Tazria -- 5775

There’s reason we say that a pregnant woman is expecting.  The time before a birth is one of great emotion – excitement, fear, hope, regret, and others.  Parshat Tazria opens with a discussion of a woman’s ritual state following childbirth, and it arrives during the Counting of the Omer.

That’s appropriate, because the Counting HaOmer is a time of expecting, building, and anticipating.  The forty-nine days are those between Pesach (Liberation from Egypt) and Shavuot (Receiving the 10 Commandments).  According to our tradition, the Torah and the Mitzvot conveyed within it are the purpose of our freedom.  Since Shavuot also marks the barley harvest, it’s a time for growth.

Day by day, throughout the seven weeks of the Counting, we build towards the revelation at Sinai.  We anticipate drawing nearer to God.

Although Sefirat HaOmer is not a tradition many Reform Jews embrace, it is profoundly spiritual.  It is a time for reflection, and to embody Godly qualities like Endurance, Glory, Leadership, Lovingkindness, Groundedness, Discipline, and Humility.

What’s growing in your life?  What’s changing?  How will you be different by the time summer relaxes its broiling grip?  How do you want to be different?  Focus on what you seek.  Picture yourself with it.  Hear it, taste it, and smell it so that it becomes a reality within you.  Then, analyze the steps you need to take, both internal and external, to make it real.  Who are your partners and what are your impediments?

Now’s the time to bring about the change you seek.

Chol HaMoed Pesach -- 5775

The plates are washed and put away.  The left overs are gone.  Even so, it’s still Passover.

Pesach is a seven-day long Festival.  For Reform Jews, Pesach doesn’t end until Friday night (Saturday night if you’re Conservative or Orthodox).  While most of us enjoy a seder or two, and many of us refrain from bread products during the whole week, few of us pause to consider the meaning of a week-long observance.  If Passover commemorates our freedom from Egypt, and the Angel of Death passed over the Jewish homes in one night, why extend the Festival?

The Israelites, you will recall, didn’t enter the Promised Land for a generation after the Exodus.  Those sent to scout the land thought they looked like grasshoppers to the natives, for that’s the way they saw themselves:  inconsequential, worthless, puny.  Although their feet were no longer shackled, their minds still were.

Liberation is a process, not a moment.  Slaves may escape; Supreme Courts may declare it.  But it takes time for freedom to percolate down into our daily lives.  We need to reshape society to include the formerly disenfranchised – something the United States is still doing, 150 years after Emancipation.  We need to learn to see the full humanity of those we haven’t previously understood.  We need to re-constitute our own psyches, to understand ourselves as free people with the power to determine how our lives should go, to know to our cores that we are grasshoppers no more.

What freedoms do you cherish in your life?  Which are legal, which are social, and which are personal?  How can you integrate them more fully into your sense of self?

Freedom doesn’t come over night.  It’s a long, hard trudge.

Passover -- 5775

Crack! goes the matzah overhead.  Crumbs fall down like rain.

“This is the Bread of Affliction,” we announce to all who will hear, “which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.”  Matzah is a humble bread, the meal of those without resources of time or money.  It is the bread of those who make due.

Matzah is more than the food our ancestors ate in their anguish.  It is our suffering selves, too.

Crack! go our bones as we toil day in and out.

Pop! go our dreams as they’re ground down by life.

Sigh! go our hearts as another year goes by.

We, like the dry cracker, break under the stress of our lives.  We fear that we will crumble.  But all is not lost.

The matzah is broken and half is hidden away.  Then, once the story is told and the meal is eaten, the search is on.  Eager children scamper for a prize.

But the real prize isn’t a two-dollar bill or a chocolate bar.  Life’s real prize is making it through the tough spots.  Sharing the journey with good people.  Telling your own story.  Laughing through the tears.  

When the afikoman is found, it will be reunited with its missing piece.  The two halves will fit together and become whole once more, as can our battered and bruised selves.  There’s a reason Pesach comes at springtime – because after the discontented winters of our lives, we need the promise of green sprig and egg, reminders to hope.

What’s lost can be found.  What’s broken can be mended.  What hurts can be healed.  What’s bound can be freed.  This is the meaning of Pesach.