On April 28, 2001 (Shabbat Tazria-Metzora), about 60 people crowded into an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan to participate in a new egalitarian Shabbat morning minyan. This minyan would be named Kehilat Hadar several months later, and it has grown dramatically in both size and influence, becoming a household name around the world and inspiring many spinoffs and imitations. So today we congratulate Kehilat Hadar on reaching its 10th anniversary. (The community celebrated its anniversary several weeks ago, on Shabbat Tazria.) We wish it many more years of success if it continues to meet a need, or a graceful end if it ever outlives its mission.
But today marks an even more important milestone. As of today, according to some (including Hadar founder Rabbi Elie Kaunfer), Kehilat Hadar is no longer an independent minyan.
How is this possible? Let’s look at the evidence.
The 2007 Spiritual Communities Study, sponsored by the S3K Synagogue Studies Institute and Mechon Hadar, restricted its sample of communities based on certain criteria. The report says “For the purposes of this report, we define a qualifying community as one with the following features:”, and among these features is “It was founded in 1996 or later.” (Other features of independent minyanim include “It exists independently of the denominational movements” and “It meets minimally once a month for worship”.) At first it seems like the 1996 cutoff (10 years before the study began) is just about defining the scope of the study and nothing more. But later parts of the report attribute more real-world significance to this categorization, such as the infamous bar graph which illustrates that “these communities … have grown in number more than five-fold”. (Of course you’re going to see huge growth after 1996 if you only include communities founded after 1996! If “synagogues” were defined as “synagogues founded after 1996″, then a graph of the “number of synagogues” in each year would also necessarily show some year x such that the “number of synagogues” increased fivefold between x and the present.) Agree with it or not, the idea here is that the period after 1996 is different in some way from the period before 1996. And because 1996 is in the past, you might think that whatever happened in or around 1996 already happened, and this historical cutoff isn’t going to change.
But you’d be wrong.
In Rabbi Elie Kaunfer’s book Empowered Judaism (published in 2010), he writes “What is an independent minyan? They are defined by the following characteristics:”, followed by a familiar list that includes “No denomination/movement affiliation” and “Meet at least once a month”. But there is one crucial difference between this list and the list in the 2007 report: instead of “founded in 1996 or later”, Kaunfer defines independent minyanim as “founded in the past ten years”. (At the time of publication, that meant founded in 2000 or later.) Since he has essentially adopted the definition from the S3K/Mechon Hadar study, he seems to understand the significance of 1996 not as a specific moment in time, but as 10 years before the study’s data collection. (For the Excel users out there, it’s the difference between E2 and $E$2.) On the next page is another version of the same bar graph, but this time it begins in 2000, and doesn’t claim to be linked to a particular sample, but is instead labeled “Total Number of Minyanim”. (This graph also features the humorous caption “Growth of independent minyanim in the United States, 2000-2009. Includes six minyanim in Israel.”)
So if we extend this dynamic definition of independent minyanim into the present time, then as of today, a community is only an “independent minyan” if it was founded after April 28, 2001. So Kehilat Hadar doesn’t make the cut.
If Kehilat Hadar, once viewed by many as the flagship independent minyan, is no longer an independent minyan, then what is it? Is it a synagogue? Is it a havurah? (Kaunfer writes that the purpose of the 10-year cutoff for independent minyanim is “distinguishing them from the havurah movement”.) Is it something else?
As Kehilat Hadar enters its second decade, it will have to figure out what it is. Either that or it can remain an independent minyan (after all, that’s what it’s good at), and we can stop pigeonholing communities based on an arbitrary chronological cutoff. We can acknowledge that independent minyanim (any way you define that) existed before 2001 (and even before 1996), and at the same time see that this takes nothing away from the significance of the work that a new generation of minyanim has been doing for the last 10.01 years. We can explore the substantive similarities and differences among independent Jewish communities, whether they were founded around the same time or decades apart.
A very unique program is recruiting a few more rabbinic students near New York (especially Orthodox, Reform or Reconstructionist) for an intensive, interfaith exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with Christian seminarians. The program is a joint project of the Auburn Theological Seminary and the American Jewish Committee.
