Esteemed Reader: May 2011

by Jason Stern, April 26, 2011

Esteemed Reader of Our Magazine:
“Why on this night do we dip twice…?”

We pondered the question as we slurped surprisingly good vegan matzoh ball soup at a recent Passover Seder I attended, with a group of forward-thinking friends and our children. This was one of those rare occasions when form and ritual serve the spirit and meaning of the event. And the spirit of Passover is questioning.

Passover is sometimes called A Night of Questions. The clear reference is to the four questions—Ma Nishtana… “Why is this night different from all others?”—traditionally asked by the youngest child. The tradition of the Hebrews is rife with divisions—milk from meat, sabbath from workdays, even linen from wool. The approach is starkly alchemical in the mode of culling wheat from chaff, metal from dross, and symbolically transubstantiating lead into gold.

There is a mnemonic in all these separations—remembering and navigating them all requires a certain legal acumen, but the spirit of the exercises is that they are tools for remembering what is most important—ourselves.

The Seder is a ritual of a high order. I would suggest that even every non-Jew attend one, just to absorb the refined combination of myth, archetypal meaning, ritual elements, and of course, food. And of course Jesus’ “last supper” was none other than a seder. Every good Christian who attends mass gets a piece of matzoh (host/flesh) and a sip of the four cups (wine/blood), not just twice a year, but every Sunday!

Our Seder-leader proposed the Jungian model of understanding myth and teaching-story: Every character, element, and relationship in the narrative represents some aspect of our inner lives. Every piece of the story, and even every exhibit on the table represents something inside us. And there is no plot-line closer to the bone of the human predicament than an account of moving from slavery to freedom.

Who in us is the Pharaoh that under penalty of every kind of plague will not relinquish the slaves? Who are the slaves? What is the bush that burns and without being consumed? And who is the one that when asked his identity obscurely replies “I am that I am”? (And it is even weirder than that—I learned at this Seder that the Hebrew is a nonsensical combination of tenses or “I Was/Am/Will Be that I Was/Am/Will Be.”)

There is a metatext within the Haggadah which represents four children and their responses to the unfolding events. They are wise, wicked, stupid (or simple), and silent children. Each responds according to her capacity to understand the meaning of what is presented.

Some see the four children as types of people—physical, emotional, intellectual, and the one who is balanced in all the parts (wise). Others see them as able to perceive levels of meaning, from the shallow and literal (parsers of the text as an historical document), to interpretive and deeply symbolic (looking within themselves for meaning).

The most startling connection I made in pondering the four children was from a tradition that predates the Jews by at least 10,000 years—the Sarmoun Brotherhood. Their canon includes a recital that hints deeply at strategies for escaping four unique types of slavery:

We who know, and do not know that we know:
let us become one, whole.
Let us be transformed.

We who have known, but do not know:
let us once more see the beginning of all.

We who do not wish to know, and yet say that we need to know:
let us be guided to safety and light.

We who do not know, and know that we do not know:
let us, through this knowledge, know.

We who do not know, but think that we know:
set us free from the confusion of that ignorance.

She who knows, and knows that SHE IS;
She is wise. Let her be followed.
By her presence alone man may be transformed.

As with our forebears
So with our successors.
So with us.
We affirm this undertaking.
So let it be.