A
nazir is one who abstains from eating or drinking grapes or grape products,
from cutting hair, and from becoming tameh
(ritually impure) through contact
with the dead. Rebbe Shimon haTzaddik
used to say he had seen many thousands of nazirim, and yet he had only ever
seen one who was appropriate.
This
one ‘legitimate’ nazir was an extremely good-looking shepherd, whose head was
crowned with ringlets and curls. Once, this young shepherd looked into a well
and, admiring the ringlets in his reflection, he thought to himself ‘I am so
beautiful, I can have anything I desire’. Shocked by this thought, he wondered,
‘how could I say such a thing, in a world that is not mine?’ At that moment, he
decided to cut off his curls and become a nazir.
Shimon
Hatzaddik was the last of the Men of the Great Assembly, and he served longer
than anyone else, and yet, he never saw anyone except for this young man who
was an appropriate nazir.
Why?
Because only this young man cut his hair in order to appreciate it. This is
also why we fast – in order to appreciate food.
The same applies to wine. If we refrain from drinking wine, it is in order to see it as one of God’s great gifts to the world.
If
abstinence is punitive, it is also angry and negative, and it inevitably
backfires, because pure discipline/Gevurah creates more anger and resentment.
The purpose of refraining from something is in order to appreciate it. We need
to find a way to reframe abstinence into the positive – to see with a “good
eye”.
A
good example of this is the Torah’s treatment of leprosy. The leper is exiled
from the camp – he is sent to a place where he cannot talk to anyone. (Leprosy
is considered the affliction of the slanderer).
Lashon haRa (gossip/slander) is simply
the internal process of anger and self-recrimination projected outwards. The
Rebbe of Ishbitz describes this constant judging of others (pure Gevurah) as
seeing the world with “a narrow eye”.
The “narrow eye” is a blockage, a tuma. What is needed is an open
channel - the ability to see from God’s perspective.
An
open channel means both seeing God and being seen by God. For this to happen,
we need a “good eye”. The “good eye” is achieved not by repressing or suppressing
the blockage, but by seeing the blockage itself as a gift from God, and seeing
God in it. In this sense, tuma is a veil, like the bridal veiling (bedecken) through which we find God.
The
Midrash (Leviticus Rabbah 16) relates: There was once a peddler who used to
frequent the towns near Tzipori and would call out: "Who wants to buy an
elixir of life?” R. Yannai was sitting in his home and heard the peddler's
call.
He
said to him, "please come up here and sell it to me." The peddler
replied, "you and those like you do not need it." R. Yannai insisted
and he came up. The peddler took out a book of Psalms and showed him the verses
(Tehillim 34: 13-15) “Who is the person who desires life and loves his days
that he may see good therein? (my emphasis) He guards his tongue from evil
and his lips from speaking bitterness. He removes himself from evil and does
good. He seeks peace and pursues it.” R. Yannai said, "all my days I read
this verse and I did not know how to explain it until this peddler came."
R.
Yannai saw something he had never seen before – that instead of suppressing and
repressing the person’s speech, the idea is to channel it for the good. Rashi
explains that what is needed to change idle or slanderous chatter into ‘Torah
chatter’.
And
so after his exile, the leper returns to the camp – to the very people he once
hated and slandered, and is able to turn his narrow eye into a good eye by
sowing the elixir of life.
The
word “Pessach” means “the mouth that speaks.
“Metzorah”
means “taking out the bad”.
The
exile of the Jews in Mitzrayim was the exile of speech, and the Pessach Seder
is the tikkun/rectification of this exile.
The
Passover seder represents a profound inquiry into the nature of true freedom –
the freedom of dialectic as opposed to the slavery of extremism and
destructiveness of dichotomy.
Human
beings are slaves, no matter what.
The
question is, to whom do we become enslaved?
The
Seder teaches us to look inside for freedom, rather than outside.
“Inside
freedom” is called Eved Hashem (servant of God).
We
are always going back to Egypt (the narrow eye) to look for this, and so we are
constantly going back and coming out of Egypt.
During
the Passover seder, we cover the matzah, raise the cup of wine, and toast the
fact that “in every generation there are those stand on us, to annihilate us”.
Why
do we do this?
The
Gemara (Sanhedrin 70a/b) examines the nature of wine, in its discussion of the
penalty of a ‘stubborn and rebellious son’.
The law of the rebellious son (Deuteronomy 21:18-21) is the only instance in the Torah of indicting someone for what may come of his behavior, rather than what is already perpetrated. When it comes to children, our greatest fear is often around what they will become. We worry about the habits they are forming and the influence of their peer group, and what this may lead to if they never progress beyond the influence and addictive attraction of the group.
This kind of behavior leads to slavery. If we follow the fashions of the peer group, we become the slaves of slaves.