Ever wondered what Christians really think about Israel? Ever thought about how to engage the regional conflict constructively across faith lines? This intensive and life-changing program features a series of study and dialogue sessions followed by a 9-day travel encounter to Israel and the Palestinian Territories in January 2012. Auburn Seminary and the American Jewish Committee (NY Chapter) jointly run the program, which has openings for a few more rabbinic students. All program costs, including travel and accommodations, are covered in exchange for a $400 program fee (waived for those with financial difficulty). Application and details are available online and are due ASAP.
Video featuring our very own Josh Frankel. For more Auburn resources to bridge religious divides click here.
This is a guest post by Lawrence MacDonald and Geri Maskell, co-chairs of the Green Team at Temple Rodef Shalom, the largest Jewish congregation in Virginia. The authors can be contacted at lawrencemacdonald at gmail.
We are two members of Temple Rodef Shalom, a Reform synagogue in northern Virginia, who are exploring with fellow congregants what it means to be a “green” congregation as the world teeters on the brink of rapid, catastrophic climate change. This is our unfinished story.
For the past four years, we have been working with our clergy and lay leaders to increase attention to the climate change threat. We invited speakers and organized events, helped to reduce energy use within the synagogue, promoted home energy conservation, organized temple members to write letters and make phone calls in an effort to block construction of a new coal-fired power plant in southwestern Virginia, and visited Richmond as participants in a Jewish Advocacy day to lobby for clean energy.
Meanwhile, nearly every year has set a new record high average global temperature. The Arctic ice is shrinking much faster than experts predicted. Extreme weather events are claiming lives and dislocating millions of people: fires in Russia, floods in Pakistan and Australia, and just this month drought-fueled wildfires in Texas and an unprecedented spate of killer tornadoes across the southeastern U.S.
Scientists are alarmed but much of the American public, confused by coal and oil industry propaganda, is complacent. Climate legislation stalled in the Senate, then died after the mid-term elections. President Obama, who had spoken passionately about the climate threat, has stopped saying “climate,” preferring to talk about “clean energy.” The U.S. failure to act has torpedoed international negotiations.
The technology exists to substantially cut the emission of heat-trapping gasses, slowing climate change. But there is a failure of political will. Could our tiny efforts in Temple Rodef Shalom make a difference in the face of this impending catastrophe? Is there something more that we and other Jews could do to help sound the alarm? More »
Before Passover came to camp out in our kitchens and dining rooms and lower intestines, I went to the closing event for Justice and Jewish Thought 2011, held at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. (The Brecht Forum, if you don’t already know, is a fantastic space for social justice activists, resources, and programing. It would behoove you to visit their website.)
Justice and Jewish Thought (JJT for purposes of brevity), a project of Pursue: Action for a Just World, is an 8 week, 5 cohort opportunity for folks interested in how Jewish thought/practice and social justice work are impacted by our multiple identities, as well as concepts of power, privilege and oppression. It began at Wesleyan University as a student forum on contemporary radical Jewish thought and has since become a course offered in Boston, Washington DC, the Bay Area and New Orleans. Topics explored in the syllabus and discussed include racism, sexuality, Zionism, intersectionality and liberation.
“When we started,” one participant wondered aloud during the closing session, “I thought, how many Jewish social justice texts are there really? It’s as though we always repeat the same ones.” This had been bothering me as well. It seems like “Justice, justice, you shall pursue,” and “You shall not wrong a sojourner or oppress him, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” are ubiquitous. How many times can we invoke and reinterpret them before they have no longer have meaning?
What I realized and what I hope others took away from JJT, is that if we work from a place of wholeness-that is, by bringing all our complicated identities into the conversation-we can actually create alternative narratives that bring richer Jewish interpretations and imperatives to the forefront. What do we consider to be a legitimate Jewish text? The Torah? (The Talmud? Commentaries? Written by whom and when?) What if we saw ourselves and our experiences as a source of Jewish legitimacy?
What’s tangible about what we’ve taken away from 8 weeks of intellectual, moral, and Jewish wrestling? What can we make tangible? How can we create positive forward movement so we don’t lose momentum? In the end, we made a list of resources-organizations, communities, events and individuals, that can help us continue to engage and confront, before closing with a ritual. The term “hadran” connotes a type of discourse one might conduct after completing a tractate of Talmud, as well as a celebration of the occasion.
