Pesach vis Shemini

Pesach via Shemini

This Pesach we have a great opportunity. Because it falls on Shabbat we get to really re-experience our freedom from Egypt in Exodus. On the other hand we also are faced with Shemini in Leviticus and the sad deaths of the sons of Aaron, Nadav and Avihu.

. And while often it feels appropriate to read Shemini literally and deal with death on a personal level…and death is a huge and important piece of our soul-voyage to try and grasp….this week I want to see Shemini as part of the catapult that gets us out of Egypt, that helps us to squeeze through the tight spaces pre-Pesach. I want to see it as the big breath (let’s say) that finally pushes us out of the birth canal towards the Promised Land. And we all know we need that breath.

I want to begin with an experience I had in Israel. I was in Sfad with my two teens, at the tomb of Shimon bar Yochai, possible writer of the mystical book, the Zohar. My daughter and I were on the women’s side so I actually had access to a semblance of the grave. I had heard that the grave of Hillel was (unofficially) reported to be in a cave nearby. It didn’t take long before I found a woman to lead us down there. Because it was unofficial I had direct access to tombstones…which is not the case with those of other great Talmudic scholars. Women are walled off from sacred gravesites in Israel.

So this was an exciting moment. We ducked and stumbled in through the opening. The cave was dank. And there wasn’t only Hillel’s (supposed) tombstone but those of twelve students. The energy was palpable. How many people had been here praying over the centuries? Ancient supplications seemed to stamp themselves on each and every drop of water falling from the rocks above. Candles were lit. The tombs were in a half circle like (as we read in Talmud) the Sanhedrin or like half a round threshing floor. Even in death these students could see each other and all could see Hillel, the center. A woman with a shawl was sitting in the corner praying. She was alone.

Or maybe not.

I looked around, smelled earth and fire, love and the consolidation of all time. The intensity was amplified by the primal clarity of the scene. No prayer books. No big signs. No walls cutting us off. No mobs of people there to see. No flowers or food or thick arrows pointing the way. No men staring at us with disapproval or women weeping. Just candles, 13 to be specific. I hugged my own shawl tighter. The woman who walked us down spoke to us in Hebrew (even though we barely understood) and she continued explaining.

His tombstone, she motioned, was lifted centuries ago (grave robbers, she inferred) and that’s why it’s on a slant. If we want we can do a mikvah with the water collected in the crevice. She showed us, filling the water in the palm of her hand and wiping her arms, her face, her neck. I did the same. I can use all the Hillel energy I can muster, I figured. My daughter Lilly, Jerusalem scarf tied on her head, long brown hair framing her face, stared at me wide-eyed.

Was Hillel really buried here? It didn’t really matter anymore. To me he was.

I remembered a well known story of Hillel and his colleague Shammai.

It happened in the 1^st century CE.

A man asked Shammai to specify the most important teaching in Tanach so that he could repeat it while standing on one foot. Just a reminder, Tanach is made up of many writings. Not only the five books of Moses but the Prophets and the story of David. There’s Song of Songs, Job and Daniel. This therefore was quite a lot to ask, especially of a scholar who loves each word. Shammai waved him away. Hillel though told him this: Do not do hateful things to your neighbor. The rest, Hillel advised him, is commentary.

Often, the statement of Hillel is mistaken for…love your neighbor as yourself. Both statements are in Torah. The truth is though, Hillel was referring to behavior. We are to create boundaries around our actions so that we do not hurt others. It’s great to love. We can all love. But in Judaism the focus is acting with love. I personally think that there might have been a teaching within the teaching here. After all, here we have a man asking such a thing of a lover of God and Torah. It would be like challenging a father of many children to choose the favorite in order to prove the holiness of them all, a brutal thing to ask.

What does Hillel do though? Dos he push him away, cut him off? In the name of truth and Torah does he tell this guy to take a walk? No. He embraces the ugliness of the situation and turns it into light, into wisdom.

We can learn from this. This is what we want to do as a people. Each and every one of us. To walk in Gods ways. To bring ugly situations into a realm of beauty. Those who study Torah and those who don’t. Those who like to take long walks or would rather sit and watch TV. Those who speak loud or softly, who collect coins or shells, who love art or math, who love solitude or company, who sleep often or little.