The
Mishna in Sanhedrin says such a son becomes liable if he steals money from his
parents and uses it to buy cheap meat and Italian wine, and if he eats the meat
and drinks the wine at a seudat mitzvah
(festive meal). The meat must be cheap, and the wine seductive, because the
Mishna is speaking about an addictive process.
In
order to understand this, we need to define “seuda”.
“Seuda”
means sitting together, with wine and bread, and the quintessential seuda is
the Pessach Seder.
Throughout
the Gemara, the Pessach Seder is the prototypical seuda, defining for us how
the Sages ate. For example, in those times, many Persian customs were
incorporated into the eating of a festive meal, and so people reclined when
they ate.
With the Pessach Seder, the Sages were trying to pass on to future generations the art of eating a Seuda, and what it represents.
In
its discussion of the rebellious son, the Gemara describes the fermentation of
wine, defining wine as hametz. It
then goes on to explore the ambiguity of wine.
Part
of this ambiguity is found in the concept of the poison containing the cure.
Wine
serves the dual function of soothing our sorrows and revitalizing us. When we
look into the Kiddush cup on Shabbat, our reflection in the wine restores the
sparkle to eyes that have been dulled by the exhaustion of the week. Wine
serves to soothe exhaustion, tears and pain, and yet it is also wine that
causes these things. The Gemara in Sanhedrin points out that the same wine that
gives hope to the lost and the suicidal is also the cause of murders and rapes,
and so the poison is the cure.
This
also applies to the matza, as another meaning of “bread” (lechem) is “war” (milchama).
The
Gemara points out that although Noach was the first alcoholic (Genesis
9:20-24), wine as an agent of pain and suffering dates back to Adam Harishon:
‘Mar ‘Ukba said in R. Zakkai’s name: The Holy One, blessed be He, said unto Noach: Noach, should you not have taken a warning from Adam, whose transgression was caused by wine? This agrees with the view that the [forbidden] tree from which Adam ate was a vine, for nothing else but wine brings woe to man. Rashi comments here that eating the fruit of this tree “brought death and crying to the world” – and so mankind needs the benefit of wine in order to cope with this reality.
The
presence of the wine at the Pessach Seder encapsulates this paradox. We need
the Chametz (wine) to be there, and we also need it to be not there. The wine
has to be there as a witness to us that God is present in the tuma, in the veil. If there was no wine,
there would be no tuma in which to
find God.
The
Gemara goes on to quote R. Judah, who said “the forbidden tree was the wheat
plant, for an infant cannot say ‘father’ and ‘mother’ until it has tasted of
wheat,” meaning that wheat (bread) is the first thing to induce knowledge. This
is the first moment of differentiation in a child, when the child first learns
to say “I”.
The
‘Knowing’ of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil – the ‘knowing’ of the
plow and of technology – is destructive because it creates the illusion of
control.
So
wine at the Seder represents Chessed, and bread represents Gevurah, and this
ties in with the dialectic of the dreams of the baker and the wine steward (Genesis
40). According to the Rebbe of Ishbitz, the dreams are sent to Joseph by God to
explain why Joseph is sitting in prison, while Judah is free.
In these dreams, the baker (Gevurah) represents Joseph, and the wine steward (Chessed) represents Judah. Each does Tshuvah in a separate way. To help people to do Tshuvah, we need both models. If we only have Gevurah, we are all judgment and boundaries. If my land boundaries are too firm, it becomes solely an issue of my land versus your land, and I will take your land. Bread (lechem) leads to war (milchama), and this is why we can’t have Chametz at the Seder. Chametz is pride and anger, and so bread leads to murder.
But
wine (Chessed) also leads to murder. Both Ishmael (extreme Chessed) and Esau
(extreme Gevurah) become murderers.
With its commitment to l’Chayim, the Torah acknowledges ambiguity.
With
l’Chayim, Torah acknowledges its
commitment to the chet, which is the
blocked window, and also to the yud,
which is the unblocking of that same window. The chet and the yud together
form the ambiguity of Chai-Life, and
so the word Chai, the juxtaposition
of the chet and the yud, becomes a visual picture of the
ambiguity. Chet is the body (from the
world of circles, in which God is transcendent and encompasses all) and yud is the soul (from the world of lines
in which God is innermost, with the shortest line – the point of the yud - containing the longest). Together,
these two represent ambiguity, which is life.
Suicide
is a rejection of ambiguity. In life, a thing is never solely one thing or
another. According to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, the world embodies
ambiguity, and the nature of physical reality is actually changed by the cat of
observation.
The
world is both a world of circles and a world of lines. If the wine represents
Yehuda and the bread represents Yosef, we need to acknowledge and appreciate
the necessity for both in the world. If the world contained only
Yosef/Moshe/bread people, nothing would happen, the energy would stagnate,
because the very perception and classification of a thing shuts down the energy
in it. By perceiving and classifying something, we are imposing order on it.