Part of this ritual is committing to have an ongoing, dynamic relationship to the text. To do this in the long term requires an integration of our values as social justice activists with a recognition of Jewish history and modernity, as well as a welcoming of the notion of productive discomfort-if you stay in the room, even (and especially when it’s hard), you’ll grow. Folks who participated in JJT were surprised by various Jewish perspectives, identities and experiences they confronted in their cohorts, and struggled openly with connection to the issues and the sources-in short, explored what it meant to be part of a radical Jewish thought community.
I read a lot of nonfiction, and more than a few memoirs. But my pleasure-reading tends towards showbiz tell-alls (next up: Tina Fey and Betty White) and pop-history (think Sarah Vowell). So when I was asked to review Susan Rosenberg’s An American Radical: Political Prisoner in My Own Country, I knew I’d be wandering out of my comfort zone.
Jewschool readers may know Rosenberg from her work as director of communications at American Jewish World Service. Those with longer memories may recall the 1990 documentary Through the Wire, which detailed a fight that Rosenberg and her fellow prisoners at the Female High Security prison in Lexington, Kentucky fought and won against the government protesting the cruel and unusual treatment they received. Rosenberg’s book connects the dots, detailing her transformation from radical activist on the FBI’s most-wanted list to non-profit Jewish professional.
In some ways, this book is hard to read. First, we are asked to sympathize with Rosenberg, a leftist radical advocating violent resistance to the US Government. She came of age in the 1970, when, she tells us, so much of the world was engaged in violent upheaval, it felt like the only way to stop the government’s racist, colonialist, misogynistic and anti-gay policies was through violence. She got involved with the Black Liberation Army and landed on the most-wanted list by being implicated in the Brink’s Robbery of 1981. While I can understand the enormity of the abuses she and her compatriots struggled against, it was hard for me to feel much sympathy for someone advocating for violent means to a political end.
But that changed the moment of Rosenberg’s capture, when she received a 58-year sentence for stockpiling weapons — the longest sentence ever given for a possession offence. Labeled a terrorist in the courts, Rosenberg was plunged into a prison nightmare so hellish, it challenges everything we want to believe about our land of the free, home of the brave. This too, makes the book hard to read, because the ugly underbelly of our justice system and the struggles of the women inside it are overwhelming.
At times, particularly in the first half of the book, I found myself wondering what Rosenberg was leaving out. Surely she must have provoked her captors to elicit some of the cruelty she encountered. But there is no justification for the torture she documents — and make no mistake, it is torture. Even more horrifying is Rosenberg’s admission that her status as a political prisoner, and a member of the white middle class, brought privileges even within the prison system that she credits with her survival.
As the book progresses, and Rosenberg herself matures and begins to not only examine the system but also her own beliefs, it becomes easier to root for her. Woven throughout her experience is a growing connection to her Jewish heritage. Although not religious, she finds strength in connection to her people and her heritage, and ultimately finds allies including a Chabad rabbi who makes prison rounds and Rabbi Matalon of B’nai Jeshurun in New York City. She writes of sharing a Passover seder in prison, one of her first moments of contact with the “general population” after months of segregation, and of teaching about the Holocaust in prison education classes to young women of color who had never encountered the subject. Even as she chafes at the rise of a more fundamentalist streak in prisoners of other faiths, Rosenberg manages to find grounding in a secular attachment to Judaism.
This book isn’t for everyone. I can’t imagine a reader who isn’t at least somewhat predisposed to liberal politics having any sympathy Rosenberg, especially because such readers are unlikely to make it far enough into the book to confront the abuses of the prison system. Those who are triggered by depictions of abuse and misogyny are also likely to have a difficult time with the book.
But it’s worth pushing through the discomfort, for there is real wisdom in these pages. And the network of individuals who coalesce around Rosenberg, and her own eventual emergence into nonviolent social activism and human rights work add a glimmer of hope to the otherwise bleak picture presented.
