Parsha Tzav – April 6, 2006
There are four steps in the process of clarification required to make a clear choice.
Paradox stimulates the longing for an answer
When dealing with the separation between meat and dairy, a drop of one will trafe up the other only if the ratio is greater than 1:60. E.g., if a teaspoon of milk falls in the chicken soup, the soup is kosher if it is a quantity greater than 60 teaspoons. However, when dealing with Pesach, even one molecule of chumatz is unacceptable.
We have to leave room for G*d, so thyere has to be room for imperfection. We are always approaching, never arriving. Assintote Torah.
The meaning of ADVERSITY is that we’re deprived of some sort of ease or enjoyment. Civilization has a toxic germ: convenience. It started with bread. So we’re starting with matzo, the bread without fluff.
Warlike, oppressive cultures grew up around bread.
The greatest invention of the Jews was Matzo. When saying the brucha, we lie: we thank G*d for bringing bread from the earth. G*d did not bring bread from the earth; G*d brought wheat from the earth
Pharaoh is the archetypal addict because he pursues a habit even when the cost is the destruction of his family and himself.
Nit chamchama, making oneself wise. This is lying to yourself, self-justification. This is what Pharaoh did. He needed to justify enslaving the Hebrews, so he said that they would help his enemies.
Person A gives his car to B for safekeeping. When A returns, B tells him that the car was stolen, and he pays A full market value for the car. What is the problem? A got full market value. The first problem is that B coveted A’s car only because it was A’s car. This violates the tenth commandment, not to covet. Another problem is that B uses his paying A as justification, to hide from himself the fact that he stole the car. The most dangerous thing is when people convince themselves they’re doing the right thing.
There is an insanity of more that infects civilization.
Once you can’t distinguish what you need from what you want, you’re in trouble. Is it worthwhile to be sane in a world where everyone is crazy, having been infected by bread-madness? Here the rabbi told a story about the king and his advisor who watched everyone around them get infected with the bread-madness. The advisor asked, “Is it possible to remain sane in an insane world?” The king replied, “No. But we can mark our foreheads so at least we know that chose to be insane.” Which they did. They wrote “matzo” on their foreheads.
Romaine lettuce is better to use for moror at the seder than horseradish because as you’re chewing from the outside, it starts off sweet and gradually turns bitter. This is civilization – everything we do starts off sweet and turns bitter. This is like the honey that can’t be brought to the altar because it is so nauseatingly sweet that you end up vomiting.
Matzo is the bread that answers many questions. Matzo is the bread of pain, pleasure, answers.
Is it possible to bring people closer to G*d through food? Food is pleasurable and eating brings people together. The seder is the model for our Shabbos meals and for all of our meals.
During the seder, people look at their watches and say, “when can we eat?” This conflict was built into the seder on purpose. It teaches us to wait for our pleasure.
A man has to give pleasure to his wife. He has to give her jewelry before every yom tov.
Gratitude is the underpinning of happiness, and you can’t have gratitude if you have it, whatever it is, all the time. Nida: in a relationship you need to delay, enjoy, and stop.
The solution to the germ of civilization is not to return to the desert, but to introduce inconvenience through every mitzvah.
Tony Gottlieb is part of a program that buys slaves in Sudan.
We can create an island culture of sensible deprivation.
Chumatz also means anger – the rising of the hot air – people get angry when they clean.
At the bedecken, the groom (chassan) sees the bride (kallah) in the wholeness of who she is, rather than the external, superficial body. The chassan is making sure that he is marrying the right woman (which we learn from Jacob, who married Leah when he thought Rachel was the bride), but he veils the kallah. You would think he would unveil the kallah. In the paradox, we begin to think. This is a parallel with bedikas chumatz, searing for chumatz by candlelight. Why turn off all the lights to search? Why scatter chumatz in places where you have spent a great deal of effort removing every bit of chumatz. Why clean it up with a feather, which is guaranteed to spread the crumbs around?
Bitul chumatz is burning the chumatz. A lot of people also burn the lulav, which connects us to the fall, when the land is shutting down for the winter.
What does it feel like to examine something in your soul-light?
At the bedikas chumatz, the woman hides ten pieces of chumatz. There is no talking during the search. Searching for the snake – Joseph’s brothers look in their sacks for the snake cup that was used for divination. They felt guilty, remembering what they did to Joseph. Then they found their money in the sacks, and felt even guiltier.