And so we need both bread (circles) and wine (lines) in the world.
The
Gemara emphasizes that the wine consumed by the Rebellious Son must be strong
(Italian) wine.
At
the Seder table consuming the required amount of wine and matzah is a chore.
Drinking four full glasses of strong wine and eating the required amount of
matzah can be very difficult. Both of these require some work; both are
fundamental avoda, and yet the wine
represents our need for Chametz at
the Seder table, and the matzah represents our need to have no Chametz at the Seder table.
This
avoda is a restatement of the search for Chametz at Pessach, which is a
two-part process. First is bedika
(checking) which requires a lot of exacting Gevurah, to the point of cleaning a
place with a toothbrush, because Chametz pollutes even at a microscopic level.
From the perspective of Bedika/Gevurah, each error is a stone. We have to
remove it.
The
truth is that this part of the process is futile, because Chametz is floating
in the atmosphere all the time, and we can never totally eradicate it. The bedika process involves working towards
a goal that is actually impossible to achieve.
Bedikat Hametz refers to uncovering places our personality that are soured. These are the places in which we harbor grudges and complaints –places where we become stuck. Finding the Hametz is like finding the Tuma – we need to know where the blockage or rigidity is so we can start the process of leaving it behind.
The
other part of the process involves letting go, by taking the ‘last’ of the
hametz and burning it. This requires Chessed.
Bitul Hametz is something we learn about
from the way we dispose of idols. There are only two ways to dispose of an idol
– we can either throw it in the ocean, or we can burn it. These are also our
only two options regarding Hametz, which represents the rigid places where we
become stuck. The rigidity is the blocked window of the Chet – the first letter
of Hametz.
Both
of these are part of the therapeutic process. First there is the exacting
process of searching all the way to the roots of a problem, even though there
is really no way to actually get there. This is eating the matzah. Then there
is the letting go and moving on. This is drinking the wine. Both parts of the
process are vital.
At
Pessach, this two-part process is the process of Tshuva, because at the Seder
we are trying to do Tshuva for Chet Adam
Harishon.
If
only Gevurah (matza) is utilized, the whole thing becomes entropic. As more and
more order is imposed, the energy and the spontaneity leak out and dissipate.
The
other side – the side of Chessed - is wine, which Kabbalah calls an import from
the world of Tohu. Wine is imported
chaos, and inside this chaos there is a freedom, an energy that creates a
synergy that is infinitely greater than the sum of any of its parts.
Without
this energy, nothing works, and this is why we need the fermented wine
(chametz) at the Seder. This is chessed, the intoxication of life, the
inexplicable mysterious force that expands the world. It is the chaos that
underlies all reality, and if it is not present, nothing can happen. From the
perspective of Chessed, each error is something beyond our control, and in this
space, we can actually do the Tshuvah with Simcha.
When
we do Tshuvah with Simcah, we can see that the error itself was a gift from
God, just like the fly flying into the wine.
A
person who only has rules and judgment – a person who is all Gevurah (matzah) –
is a very angry person.
On
the other hand, a person without rules and judgment – a person who is all
Chessed (wine) – is totally chaotic. This is why the wine is blood-red –
because it leads to murder.
The
Torah frees us from this dichotomy. Torah is given as a kind of chaos theory,
to liberate the mind, to give freedom.
Without
the fly in the wine (chessed - the mysterious expansive element in the
universe) there really is no room for Hashem. Gevurah is a system of control,
and without Chessed it will render the system totally entropic. We need the
fermenting wine, to see all errors as gifts from God, and to do Tshuvah with
Simcha. This is the meaning of the wine, and without it there is no “good eye”.
And
yet, the great miracle of the exodus from Egypt is that the bread didn’t rise,
because if it had, we would have swung from one extreme (the death of extreme
gevurah/slavery) to the other (the death of extreme chessed/unbounded freedom).
We would have become the oppressor, and the oppressor would have become the
oppressed, but the system itself would have been perpetuated. In order to break
through, from the narrow eye to the good eye, we had to break out of the
dichotomy, to be able to go on to count the Omer and receive the Torah, instead
of turning back and fighting the Egyptians.
We
are always going back to Egypt (the narrow eye) to look for this, and so we are
constantly going back and coming out of Egypt.
At
the Seder, we dance between the wine and the matzah. When we raise the cup of
wine, we cover the matzah. When we put down the wine, we uncover the matzah.
This
forms the core of the Seder. Each must maintain its own dialectic integrity,
and from this they create dynamic tension. It is the unity of these two – of
Yehuda and Yosef – that gives us the Tshuvah.