Imagine late-night singing and philosophical discussions under the stars; engrossing Jewish learning; opportunities to participate in a variety of services, arts experiences, Shabbat celebrations, and outdoor activities; meeting a group of dynamic, thoughtful, energetic Jewish young adults as well as community members of all ages at a
weeklong institute. Sounds fantastic, right?
The NHC Summer Institute is now accepting applications for its Everett Fellows Program! Fellows participate in the full Summer Institute programming and in four workshops designed specifically for them. As a Fellow, you receive a scholarship for tuition, room, and board, and are expected to pay only for registration and dues ($120) for the full
week (August 1-7).
To apply for an Everett Fellowship, you must be 22 through 32 years of age, interested in exploring Havurah Judaism, and willing to participate fully in the Summer Institute. Preference is given to first time Institute attendees. The application can be found here
— it’s just four questions. Please see our website for more information or call the NHC office at
215-248-1335. The application deadline is May 2.
This program has been generously underwritten by the Edith and
Henry Everett Philanthropic Fund.
A Passover musical parody by The Ein Prat Fountainheads, graduates and students of Midreshet Ein Prat in Israel, a culture creation institute for young Israelis. Full lyrics and credits on the YouTube page.
Hag sameach to all, and next year in a (metaphorical) Jerusalem.
This is a guest post by Sarah Beller, Director of Programming and Education at the J Street Education Fund, which houses J Street U, J Street’s grassroots chapter network, and J Street’s Rabbinic Council.
What do Peter Beinart, the Mishnah, and modern Pesach seders have in common? They all invite young people to ask crucial questions and join in a robust intergenerational conversation. Open a nuanced and thoughtful discussion around Israel at your seder this year using J Street’s Passover Seder Supplement, “Ma Nishtana? A New Generation of Voices at the Table.” Chag sameach!
The following is a recipe I just threw together inspired by Greek Haroset.
soak dried dates and apricots in water for about an hour; strain and save soak water
chop dates and apricots into mush (I like to do it on wax paper for easy cleanup)
put into a large mixing bowl
in a dry, hot pan toast fennel seed, coriander seed and white peppercorn–once you smell the amazing fragrance and hear the seeds pop, remove from the heat–grind according to your desire (i smashed it with a glass bottle between wax paper)
mix the spices in with the fruit and mix well, adding splashes of the soak water if necessary to ease mixing.
chop walnuts, fold into the mixture
add in finely chopped fresh dill (yup, fresh dill–and it HAS to be fresh; mint will work too, but dill is better)
add in a splash or two of red wine, mix it up really well
and there you have it, a sweet, spicy sticky haroset that your bubbe wouldn’t recognize!
enjoy!
Those who are familiar with the oddities of the Jewish calendar may be aware that a largish holiday begins tomorrow night (called Passover). Fewer people may be aware that on the second night of Passover begins… well, it’s not a holiday exactly, but it is a holy period, called the Omer.
Beginning the second night of Passover, every adult Jew is supposed to count off the 49 days (seven times seven weeks) that make up the period between Passover and the holiday of Shavuot, the holiday of the giving of the Torah. I have to say, it’s a bit of a pain. Not he counting, which is fine, but remembering to count properly, keeping track of which day it is, and so on. It’s enough of a difficulty that the Jewish legal code has instructions about what to do if you forget to count at the right time, or for a full day. You’ve got to count every day, or you lose your obligation to say the full blessing as you count.
The counting itself is a lovely tradition: each of the weeks represents one of seven traits of God, as does each day, so one develops a spiral of thoughts throughout the counting period (for example the trait of strength during the week of mercy… consider what that might mean as we approach the giving of the Torah… etc.)
Well, I decided that the best way to do this would be a sort of advent calendar, with little treats each day as you opened up the proper box to say the blessing for that day (hey, why should Christians get all the calendar fun?). At one time, I thoght the best way to do this would be through carpentry, but it’s been some time since I had any access to the proper tools,a dn I just didn’t want to wait anymore this year, so for pretty cheap I made one out of things that one could glue together – namely cardboard, cardboard, and , uh, some glue and glitter paper.
Almost everything came from the container store, and it took me about three days to make (including some glue drying time. Not labor intensive, but pretty sturdy anyway).