The bedikas chumatz is also to have fun.
In the Middle Ages Jews didn’t get the plague at the high rates of their non-Jewish neighbors because Pesach cleaning eliminated rodent food (the plague was transmitted by rodents). This was a mixed bag, because the non-Jews responded with pogroms. During Pesach, Jews would nail a plank across their door to protect themselves from pogroms resulting from the blood libel.
Bread is the most processed food. It’s hard to see G*d in the bread because you’ve done so much work making it.
“April is the cruelest month.” A lot of people want to be numb in the snow and resist the time when the water begins flowing. But Jews take advantage of transitions, such as doorways (mezzuzas), sunrises, sunsets, etc.
What’s the purpose of having a difficulty in every mitzvah? Confident humility releases our potential. Humility can be difficult to identify. For instance, the act of meditating can mask laziness, fear, passivity.
Korban Pesach: eat, talk, draw closer to G*d.
The sheep was put into a fetal position during roasting on a spit in order to evoke compassion, innocence. The Hebrews would tie the sheep to the bedpost for four days to make an emotional connection to it. When schechting (slaughtering), they would say, “This is me.” We have to be able to schecht the lamb while feeling compassion for it. If you have a catharsis, you’re not going to be a healthy Jew (????). You have to remember the difficulties in history – the seder is a tool to do this. Raise unconscious elements to consciousness – sin offering – we want to see now what we couldn’t see before.
When studying the four sons, ask which child are you?
Torah should be taught in very small groups. Otherwise the teacher never knows how people are getting it or if they’re getting it. Sexuality is best taught in groups of three. K Mysticism is taught one-on-one.
Haggadah means to draw water from Miriam’s well – draw near, draw out. Draw stories from people’s hearts. It’s about drawing near and teaching faith. The bread of faith, not about telling the same old stories. The tension points are strictly adhering to the form of the seder while drawing out all the diverse “sons.”
Emunah (faith) does not refer to religious people; it refers to honest businessmen. Cheating in business is lack of faith.
Matzo is the constrictive, wine is the expansive. During the seder when one goes up, the other goes down.
This is the ultimate holiday of national unification and it is the only holiday that we need a non-Jew. We have to sell to the non-Jew the space of our house in which we store the chumatz. This is another paradox.
The rules are provocative, paradoxical, contradictory, to make us think. Although we are supposed to get rid of all the chumatz, we are supposed to keep some chumatz so we can sell the space to a non-Jew. If I’m going to identify as a Jew, I need the stranger inside the house! Some people deliberately invite strangers to their seder.
The Rabbi’s grandfather, although he was bitterly poor, every Pesach gave away 100 boxes of matzo, wine and chicken.
The four sons are in all of us. Without the rasha (wicked son), we have no juxtaposition to make decisions. These four sons inside us need to talk to each other.
We all have to hear the voice that says that we’re the outsider. This is what the rasha feels like, the outsider.
?????evil
??????the evil person
The difference between evil and the evil person is the ?, which is the shechina, G*d's female attribute. The evil person has a soul, a spark, which we need to elevate. All through the seder we work to keep the rasha at the seder table.
CHULLIN – MOON & SUN
Aish Kodesh, page 308
There were people in the concentration camps who would not eat bread during Pesach; they would trade their bread for thin soup.
The inoculation for the addiction of convenience is simcha (joy); it is not pain.
See the sliver of the moon, the potential—see the sliver of goodness in yourself.
In the story, the sun and the moon were equal, until the moon told G*d that one should be stronger than the other. G*d responded, “Diminish yourself.” G*d did not diminish the moon, but told it to diminish itself. This is like Moses leaving the mishkan when Aaron and his sons took over the duties of the priesthood, which Moses yearned for. Moses is the sun. Revelation made his face shine.
Noach and Moses (gilguls) both failed with their children.
Moses had to step out of the mishkan to do tchuva for the Golden Calf – you can’t shine all the time.
We’re not looking to shine all the time. Everything waxes and wanes. Gratitude and simcha – waxing and waning. If I understand I’m going to have a bad mood, I can be prepared. Otherwise, we will self-medicate. Accepting the cyclical nature of things is vital.