But how do we embrace those who are unknowingly hurtful or destructive, who act in ways that sing the song of Shammai and self righteous truth….and in so doing cut us off? Who are determined to prove some kind of fallacy in our inner growth, in our beliefs, in our path? How do we deal with the child on Pesach who asks: What is this to you? If we are Hillel we honor their request, and teach them carefully, with concealment and gentleness. By so doing we arrive at our inner freedom. We don’t create impermeable walls that (yes) protect us but also keep us captive. By keeping our hearts open to even the shadow in others, we widen the opening of our passage to liberation.

If you think about it, there are so many reactions Hillel could have had. For example, he doesn’t sit this man down and spend days with him trying to convince him of the beauty of Torah. He doesn’t yell at him that he’s a heretic. He doesn’t get carried away with the situation. He responds with balance and peace.

He acts carefully, thoughtfully.

This is not how we all react all the time. I mean if we are really honest with ourselves. I don’t think anyone knows the seriousness of his reactions, the coming repercussions, what happens when we act with jealousy and denial, when we feel threatened, when we make outrageous requests of others, when we use words like fists, when we harden our heart (without really knowing it) when we buy into a creed that there are favorite children of God, when we knowingly or not knowingly hold back others from achieving their own path, when we try through cynicism or manipulation to keep the Israelites in Mitzrayim or when we shoot ahead like meteors without sharing the solid ground we stand on.

Does the Pharoah know beyond his own culture and habits that by holding onto the Jews as slaves he is acting against a holy radiance? Does he know that he is bringing great vulnerability to his own shadow-space, the seeds of his shadow, his people. I don’t think so.

Do Nadav and Avihu know that by getting carried away with the ritual of offering and intimacy that they will be zapped into a place of yes amazing revelation but (also) physical death?

As a reminder, during the consecration of the mishkan they bring incense offerings…those most holy and intimate…to the copper altar. They are basically over-doing it, getting a bit too carried away, like teens enthralled by a thunder storm running wildly in an open field and getting hit by lightning. It’s sad. Tragic. Beyond blame even if they know better. They die in the arms of God no doubt. They completely give up their shadows… whether intentional or not….all the stuff and emotions and day to day concerns of human life…for something unknown. .

I don’t think many of us know what we are doing when we do it. But let’s look at this more.

Pharaoh uses too many limitations and this threatens his very existence and ours…the Israelites.

Nadav and Avihu use too little limitation. And this action not only threatens their personal shadows, it destroys them.

What I like to think though is that if we place them together…allow Nadav and Avihu in their great love to help us out of Mitzrayim perhaps we can learn something.

What I also like to think is when God approaches and kills the Egyptian first born at midnight…at that half-way point between night and day…that perhaps as the shadows leave us Nadav and Avihu can enter through that same midnight portal….through the blood on our door posts…and help us to make offerings of ourselves as they clearly do in the parasha Shemini…as we need to do. Perhaps their enthusiasm and excitement can direct us faster and mightier out of the hole of the past and stuck ideas and stuck dependencies into a place of lightning self-perception.

Perhaps the restrictions of Mitzrayim can serve as the borders of the path through which we are propelled. In other words, perhaps the very stuff that hurts us can serve to free us.

And perhaps if we start to spin out and run too fast we will arrive right here at Hillel’s grave, a sure place of grace, balance and humility, the true Promised Land in a world of extremes and indecision, the Torah of our earth whether Hillel is really buried there or not.

After saying the Sh’ma (the prayer that I knew Lilly would like saying) we moved out of the cave and walked back up the path to where we began. As we climbed on the rocks and through the weeds the woman motioned with her hand up into the hills. Shammai, she said, Shammai is there. I nodded, offered to make the hike. She looked at me and shook her head.

I hope that one day she will go there. It can’t be that far. And my guess is that Shammai would appreciate visitors as well.

I’m going to think about that cave of Hillel this Pesach and send blessings to all who I know are in tight spaces…and try to transport to that gravestone-mikvah. If it isn’t the Promised Land it’s the closest I’ve been to it. So may we all thank Nadav and Avihu and even the Pharoah for taking us there. May we thank them for their love…even if it is an odd kind of shadow-love….sometimes a very hurtful love. May we find the compassion and know who we can help as they breathe through the tight spaces. May we have the humility to accept help as well. May we find comfort and beauty beyond the limitations of time in the eternal golden core of God. May we know who we are.