I’m happy to share instructions with anyone who wants to build one. I used a hard cardboard ornament storage box and three by three folded gift boxes (seven of which fit perfectly across, although you need two ornament boxes cut to size and glued together to get the height as only five rows tall fit, if you pop open the top edge of the ornament box).
The numbers for the days (written out in blue in Hebrew letters) as well as the blessing on the inside (which has the blessing, the day and date – in other words, everything you need for each day… no looking anything up!) are printed on clear sticky labels cut to size.
For your delectation:
(Not sure why the blessing box is shown on its side, just ignore that, it opens upwards (although you can make yours open any direction you want, of course)
I don’t think I”m quite done decorating it – obviously this is pretty simple, but the plus is that the boxes make it so that magic marker will write on them perfectly nicely, so if I go for color, that’s probably the way I’ll go. Stickers work fine too, but I’ll probably eventually go for a large picture that covers the entire front face of the Omer Counter. Happy counting!
This past week, rabbis across the country received a request from the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism to sign a public rabbinic letter to Congress that urged our Representatives and Senators not to cut any foreign aid to Israel as part of the FY2012 budget. The request was co-signed by the rabbinical leaders of four major American Jewish denominations.
As rabbis who received these appeals for our endorsement, we would like to voice our respectful but strong disagreement to the letter. We take particular issue with the statement:
As Jews we are committed to the vision of the Prophets and Jewish sages who considered the pursuit of peace a religious obligation. Foreign Aid to Israel is an essential way that we can fulfill our obligation to “seek peace and pursue it”
We certainly agree that the pursuit of peace is our primary religious obligation. Our tradition emphasizes that we should not only seek peace but pursue it actively. However we cannot affirm that three billion dollars of annual and unconditional aid – mainly in the form of military aid – in any way fulfills the religious obligation of pursuing peace.
This aid provides Israel with military hardware that it uses to maintain its Occupation and to expand settlements on Palestinian land. It provides American bulldozers that demolish Palestinian homes. It provides tear gas that is regularly shot by the IDF at nonviolent Palestinian protesters. It also provided the Apache helicopters that dropped tons of bombs on civilian populations in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, as well as the white phosphorus that Israel dropped on Gazan civilians, causing grievous burns to their bodies – including the bodies of children.
In light of Israel’s past and continuing military actions, how can we possibly affirm that our continued unconditional aid fulfills the sacred obligation of pursuing peace?
We also take exception to this assertion:
U.S. foreign aid reaffirms our commitment to a democratic ally in the Middle East and gives Israel the military edge to maintain its security and the economic stability to pursue peace.
In fact our ally, the Netanyahu administration, has even rebuffed mild pressure from the US government to comply with the longstanding US position against new settlements in the West Bank. If we believe that any peaceful settlement requires the end of the Occupation and Israel’s settlement policy, how will massive and unconditional foreign aid – and the support of hundreds of rabbis for this aid – promote a negotiated peaceful settlement of the conflict?
An Israeli government that continues to settle occupied territory with impunity will not change its policy as long as it is guaranteed three billion dollars a year. With every other ally, our government pursues a time-honored diplomatic policy that uses “sticks” as well as “carrots.” We believe the cause of peace would be better served by conditioning support to Israel on its adherence to American and Jewish values of equality and justice.
We are also mindful that the Arab world itself feels under assault by the US when it witnesses Palestinians regularly assaulted with American-made weapons. With the vast and important changes currently underway in the Middle East, we are deeply troubled by the message that this policy sends to Arab citizens who themselves are struggling for freedom and justice.
We know that many of our colleagues who have signed this statement have taken courageous public stands condemning Israel’s human rights abuses in the past. We also know it is enormously challenging to publicly take exception to our country’s aid policy to Israel. Nonetheless, we respectfully urge our our colleagues to consider the deeper implications represented by their support of this letter.
Unconditional aid to Israel may ensure Israel’s continued military dominance, but will it truly fulfill our religious obligation to pursue peace?
In the Forward today, Eli Valley gives you the only haggadah supplement you’ll need — one about freedom, peoplehood and the next generation. What with all the charity-motivated supplements filling up our inboxes, here’s one without a donation card attached! (Click to view full-size.)