A spiral is circles and lines. The shorter line contains the longer lines. This is a different model of the same diagram that appears on the web page of the four worlds. It is supposed to be showing HaShem as encompassing all four worlds, although I think you might get the wrong impression that HaShem is outside all four worlds.
The long way is the way to pleasure. The shortcuts take very long.
The Jews made a conscious choice to use a lunar calendar. Ra was the sun god. The Egyptians worshipped the sun god, the clearly seen, the obvious, the constant. The Jewish calendar is based on the cyclical, the waxing and waning.
We have to give up something to draw close, achieve intimacy.
APRIL 9, 2006, SUNDAY.
Psalm 149 is about the double-edged sword which is given to us when we recite the Shmah to ward off daemons and the evil inclination before going to bed
HaShem out there, as the other
HaShem inside us
Evil outside us
Evil inside us.
In a tshuva-based world, we ask, “Where are we vulnerable? Where is our weakness?” In an Amalek-based world, weakness must be hidden.
The word for clothing is also the word for treachery. The Kohane Gadol (High Priest)’s clothes would inspire tshuva.
The heart of Torah is discussion of anger, when Moses got angry at Aaron for not eating the Korban after his sons died.
The root of chumatz is heat.
Further discussion of the car that was stolen and was paid for:
A gives B a car for safekeeping. B says the car was stolen. If you think that B is a thief and you force him to swear that he didn’t steal the car, you will be guilty of putting a stumbling block in front of him. (I think you will be giving him an opportunity to do tshuva, but the rabbis do not agree with me.) B stole the car from A because of an innate jealousy; like a young child, he wanted A’s car simply because it was A’s car. Because he pays full value for the car, he makes himself unaware of his jealousy, and of breaking the tenth commandment, not to covet.
No honey, no chumatz can be brought as an olah offering.
It is important to have an environment where people are looking for chumatz (with regard to their midos (personality traits), otherwise we are unable to make ourselves vulnerable.
Pesach is a holiday of fire, heat. Matzo goes into a hot oven and has to come out the same temperature. Anger (heat) needs to be removed by the same degree of heat, as in pounding the pillow in therapy.
When selling the chumatz, we lift an item, like a pen, to show that we clearly agree to the transaction. If we don’t lift the pen, we create an ambiguous situation that does not have full intentionality. Gambling is an example of this. We put the money in, but we’re hoping to get it back out again.
Pigul is discussed in this week’s parsha, Tzav – if the intention of the person offering the korban was to eat it at the wrong time, it would be completely invalidated.
This past Shabbos was Shabbos HaGadol. This was when the Hebrews bought the sheep. They offered the korban on the day in the hours before the start of Pesach. In order to buy the sheep, you had to get out of your passivity, to declare that you would not obey Egyptian rules any more. In today’s world, wearing a yarmulka and putting up mezuzah on the doorposts is the same as putting the blood of the lamb on the doorposts. Becoming an eved HaShem (servant of G*d) means taking a stand.
We have to elevate the best of America and talk about its weaknesses.
Slavery in Egypt started with Abraham’s nightmare about smoking furnaces – the covenant of the halves Bri Ben Habitarim - – how I’m connected to you. In the Holy of Holies, all the dimensions contain halves. The Kohane Gadol is the only one who enters; he brings incense that has the nasty smell (is there a paradox here?).
Page 67 of the Stone Chumash, Exodus 15, lines 1-2. Abraham says, “What can you give me, since I don’t have children?” The point of Pesach is to cry with the sheep when you schecht it. You need to feel for others without breaking under it. Rachamin, empathy v. sympathy.
When Abraham repeats the question as a statement, it indicates his hurt. Hinay – I’m here with you in your pain. A erpson’s presence is invaluably more than declarations. HaShem took him outside does not mean G*d took Abraham outside the tent; it means G*d took Abraham outside the physical frame of reference and the astrological indications that Abraham would never have children (he and Sarah were born without the sexual equipment needed to create children).
Abraham is struggling with his own doubt when he says to HaShem, “Give me a sign.” Out of this doubt comes Egyptian slavery.
The more we talk about daemons, the more there are – so we want to not talk about them and yet not deny reality. [However, if he had not spoken about his pain, perhaps his attempts to deny his reality would have resulted in a projective reality where there were MORE daemons.]
