Hey everybody, Rabbi Fohrman here.
So, if you're like me,
every year you probably set aside a little bit of time before Pesach
to look over the Haggadah –
you wanna have something to share with your guests or your family
about the Haggadah when the Seder night finally arrives.
The good news is that you can count your video-watching-time right now
as part of that "Seder Prep".
But I am going to tell you, right off the bat, that –
to paraphrase Mah Nishtanah -
this Seder Preparation will be a little bit different
this year than all other years.
Because, typically, you know, what do you sort of do
when you look to prepare for the Seder?
Well, you know, think of what Divrei Torah at the Seder often look like.
They tend to be very particular, very local.
Often, you look at an isolated bit of the Seder –
say, the Four Sons, or that little story with Rabbi Akiva and the Sages
sitting around the table in B'nei Brak –
and you try to find some little nugget of inspiration
that you can share around the table
about that particular part of the Seder.
So, what kind of a Seder ends up evolving out of that?
Well, maybe something along these lines:
Kadesh! Alright, everyone gather around for Kiddush.
And you know, kiddush, it feels all very nice and communal,
we all gather and listen to the sonorous melody of Kiddush
and drink our wine.
We eat that little bit of parsley or potato dipped in salt water,
break that Matzah and show it around,
and listen to little Jimmy or little Debbie,
little Beryl and little Chanie,
standing on the chair,
tenuously reciting the four questions as best he or she can from memory.
In Yiddish, sometimes. Or in English.
Or Sanskrit – or whatever; but you get the point.
And then?
And then you get to sing a song.
Avadim Hayinu, Hayinu… Songs are fun.
Little Chanie wants to put on a skit with her cousins
about those Rabbis in B'nei Brak.
Everyone watches and claps.
And then one of the kids has a question:
Daddy, how come the wise son's question sounds so much like the wicked son's?
Good question, Beryl, let's talk about it.
Before you know it, another song:
V'hi She'amda, V'hi She'amdah, lavoteinu velanu…
And then, you know, you put the wine cup down and so it goes.
Until you get to the hard part.
The hard part are those really difficult to follow paragraphs a bit later on in Maggid.
At that point, things often devolve into what I call
a "mumble-mumble-stop" routine.
You know, everyone kind of mumbles a few paragraphs to themselves,
then, stop! Dvar Torah…
then: mumble mumble mumble some more - and then you got to a song.
Mumble mumble some more. Soon people start getting tired,
and so you pick up the pace… mumble mumble - song!
mumble mumble - d'var Torah! mumble mumble - song!
And finally: mumble mumble - Dayenu!
Yay, we've made it through maggid!
You chomp your way through Matzah, marror and arrive gratefully at
Shulchan Orech - the Matza Ball Soup and Brisket.
Things are good now.
It's all very sweet. It really is.
But here's the issue:
When you sort of mumble your way through difficult paragraphs,
you sort of lose the larger picture.
You can end up having an entire "mumble mumble stop" Seder
without actually understanding what you're actually saying.
And when I say that you won't have a basic understanding of what you're saying,
I don't mean you won't be able to translate any given word,
phrase or even a sentence. You will.
But what you'll be missing is an understanding
of how it all hangs together; how does line A lead to line B?
How does paragraph C connect to paragraph D?
And that stuff's important.
You know, you read an article in the New York Times or some other newspaper –
what do you do when you read the article?
Consciously or not, your brain asks:
What is that first paragraph doing, what's it talking about?
And how does it connect to the second paragraph?
And you keep on reading the article that way
and those are the questions you ask.
But imagine you were reading that article, and...
you couldn't make heads or tails of how one idea led to the next –
but then, instead of trying to figure that out,
you say to the person next to you and you say:
"Hey! Did you notice that it says
'because' in this paragraph not once, but twice?
Let me tell you a fascinating idea I once learned about that…"
That sounds kind of absurd, right?
So let's not do this with the Haggadah.
I mean, I grant you, when it comes to the Haggadah,
reading comprehension is harder than it is with the NY Times.
The Haggadah is a rabbinic text that's many centuries old,
written in the style of – and about the same time as -
a piece of Baraita, or Talmud.
And these texts aren't meant to just be read,
they're meant to be studied.
And the way you study such texts,
is really to focus on the main things that
any of us focus on subconsciously when you read the newspaper:
For each paragraph, you ask: What was that paragraph about?
What was its main point; what was its purpose?
And then, you ask yourself:
How does this paragraph connect to the paragraphs around it?
The paragraph before it, and the paragraph after it?
What's the flow here?
In the videos that follow,
we are going to do exactly this with the text of the Haggadah.
Dive in with me, and let's begin to look at the main part of the Haggadah,
that section known as Maggid:
Maggid. This word literally means "retelling a story".
This, supposedly, is the part of the Haggadah
dedicated to actually retelling the Exodus story.
But look how it begins.
Ha lachma anya:
This is the bread of affliction; poor man's bread,
the bread we used to eat in Egypt.
This is the part where we hold up the matzah for everybody to see
and we explain what it is.
What's the main point of this paragraph?
Well, we seem to be quite literally pointing to,
and explaining, a central symbol of the Seder that is about to unfold:
Here is the matzah, and here's what it means.
All right, that's great. But,
let's ask ourselves a reading comprehension question:
What's this doing here?
We are supposed to be telling a story, right?
Pointing at Matzah doesn't seem to be telling a story.
But maybe we are beginning a story, in a certain kind of way.
We are pointing to a concrete thing – a food –
that will tell the story to come not just in words,
but in flavors and textures.
The matzah is setting the tone, the flavor, if you will,
for the story to come.
So, maybe it is a reasonable way to begin the Seder.
All right,
The next paragraph is ma nishtana, four questions
in which a child remarks on how
very different this night seems from others during the year.