It has been a few hours after our plane landed. A crystalline night in Zurich. The air is fresh, the trams are sleek and the fleyshiks spot is, as expected, mediocre. We were surprised to see many erlikhe yidn walking the streets. Just a few more hours before I leave this narrow bridge and make my way, i’y'h, towards the Land of Israel…
Below is an overview of the Uri L’Tzedek Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement by a former Uri L’Tzedek intern, Yitzi Raizner. The supplement, featuring 26 articles and insights about food, justice and Pesach, is available for free download here:
Justice at the Seder Table
by Yitzi Raisner
The Seder is an orchestrated affair with fourteen movements, from Kadesh to Nirtzah. At my family’s Seder, though, there is a prelude which marks the true beginning of the meal, long before the first cup of wine is poured. One might call it Bechira, “The Selection.” For you simply cannot approach the Pesach table without a thoughtfully chosen Haggadah (and pillow, for that matter). My grandmother is loyal to the Szyk Haggadah for its aesthetic offerings. My sister, on the other hand, appreciates the Abarbanel’s unique insights. It’s a highly personal choice and no two people end up at the table with the same one.
This year, Uri L’Tzedek, “an Orthodox social justice organization guided by Torah values, and dedicated to combating suffering and oppression,” has partnered with a number of like-minded groups to produce a Haggadah supplement tailored to the needs of a new generation of Jews. This is a generation, according to Nigel Savage, founder of Hazon and a contributor to the supplement, “striving to find meaning and wisdom in ancient tradition, and not merely in the abstract, but in relation to a wide range of complex and troubling contemporary issues.” Members of this generation will find a compelling treatment of one such issue in the Food and Justice Haggadah Supplement. Its message is simple: As we eat sumptuously and recount the story of the Exodus, we cannot ignore modern-day slaves, the impoverished and oppressed people of the world. Some of them, like the farm workers who pick the grapes for our wine, provide the backbone of our food security while enjoying no such security themselves. This is a grave injustice. More »
Before you panic, rest assured: we’re not about to start charging you when you read more than 20 posts per month. No, we’re talking about the ever-skyrocketing expense of sending children to Jewish day school in the U.S.
With $7,000 you might be able to fly back and forth to Israel six times, but for the same price you could stay put in Overland Park KS and learn at the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy for one year. One thousand dollars more will buy you—show them what they’ve won—one year of 1-8th grade education at the Cincinnati Hebrew Day School. If you want to send your child to the Solomon Schechter of Atlanta, be prepared to shell out upwards of $17,000 per year starting with first grade. $26,650 might be a fine price for a Toyota RAV4 Sport, but did you know that for the same price, you can ‘kaneh likha rav’—or maybe even four—and enroll for one year of high school at the Jack M. Barrack Hebrew Academy in Bryn Mawr, PA? $29, 955 would be a steal for a small, foreclosed apartment in a depressed real estate market, but it could also buy you one year’s education at Milken community high school in LA. These numbers don’t even include the usual “give and get” $1,000+ minimums typically imposed upon day school families on a yearly basis.
Ivanka Trump: a convert to Judaism, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the woman who sat three rows in front of my mother, sisters, and I during the high holiday services of my youth. Just throw a giant hat on her, hand her an Artscroll and presto
Some day schools—such as the Ramaz School of NY and the Ida Crown Jewish Academy in Chicago, IL— do not openly
disclose their tuition fees, and perhaps for good reason. Unless you are Ivanka Trump, who wouldn’t want to faint upon seeing these staggering numbers? Especially given today’s economy, how can anyone but the super-rich possibly afford to shell out $20,000 dollars annually to send a child (or, more likely, multiple children) to Jewish day school…for 15 years?
As a day school alum (16 years, but who’s counting) whose entire college tuition (yes, all four years combined, at a private institution which furnished me with an excellent post-secondary education) still cost less than one year of Jewish high school, the irony of this situation is not lost on me. (For purposes of full disclosure: I benefited from a faculty discount for my university tuition.)
Below you’ll find two prayers by Jon Kelsen and Dina Weiss, written to accompany the search and nullification of chametz in our homes. I found them meaningful – hope you will too.