References to the furnace: make matzo, where Abraham was tossed as a child, ovens of the concentration camps, slavery in Egypt.
Korban means intimacy; the word “sacrifice” means suffering in torment. The translation of “korban” as “sacrifice” created a huge chasm between Judaism and Christianity. If you sacrifice, you will get angry about what you’re giving up, and this will get in the way of drawing close. The Rabbi told me to tell my nefesh before a fast day that I would not be depriving it of food, but I would be feeding it higher food.
Maggid – drawing out from the waters – Each cup of wine is dedicated to one of the Four Sons. The first cup is dedicated to the Wise Son, the second to the Rasha, the third to the simple son and the fourth to the son who does not have the capacity to ask. Most of the seder is done over the second cup of wine, dedicated to the rasha. This is because we need to draw out the part of ourselves which is angry, feels alienated, not included. This alienated person is the key person at the seder. The challenge of the rasha, “this is what G*d did for YOU!” is really an invitation. He is a teenager – teenagers present a wall, but the wall is really an invitation. “You will be a stranger in a strange land” implies a longing to be part of, to join.
If the teenager puts up a wall and I feel insulted, I put up a wall next to it, making a double wall. If I reach out, accept the invitation, draw out, then I can put up a wall parallel to his, creating a receptive vessel.
Abraham felt excluded from his family – they worshipped idols, and his father handed him over to the evil king who tossed him in an oven. How do you go from a model of exclusion to a model of inclusion? By practicing with every mitzvah, exposing the weakness.
We are trying to elevate the Rasha to become the best son. You have to get in touch with the wise self, he who learns from everyone, who sees how one thing comes from another – to elevate the Rasha, the Wise Son says to the angry Rasha, “We can together make a connection.”
Hish kodes agadida – the reactive ego says “But!” As Abraham said to HaShem, “I believe you, but give me a sign.”
Parsha Tzav – the Kohane Godol wore wool and linen. Wool is Abel (the shepherd) and linen is Cain, the farmer.
Left hand, the tunic is atonement for rigidity of the left hand: anger (discipline turning to anger. We have to cook quickly at a high temperature to cook our personality). Discipline, cleaning for Pesach.
The right hand: inclusive, love, love the teenager enough to overcome feeling insulted by him. The daemon of the right hand is an appetite thatis addictive from the desire that is the root of love. Desires that get out of hand. Letting go, burning the chumatz and lulav (the lulav means to him is my heart) – positive, healing fire.
Appropriate love and fear makes the perfect balance.
Chumatz: the things I want but don’t need. America is full of chumatz.
Unholy fire: Aaron’s sons – their egos got in the way – they didn’t check in with their teachers.
Holy fire: one million children at Auschwitz.
Pinchas HaLevy – Spain – the brilliance of the Spanish rabbis caused a weakness, the Jews gravitated to the universities and converted (the Jews of Russia? did not convert). Every mitzvah uncovers a weakness. This does not mean that they were bad.
There is no mitzvah for a parent to love the child, but there is a mitzvah to honor your parents, because it is natural to love the child, because you nuture him/her. But it is equally natural for the child to rebel against the parent.
Balancing love and anger is needed for cleaning the house and raising children.
I have to get close to myself to get close to G*d.
When chamatz is bread it will cause war, but when chamatz is matzah it will not cause war, because no one will fight over matzo!
We also had a discussion about the difference between avoda and meaning. We talked about the difference between coming to class because of the effect we hope it will have on our personal selves, and also coming to class because Torah study creates a real and physical change in the world. We talked about how we create our own personal worlds, for which I used an example of Andy Kaufman in Man In The Moon, who found that after a life of playing practical jokes on everyone that no one believed him when he became sick with a fatal illness; he had created his own world in which he was not believed. In the macrocosm, there was a story about a rabbi who refused to send help to a girl who fell down a well and was in danger of drowning because, said the rabbi, on the merit of her father, who had provided water to the community, she would not drown. He was right and she was able to escape. However, after that her brother died of thirst. Why was that possible? Because the rabbi had died and his reality went out of the world. Torah does not describe the world, it creates the world.
Also, we discussed how the Rabbi and the class have learned (or are learning) to elevate the Rasha in each other, whereas in earlier days more often there was a feeling of alienation and sulking.