How is this paragraph connected to the last one?
Well, we just held up the matzah,
we called everybody's attention to one of the main symbols of the night.
And, our children notice that there's something out of the ordinary going on tonight,
they want to understand.
In a sense, these questions create the opportunity for a story –
a story that we will soon tell.
All right, so Mah Nishtanah isn't yet the story,
but it is a precursor to it.
The story we tell is going to be couched as an answer to a set of questions.
This question and answer format is a pedagogical model
that the Rabbis lay out in the Talmud.
We, as parents, have an obligation
to tell the story of the Exodus to our kids.
But the Rabbis knew that the best way to engage children
is to first give them the opportunity to ask their own questions.
So this paragraph is giving the children a chance to do just that –
helping them get engaged in the story we're about to tell.
All right, let's move on, the next paragraph is avadim hayinu:
We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God took us out of there.
Wait a minute, this seems like a story!
Has Maggid, the story-telling part of the Haggadah,
really, finally, begun?
Well, in a sense it has.
When we say that one sentence –
we have, in essence, just told the entire story:
We were once slaves, now we're free.
So, you might be thinking… if we've gone and done it already –
if that's the story – well, we have finished our business!
Let's close up shop and bring out the soup and brisket:
Let the meal begin!
Why don't we do that?
Well, maybe the rest of the paragraph here
is actually explaining why we don't do just that:
the next thing we say in the Haggadah is,
Had God not taken us out, we'd still be in Egypt.
In other words: these events that happened so long ago,
they're not just bygone events in history,
mere curiosities of times past –
they have profound consequences
for you and me sitting right here right now.
If it were not for the Exodus,
Israel as an independent nation would never have come to be.
We would have been a perpetual class of slaves –
and eventually, we'd have probably assimilated into the host culture.
You and I would never be sitting here today
had the Exodus not happened. And therefore…
and therefore, we need to do more than perfunctorily dispense with the story.
It's not enough to just summarize the Exodus story in a line,
and move on to the meal.
No, no matter how knowledgeable or wise we all are,
no matter how many times we've heard this story before,
we need to elaborate on it, flesh it out; make it come alive.
We need to delve into this story,
cuz it's this story that changed everything for us.
The author of the Haggadah is providing a rationale
for what comes next - a reason
why the meal won't be coming yet for another few hours.
In other words: This paragraph is really the beginning of a meta-story:
A story about the telling of the Exodus story.
Here's why we do things this way, little Jimmy and little Debbie.
We are learning why the story is important,
and why we're going to spend a lot of time telling it.
So what happens next?
Do we start telling the exodus story now?
Well, no, actually we don't.
The next paragraphs actually continue the "meta-story".
They continue to talk about telling the Exodus story.
We get a little episode about some Sages from the Talmud,
in Bnei Brak, who told the Exodus story on Seder Night
in so much depth and detail that they stayed up all night doing it.
And, that paragraph is really just illustrating the last point, right?
That no matter how much you know,
you just have to lose yourself in the telling of the Exodus story.
It has to be all-encompassing.
The "meta-story" continues with the next paragraph in the Haggadah,
the "Four Sons".
You see, if the previous paragraph told us how much to tell the Exodus story,
this next paragraph tells us how to tell the story.
Cuz, the Rabbis noticed that the Torah
tells you not once but four different times
that you have to tell the Exodus story to your kids.
From there, they drew the idea
that there are actually four different ways to tell the story –
the story needs to be tailored to the needs of the listener,
to the needs of each kid.
In all of these paragraphs, for that matter, the ones that follow –
we are not yet getting to the actual story of the Exodus –
we are telling the meta-story;
we are being given pointers as to how to tell the exodus story.
We don't have anything that really sounds
like an Exodus story in the Haggadah, until we get to these words:
"Metchila ovdei avodah zara hayu avoteinu…"
Once upon a time, our ancestors were idol worshippers…
Well, that's a proper way to start a story –
quite literally with a "once upon a time".
And in fact, the Exodus story really does begin at this moment,
at least in a way.
Yeah, we're starting from all the way in the beginning,
even before Abraham, and
there are still some confusing paragraphs in the Haggadah beyond this point,
but it seems fair to say: The meta-story is now over,
and an actual story is beginning.
This is where the action really begins.
So, as you sit down to the Seder this year,
keep your eye on the ball.
Until now, we talked about how important it is to retell the Exodus,
how much we have to retell it, how we have to retell it,
when we have to retell it – but we haven't yet actually retold it.
Until right here. This is the beginning.
So how does that affect you?
Well, at your Seder,
it is easy to entertain lots of questions and divrei Torah
about these introductory pieces –
why Rabbi Elazar ben Azaryah's beard was so white
when he was only 18 years old, and all that...
but there is a price to pay for these indulgences.
You get up to this point where we're at now,
"Metchila ovdei avodah zara hayu avotein" – and,
by now, the kids are getting restless, the guests are hungry,
and in front of you there's this dense and intimidating section
of Rabbinical analysis.
So if you're not careful, it's "Come on folks,
we've got an afikoman to eat by midnight, let's move!"
My advice: Try not to fall into that trap.
Say fewer divrei Torah on the introductory parts,
and make sure you get up to here,
fully awake and ready to go.
Because remember: The story starts here.
Don't let it pass you by.
In the next videos of this course,
we're going to tackle the next paragraphs of the Haggadah.
They are some of the hardest to understand in the Haggadah.
It is not easy to figure out exactly how they hang together,
or what story they are meant to tell.
But if we can piece together their puzzle,
we will find ourselves richly rewarded.
We will get an inside look at the Exodus story,
as the rabbis beckoned us to see it.
We will, I daresay, begin to see
a side of the Exodus story that we never imagined existed before.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét