better, hope for the Geula.  No one carries that hope in a more visceral way  than the poor.  For them, hope that the script will flip is fervent, desperate even.  They are a model for all of us: We are all desperate for a flip of the script. May that flip bring us to a deeper love of Hashem, Bimheira Vimeinu.