"Torah Lights"
 
Video Insights on the Parsha
 
 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel: "This day shall be for you a memorial; and you shall celebrate it as a Festival unto the Lord for your generations. As an eternal statute shall you celebrate it" (Exodus 12:14)

This week's Biblical reading describes the workings of the Hebrew calendar beginning with the celebration of the New Moon. It then tells us about the many laws of the festival of Passover, our festival of freedom. But there is one "mystery" festival which requires definition and explanation: "this day shall be for you a memorial…" (12:14). Which day is the Scripture speaking about? The classical commentator Rashi suggests that it refers to the first day of Passover - the fifteenth of Nissan. But Passover lasts for seven days, with the first and last days being called "holy convocations" on which no physical work is permitted (12:16). Why single out the first day?

On the tenth of Nissan, the Jews in Egypt were commanded to take a lamb and keep it until the fourteenth of the month when they slaughtered it and placed its blood on their doorposts. The lamb was then roasted on the fire, and we were commanded to eat the whole of this sacrifice including its head, legs and innards. Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra maintains that the special festival refers to this day, which was designated for the "slaughter of the paschal lamb by the entire witness-congregation of Israel after the sun begins to set" (12:6). Why were the instructions for this sacrifice so detailed and why did it warrant a special day on the eve of Passover to serve as an eternal memorial (zikaron)?

The astrological symbol of the month of Nissan, its "sign on the zodiac," is Aries the ram – linguistically linked to Ra, the sun-god of Egypt. Aries was particularly invoked during the month of Nissan, the first month of spring, when the days were getting longer and the sun was getting stronger. Ramses, or ‘son of Ra,’ was a popular Egyptian name, and the very term ‘Pharaoh’ may very well mean ‘the house of Ra.’ If indeed the ram (or lamb) symbolized the sun-god of Egypt, we can readily understand why the Hebrews had to leave Egypt for three days in order to carry out their sacrifice, as Moses explained to Pharaoh: "It would not be proper for us to do so [in Egypt] since it would be an abomination for Egypt that we slaughter in a way which would be an abomination to Egypt before their eyes and not have them stone us?" (Exodus 8:22, see also Genesis 46:34).

Nevertheless, right before the exodus, the Almighty commands each Hebrew household to take a lamb (or ram) on the tenth day of Nissan, the month of Aries, or Ra, and then four days later to slaughter the symbol of the Egyptian god before the eyes of their masters. A midrash teaches that on that same day they had themselves circumcised, a symbol par excellence of blood commitment, before placing the blood of the ram on the doorposts of their homes, flaunting their sacrilegious act before the Egyptians. They then roasted the lamb on a fire, causing maximum fragrance to waft into the streets outside, while retaining all of the lambs' limbs "entire and intact," as the ultimate act of defiance.

I believe that G-d's message with this commandment was that the Hebrews had to earn their right to freedom – pay their exit or exodus tax, as it were, by slaughtering the symbol of the Egyptian god, patron of consummate evil who presided over hedonistic and totalitarian pharaohs. Slaughtering the ram must have been a capital offence in Egypt and by carrying out the Divine command in such a public manner, the Hebrews were placing their lives on the line for the G-d of freedom and morality.

This then is the memorial, the unique festival of the fourteenth day of Nissan, which certainly deserves to be an eternal statute as a reminder of Hebrew mesirut nefesh, our commitment to pay the ultimate price for the sake of freedom and redemption. It is also a reminder that without this total dedication, liberty and deliverance will remain illusory and unrealized goals. Thus from a Biblical perspective, there are two distinct and disparate festivals: first the one-day Festival of the Passover Sacrifice, on the fourteenth day of Nissan, followed by the seven day Festival of Matzot, from the fifteenth to the twenty-second of Nissan.

There remains one more set of symbols to explain: the matzah (unleavened bread) and the hametz (leavened, fermented, risen bread). Matzah represents the poor bread eaten by the Hebrew slaves, who would return home hungry and exhausted after a difficult day of slave labor, so desperate for sleep that they hadn't the energy to wait for their dough to rise before eating their one meager meal of the day. Matzah was also the bread which the Hebrews took out of Egypt with them, and so it became the symbol of freedom – freedom of movement, freedom of choice, and freedom of worship. At the Seder, the matzah is eaten together with the paschal sacrifice, and after the destruction of the Temple, it took on the symbolism of the paschal sacrifice in the form of the Afikoman, which substitutes for the final taste of the paschal sacrifice that was eaten in Temple times.

On the other hand, yeast and leavening, hametz, symbolizes the hedonistic materialistic pharaohs, who represented Ra the sun-god, and who utilized Hebrew slave labor for their own puffed-up self- aggrandizement. Hence we are Biblically commanded, "But, on the first day [of the Festival of the Paschal Sacrifice, the fourteenth day of Nissan] you must cause leavening to cease to be in your homes…" (Exodus 12:15). And the Hebrew word tashbitu (‘cease to be’) can mean either to physically destroy or to spiritually transform.

The Jewish people, the children of Abraham, were put in this world to imbue it with compassionate righteousness and morality, to fight against and ultimately destroy the unbridled greed which fuels totalitarian despots who take advantage of and even enslave their weaker subjects. This "leavening" cannot be tolerated. If we can bloodlessly change regimes, if Amalek can be inspired to repent, as the Talmud records that the grandchildren of Amalek taught Torah in Bnei Brak (B.T. Sanhedrin 98), that would be optimal; but if such spiritual transformations are impossible, then Pharaoh and his cohorts must be drowned in the Reed Sea. Ultimately, freedom and morality must prevail if humanity is to endure.

Shabbat Shalom

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