Dreams and Details: The Meaning of Passover

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And then suddenly everything changes: one day God shows up and the unthinkable happens--you are freed. That which was literally unimaginable a short time ago has now become a reality, your reality. You will forever feel an immense debt of gratitude, and you hope your children will, too.

You have a lot of chutzpah. So instead of just celebrating this experience as an amazing event in the life and history of your family, you claim it is far more-- the paradigmatic event of all Jewish and human history, in fact. This is not just a story, it is the story. You will remember the fact of your departure from Egypt every day, and once a year you will even re-enact it.

The most important things one can know about God and human life, you insist, one can learn from this story: God will forever be known as the One who sides with the afflicted and downtrodden, and you will be mandated to love the stranger and to treat him as one of your citizens (Leviticus 19:33-34). You even enter into a covenant with God in which both you and God dare to dream of a different reality, a world in which human dignity is real and the presence of God is manifest. A world, that is, that is utterly unlike the Egypt that enslaved you.

To serve God is to help translate that dream into a reality. Judaism thus has radical goals-- to overturn the status quo of human history, away from a world of callousness and brutality, and towards a world of compassion and service of God. But since redemptive goals can often be used to justify very cruel (and profoundly unredemptive) behavior, Judaism is suspicious of all-at-once approaches to social and political change. And so it makes a paradoxical move-- it aims to achieve revolutionary goals through traditionalist means. In other words, it seeks to change the world by building a culture, step-by-step, one that values each and every human being as an infinitely precious image of God capable of entering into deep and nurturing relationship with the transcendent Creator and Redeemer of us all.

Consider, for example, what we do on the first (two) night(s) of Pesach itself: we strive to re-live the story and to see ourselves as if we, too, had been liberated from Egypt. But we do it through an incredibly detailed and well-choreographed set of rituals. Interestingly, perhaps surprisingly, the evening's rituals are collectively referred to as the Seder, from the Hebrew root S-D-R, meaning to organize. The most radically transformative night of the year is thus also a highly structured affair. It as if we are being told: the world will not be redeemed without loving attention to detail, without remembering that our grandest ideals sometimes have to be played out on the smallest of tableaus.

None of this is to mitigate the importance of the great dreams. On the contrary: "The great dreams," writes Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, "are the foundation of the word." No dreams, we might say, no Judaism. In fact, it is crucial that we work to ensure that we not get lost in the details, that we not hold to traditionalist means in lieu of revolutionary goals. If we forget Judaism's grand ambitions, we run the risk that it can rapidly disintegrate into a not-very-interesting collection of overly detailed behaviors. The "trick," as it were, is to hold the paradox close to our hearts and minds-- radical goals through sacred attention to detail. Our goals: to live in a world that embodies God's dreams of justice, compassion, goodness, and holiness. Our means, at least for tonight: to build that world slowly, piece by piece, home by home, and table by table.

There are important battles to wage. Slavery, oppression, illness, hunger, and deprivation-- all conspire to deny human dignity, and all must be struggled with, valiantly and in the name of the God who liberates the slaves and comforts the afflicted. In an age of unprecedented Jewish power and wealth, we, the heirs and bearers of God's covenant with Israel, should be at the forefront of these causes. But none of this can be accomplished without a focus on the smallest, most painstaking decisions we face each day-- how will I talk to my spouse and child today? How will I greet another human being on the street? How will I use the power I have to help another? How will I refrain from using the power I have over another? To take Judaism to heart, ultimately, is to know that the biggest social ideals and the smallest human interactions are meant to live together, to deepen and fructify one-another. The details of Pesach observance serve to remind us that just as there is no Judaism without big ambitions, so also is there no Judaism without sacred details.

This Pesach, dare to dream. If your proclivity is to pay attention only to the fine points, push yourself to remember God's grand designs for human history. If your temptation is only to dream big dreams, force yourself to remember the quotidian details and the people around you who make up your immediate world. May God grant us the vision and the insight, the heart and the passion, to help move the world me-avdut le-herut, from oppression and degradation to freedom and liberation. Next year in Jerusalem!

haggadah Section: Commentary / Readings

Source: Original