This Shabbat is the final Shabbat of arbah parshiyot, the four special Torah readings that supplement our weekly march through the Torah from beginning to end. These special Torah readings are part of the Jewish liturgical cycle, so that not only do we journey with our ancestors from the creation of the world to the precipice of the promised land, as our ancestors did when reading the torah each year from beginning to end, but certain parts of the Torah were lifted up specially to attune our hearts and our spirits to where we were in the rhythm of the year cycle—which holidays were nearly upon us and when, so we could begin to spiritually prepare for their celebration.
This Shabbat is Shabbat-hachodesh—the shabbat of literally, “the month,” drawn from the first verses of the special Torah portion we read this week when we read Adonai saying to Moses in the land of Egypt, הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים “This month”—the month in which you are about to embark on your journey from slavery to freedom, from constriction to expansiveness—”shall mark for you the beginning of the months” (Exodus 12:1). This is a new beginning.
Rabbi Harold Kushner notes that “one of the first steps in the process of liberation was for the Israelites to have their own calendar, their own way of keeping track of time,” and their own way of recalling the seminal moments in the story of their people. An oppressed person “does not control their own time; it belongs to someone else,” he says. Rabbi Kushner cites Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch for the teaching that “the Jewish calendar is the Jewish catechism.” A catechism, for those, like me, who aren’t quite clear on the term, is a summary of religious doctrine, of the main beliefs of a particular religious body, and so to say that “the Jewish calendar is the Jewish catechism” is a way of saying that allowing our hearts to align with, to go through the journey of, the Jewish calendar each year—Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur in the fall, cleaning the slate, purifying our hearts to enter into the year, feeling like we are grounded, like we have re-centered ourselves and have a solid foundation under foot; on to Sukkot, feeling the fragility of the sukkah, recognizing life’s fragility, exposing ourselves to the elements but being at peace with our transitory nature on earth; picking up our spirits during Hanukkah, finding that light amidst darkness, pirsuming ha-nes, publicizing the miracle that each of our lives are, letting our lights shine; imbibing in Purim, letting out our silly side after a long, cold winter; then going through the journey from oppression to freedom in Passover, reminding ourselves that yes, we sometimes find ourselves in narrow, dark places, and yet we have broken free before and will again, that there is a spirit within ourselves we can turn to to lift us up and out of these dark places, to break free crossing that sea to freedom; then journeying to Shavuot, commemorating the revelation at mt sinai, reminding us, that it’s not just freedom from, but freedom to; that we have obligations in this life, the Divine calling upon us, reaching out to us to have us act with a sense of responsibility, a sense of commitment, a sense of mitzvah in the world, that our lives are interconnected and we’re called upon to sow light as we live—allowing our hearts to go on this year journey, along with all the other little pit stops, like Simchat Torah, Tu Bi’Shvat, Tishah b’Av—all of this is to say that , the Jewish calendar is the Jewish catechism: it is in some ways the expression of our Jewish faith.
The arbah parshyiot, the four special Torah readings, one before Purim, three before Pesach, are a recognition of the fact that in order to be properly attuned to this rhythm, to the spirit of this calendar, one has to do a little bit of preparation; a little bit of homework. One doesn’t just—poof—wake up and it’s Passover, or—poof—wake up and it’s Purim. Amazon is fast but it’s not that fast; we’ve got to order parts of our costumes a little bit ahead of time. If it’s Pesach and we observe the tradition of cleaning our house of chametz, that takes time. My wife and I have a Pesach meeting on our Google calendars scheduled for how to prepare the house; we know it’s going to be an undertaking, both physically and spiritually, to get in the head space, heart space, spirit space of what Passover means for our lives today.
Living in, as Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan put it, two civilizations—living as we do as a minority culture in a majority civilization, it can be easy to lose track of where we are in our own calendar. Starbucks red cups don’t start appearing to let us know Passover is upon us.
Living in two civilizations—living in exile—is not new to the Jewish people. It’s in many ways our modus operandi, our way of encountering the world. So we’ve developed habits and practices, like the four parshiyot, that prepare us for the fact that some of the year’s most significant weigh stations, Passover especially, is nearly upon us. We’re invited to begin considering the journey of Passover even before we sit down to the seder.
So let’s do that for a moment: let’s ask how it is we might prepare ourselves for the journey that takes places on Passover; the journey where, as the Haggadah says, בְּכָל־דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת־עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם, “In each and every generation we are obligated to see ourselves as though we ourselves left Egypt.” Where we’re invited, Jumanji-like, to put ourselves right in the center of the experience of leaving Egypt, undertaking an arc according to which, the mishnah teaches, מַתְחִיל בִּגְנוּת וּמְסַיֵּם בְּשֶׁבַח, we begin with a sense of diminishment, constriction, oppression, asking how we ourselves and others in the world have experienced, or continue to experience, oppression—a sense, literal or otherwise, that the walls are closing in—and we end with praise, with expansiveness, with breaking free. We go on the journey, over the course of the seder from tapping into the experience of deprivation and pressure to the experience of openness and freedom, in so doing recognizing that that journey has happened, and can happen again, for us, and for the people in the world who need it most. In going on the journey, we both replant the seed of hope within ourselves year after year, literally tasting the memory that we’ve experienced this journey to freedom before, and reminding ourselves what it’s like to be in Egypt so that we feel the urgency that the journey indeed happens for everyone and that we do what we can to make it a reality.
Different Jewish holidays at different parts of the calendar light up, touch on different parts of our spirits, inviting and reminding us to experience renewed sensibilities to the world around us.
Our calendar is our catechism. Our calendar—living it—is a statement of faith. It’s an expression, an articulation, that, no matter our exact theology, we are swept up in something bigger—a people, a story, a Source of Life. I wish you all a Shabbat filled with life. Shabbat Shalom.
