Yom Tov Sheini? Shabbat Shmini, April 11, 2015 ( 8 th Day of Pesach ) Every year I get this question from somebody, often from a congregant, always from my mom: What day is Pesach over? It s a simple, and a complicated answer. In the Torah we read that Pesach is seven days long. The first day is a festival and the last day is a festival. The Israelites are commanded not to work. On the first night our ancestors were commanded to have a special meal (which became the seder). So, seven days, easy, yesterday was the last day. But, hold it, not so easy. If you go down the street to our Conservative or Orthodox cousins, today is the last day of Pesach. Today for them is Shabbat and Yom Tov. Why is this? In ancient times when the Temple stood in Jerusalem they used to announce the new month after witnesses witnessed a new moon in the sky. They would then light torches. When people on the hills outside of Jerusalem saw the fire, they would light torches, and the message of the beginning of the new month would spread. In the month of Nissan, you would know when Pesach began, because you would count fifteen days after the torches. But, two thousand years ago Jews didn t just live in the land of Israel. They lived in Babylonia and Egypt and Europe. They couldn t see the torches, and it might take a messenger more than two weeks to travel to an outlying community to tell them when Pesach is. So, communities outside the land of Israel added an extra day to Pesach and Shavuot and Sukkot to be extra sure that the festivals are celebrated 1
on the correct day. In the case of Pesach, the first two days are festival, and the seventh and added eighth days are festivals. You still with me? In the discussion of this in the Talmud it brings up that our sages no longer relied on witnesses and torches to declare the new month. It was done by calculation. Shouldn t we then get rid of the extra festival days and go back to what the Torah says, they ask. The answer was no, there might arise a time and place where people forget because of persecution how to calculate the calendar. And, besides, who are we to get rid of the traditions of our wise ancestors? So, in the Land of Israel, do like the Torah says, and outside, add an extra day of Yom tov. Ok, so we Reform Jews should be celebrating today as the 8 th day of Pesach. Not so fast. In 19 th century Germany, 1846 in Breslau to be exact, liberal rabbis had a conference and they declared that the second-day festivals and the eighth day of the Pesach festival, respectively, as well as the ninth day of the Feast of Tabernacles, have no more validity for our time. Whoa, they were definitely throwing out the traditions of our ancestors. Let s explore what they were thinking. In the mid-19 th century in Central Europe, Jews were integrating into society. Taking two days off of work/school became a burden, also how to calculate the Jewish calendar was in the possession of everybody, not just the Jews, so it was very unlikely that that knowledge would be lost. Also, as recent Reform responsum notes, the elimination of yom tov sheni would strengthen our religious life by allowing us to concentrate 2
our efforts upon a more intense and meaningful observance on the first day. (I have been to several Conservative congregations on the second day of festivals and I can only imagine they were more lively on the first day.) So, there you have it, in the Reform movement we follow the practice of the Torah and Israelis Pesach ended last night. (But, you will notice that today s lunch is matzah. They are eating matzah in Israel, too, because there is no time between the end of Pesach on Friday night and the beginning of Shabbat, so there is no time to bring chametz into the house.) I gave this short history lesson not to confuse people about their dearly held Pesach practice, but to start of conversation about what Reform Jewish practice means. I want to quote again from the responsum that I quoted a minute ago, We Reform Jews respect the customs of our ancestors; we do not dismiss them with scorn or disdain or for no good reason. But when those customs no longer serve the purposes for which they were adopted, it makes no sense to insist they be maintained merely because they are ancestral customs. This is especially true when maintaining them becomes counter-productive, when powerful considerations that reflect our deeply-held religious values argue against their strict preservation. For example, today egalitarianism is a deeply-held Reform religious value, therefore we have to adapt traditions or discard traditions that are not egalitarian. As the great 20th century rabbi and founder of the Reconstructionist movement 3
Mordecai Kaplan said, The past has a vote, not a veto. (maybe say guidance not governance by Solomon Freehof.) Reform practice is decided by weighing the historical analysis of past traditions, contemporary concerns for justice, communal norms, personal spiritual meaning, and the list can go on. There are some things that are pretty universal to Reform practice like seven days of Pesach, and now adding in the Matriarchs to our prayers, or even kippah optional services, but sometimes the notion of Reform practice is pretty chaotic because there is an element of personal autonomy. This is a bit ironic because Jewish practice, ritual, brings order to our community and to our lives. Personal ritual can bring order to our lives personally, and bring disorder to the community because everyone is doing something different, and maybe vice versa, but, so is liberal Jewish life, I guess. Order is important in our lives. At the beginning of Pesach we had a (maybe two) seder which means order. We are praying from a siddur a variation on the same word. Many of you know that I have been interested recently in Mussar, a tradition Jewish way of self transformation a system to develop our inner virtues, or as the contemporary Mussar teacher Alan Morinis calls them, our soul-traits. Seder-order is one of these soul-traits. Morinis writes, The soul-trait of order is all about the middle way. Too little order gives birth to chaos, while at the other end of 4
the range, too much order ties us up in obsessive rigidity. The best in life lies between these extremes, and we are well-advised to seek that moderate course. As I said, Jewish practice can bring order to our lives, just like cleaning our desk at work. Morinis writes, The order you create on your desk, in your car, and with your clothes, your financial papers, your tools, your kitchen utensils, and so on is not just good management, it is actually bona fide spiritual work. Nothing less. Having an ordered life gives us the space to order our soul, and that s where Jewish practice comes in. As I mentioned, Reform Jewish practice can seem disorderly, but I think that it is actually the middle way that Morinis speaks about. It is not too rigidly tied to the past, it adapts, but at its best, it is also rigorous and serious. A trait related to seder-order in Mussar is humility. Disorder is often the child of a rebellious ego that resist humbly occupying a rightful place. All that it whispers in your inner ear can be reduced to I want or i don t want.... I want my leisure, and setting things in order is work. Or... I don t want to take responsibility for my stuff. I don t want to do that. I don t have to... Order is, after all, a kind of submission of will, and humility foster submission in place of ego s self-assertion. Back to Reform practice: I think Reform Jews have to be very humble when it comes to changing practices from the past. Are we doing it because of seder-order, or are we doing it because we think we are smarter than our ancestors, or because of 5
perceived convenience? We need humility when we face the Jewish past. Our ancestors were spiritual giants. We live in a different time, but they had great insights into the human soul. Practicing seven days of Pesach might be the right thing to do today for our Judaism, but the Reform Movement did not make this decision because we are better than our ancestors. Reform Judaism needs to have great kavod-honor for those who developed this thing we call Judaism. The Mussar teachers have had almost as much to say about honor as humility, since the two are actually very closely linked. In this cas, what I have in mind is that disorder inventively involves some sore of dishonor. The only question is, what or who is the target of the dishonor? When we as Reform Jews develop our practice, we do not want to dishonor those who came before us, including our Reform founders. The Reform Movement of today looks very different then 50 or 100 years ago, but we are humbly still apart of a great chain of tradition, an ordered tradition. I started this sermon with a history lesson of seven days versus eight days of Pesach, then talked about Reform practice more broadly, and then threw in a related Mussar teaching. My point that I hope you take from this is that Reform Judaism has reasons for its unique practices that look to the past with humility and honor, but also evolve to bring order and meaning to our lives. 6