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The Torah instructs us to clear our homes of all hametz (leavened foods) prior to the onset of the holiday of Pesah. In the Talmud, R’ Alexandri refers to his yetzer hara (evil inclination) as “leaven that is in the dough” (TB Berakhot 17a). The Midrash provides a way of understanding this equation:
“ושמרתם את המצות” ר’ יאשיה אומר: אל תקרא כן, אלא ושמרתם את המצוות. כדרך שאין מחמיצין את המצה, כך אין מחמיצין את המצוה; אלא, אם באה מצוה לידך, עשה אותה מיד:
“And you shall guard the matzoth. ” R. Yoshayah said: Rather read [the word “matzoth”] as “mitzvoth. ” For just as we may not allow matzah to rise, so too we may not “ferment” [i. e. delay] a mitzvah. Rather, if a mitzvah comes your way, do it immediately (Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, m. d’ Piskha 9).
Because leavening is a process that takes place over time, R’ Yoshayah equates hametz with laziness. In other contexts, hametz is equated with the attribute of self-inflation, of arrogance. This more expansive definition of hametz invites us to link the process of destroying and relinquishing hametz with the complementary practices of working to remove those “hametzdik” attributes which we have allowed to grow within our souls, and which manifest themselves in multiple ways, including in the maintenance of superfluous possessions and even income.
Using the traditional liturgy as our template, we have composed two prayers intended to frame our intentions as we work to discard our hametz, clean our homes, and engage in bedikat and bi’ur hametz (the search for and destruction of hametz). The first text is designed to be recited during the days and weeks prior to Pesah as we clean and dispose of our hametz; the second text is meant to be recited after the burning of the hametz, on the morning of April 18, erev Pesah. We hope that these texts resonate with you and move you to adapt them to fit your own circumstances.
Hag Kasher v’Sameah,
Jon Kelsen and Dena Weiss
Hineni
I am present, in body and mind, to fulfill the positive commandment of “On the first day, you shall dispose of hametz from your homes. ”
As I prepare to destroy all the leavened food in my possession, so I commit to removing all objects and aspects of my life which share distinct features with hametz: clothing I do not wear which might clothe another, tzedakah I am withholding which might sustain another; love I have not shown which might inspire another. I also prepare to challenge my traits of procrastination, selfishness and narrow perspective, arrogance, and fear.
Yehi Ratzon
God, should it please You, help me to grow from the experience of discovering and destroying the hametz from my home and office, my closet and my desk, my heart and my mind. I recognize that I have not done so completely. Regard my efforts as achievements. Help me to turn my mistakes into lessons and to continue this process of purification throughout the coming year. This year we are here, next year may we be in Eretz Yisrael. This year we are slaves, next year may we be free.
הנני מוכן ומזומן הנני מוכן ומזומן לקיים מצוות עשה כמו שכתוב בתורה “אך ביום הראשון תשביתו שאור מבתיכם. “ וכמו שאני מוכן להשבית כל מחמצת שברשותי, כן אני מוכן להשבית שאר דברים שברשותי שיש בהם מעין תערובת חמץ: בגדים שאינני לובש היכולים להלביש ערומים, צדקה שקפצתי בידי היכולה להקים דלים, אהבת חינם של חננתי. ואף אני מוכן להתמודד עם יצרי הרעים שבכל מחבואות מחשבותי ,שאור שבעיסה: החמצה, אנוכיות, מוחין דקטנות, גאווה, ופחד.
יהי רצון יהי רצון מלפניך ה’ אלוקינו ואלוקי אבותינו, שתעזרני ללמוד לעלות ולהתקדש על ידי עבודת בדיקת וביעור החמץ: הן מביתי הן ממשרדי, הן מארוני הן משולחני, הן מליבי הן משכלי. מתודה אני לפניך שלא סיימתי את מלאכת הקודש בתמימות. צרף יגיעתי להשגתי, מחשבתי למעשי. הפוך שגגות לזכויות, ירידות לעליות, ותזכני למשוך שפעת הקדושה והטהרה של מצווה זו. השתא הכא, לשנה הבאה באראע דישראל . השתא עבדי, לשנה הבאה בני חורין.
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