It is so important that slavery to routine does not exclude us from life-changing experiences that do not fit into our routines. Pesach entails both routine (Seder) and discontinuity. We create a new Seder for the occasion rather than force occasions into our own robotic routines. We do not become slaves to routine; rather we use Seder, (routine, order, structure) to serve our Freedom. Routine is a tool for completion. Not a structure for dominance and control.
I will not be sending out a Tzav Parsha Insight this week, due to pre-Pesach pressures and my travel commitments. But let’s share some ideas on Pesach which I hope you will explore further at your Seder tables.
Both our major Yamim Tovim, Pesach and Sucot entail disruption to routine. Despite that shared dimension though, they are opposite in their types of disruptio. In the case of Pesach we stay firmly within the secure structures of our home, but everything else changes. We eat different food on different keilim and our “seder” is a meal of a very different kind. So different that our children are prompted to ask Ma Nishtanah?!
On Sucot, we are encouraged to operate just as we do the whole year around, Ke’ein Taduru (Live in your Sucah just as you do in your home). Our children do not ask Ma Nishtana although you would expect them to find Sucot more unusual than Pesach! This is because On Sucot everything we do stays the same. It is however the security of our physical structure that we completely surrender.
We live in disruptive times. None of us can any longer assume that tomorrow will be a predictable continuation of yesterday. Some of us, at various stages of our lives, experience more disruption than others. Routine, with its many advantages, quells zest and growth. Discontinuity disrupts routine but it can restore radically accelerated self-discovery and growth. The Torah provides at least two disruptions a year: Pesach and Sucot.
In Pesach there is both routine (Seder) and discontinuity. We create a new Seder for the occasion rather than force occasions into our robotic routines. We engage in challenging conversation for hours before we eat. We wash our hands hours before we have bread, and then do it again. After taking our time the whole evening, we rush to meet deadlines at the end of our meal. While focusing on staying alert and keeping the children awake, we indulge in no less than four glasses of wine ourselves. Despite the seriousness of the evening and its abundance of meaning and symbolism, we do not sit upright during our discourse and meal, but recline in a most leisurely fashion. Yet all the time we follow a rigorous agenda from which at no time we depart. We use Seder, (routine, order, structure) to serve our purposes. We do not become slaves of routine. Routine is a tool for completion. Not a structure for dominance and control.
Sucot is different. The routine of our meals and family get-togethers are unaltered. It is the venue, the structure that changes. We leave everything we know to be warm, cozy and secure, and we celebrate in flimsy Sucot.
There are two aspects here to order. There is an order of time and an order of place. We tend to get attached to both, and that severely restricts our freedom of movement. It restricts the freedom of our physical movement as well as our intellectual and spiritual movement. It is so important that our slavery to routine does not exclude us from life-changing experiences that do not fit into our routines. It is important that our anchorage to secure structure does not inhibit our capacities to travel physically and intellectually.
We are also often enslaved to these limitations in more abstract ways. Our dogmatic attachments to ours being the only way to view the world, or even the Torah, can keep us entrapped in smallness.Shivim Panim LaTorah (there are seventy facets to the Torah) is not merely a statement of fact. It is also a call to action: Get out of your own comfort zone and see the wonders of the torah from 69 other angles. How much of a beautiful building would you know if you saw it only from one angle? How much of your beloved’s personality and being would you understand if you saw him or her from one angle only? We are not asked to abandon order of time and space. We are merely urged to constantly reinvent and recreate the order of the time and space in which we live to serve the moment, rather than to admit into our lives only those moments that conform to our limited notions of our own orders and the way we see our worlds.
Many Mefarshim question why Sucot and Pesach do not converge in the calendar. Both Chaggim celebrate Yetziat Mitzrayim (The Exodus), would it not be appropriate to conduct our Sedarim in ourSucot? Many answers are offered. Perhaps, in light of the ideas above, the Torah prefers that we focus separately on both forms of disruption. The Torah prefers that we honor disruption of time routine as much as we honor the disruption of space routine, and gives each form of disruption, its own place in the calendar.
Often, to move into new spaces of being we need to let go of old spaces of being. That does not mean those spaces were bad or wrong. Just that they do not serve our futures as well as they served our pasts. New places and new phases are not always easier than familiar ones of the past, but they do challenge us into new paradigms of seeing and being. As we abandon the secure restrictedness of Mitzrayim (
This Seder, seek new wonders in the same Haggadah you have read for many years. Find new curiosity as you question old ideas. Formulate new thoughts and fresh answers to age-old questions. As you detach from your Chameitz and design your new order for Pesach, open yourself to the opportunity to come away from Pesach seeing a new world full of new and exciting possibilities.
Have a Chag Kasher veSameach.
