Shabbat HaGadol Parashat Tzav Leviticus 6:1-8:36
Dear TBE Community,
Because Parashat Tzav falls on the Shabbat before Passover this year, the haftarah this week comes from the prophet Malachi.
The Shabbat before Passover is called Shabbat HaGadol, the “big” Shabbat – because traditionally, congregants could flock to the synagogue to ask the rabbi questions about Passover cleaning and observance, and the Shabbat service would take much longer than usual.
We are having our Shabbat Around the Table this Shabbat, so our synagogue is closed this Friday and we won’t have services, but it is a lovely spin, to have TBE folks gather around Shabbat tables on this particular Shabbat to engage in community bonds, enjoying a meal together. A big Shabbat indeed, and a wonderful tradition that I already love.
And since this is Shabbat Hagadol, this missive is also big, i.e. longer than usual.
Let me go back to Malachi: Malachi is the last prophet in the section of the Nevi’im, the prophetic readings in the Hebrew Bible. His visions are different from some of the earlier prophets in that his prophecy evokes a “fearful day of Adonai,” a day that will come “like a burning oven.”
These are the last verses of the book of Malachi:
Be mindful of the Teaching of My servant Moses, whom I charged at Horeb (Sinai) with laws and rules for all Israel. Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of God. He shall reconcile parents with children and children with their parents, so that, when I come, I do not strike the whole land with utter destruction. (Malachi 3:22-24)
This prophecy resembles a final judgment, conjuring up a day that feels more fear than awe-inducing, and that doesn’t feel so “Jewish” in the sense that many of us might understand it. That sentiment is not a modern one. For almost two thousand years, the fiery, furious ending of Malachi hasn’t sat easy with our people. It can’t be that the last word of any book in the Tanakh ends with a vision of destruction! So, instead of accepting, at the end of the prophetic section no less, a clear, linear, doom-bent timeline – the coming of a fear-inducing, destructive day of Adonai, Judaism turns to a more reconciliatory figure: the prophet Elijah. Which is why, when this haftarah is read, the verse about Elijah is repeated at the end, to focus on the possibility of reconciliation, rather than destruction:
Lo, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before the coming of the awesome, fearful day of God.
Mind you, Elijah was quite fiery and furious himself, but for several reasons that we can one day discuss in a class on this enigmatic, elusive guest at all seders and brit milahs, or circumcisions, Elijah became a more palatable herald of better, redemptive days. Or rather, he became the figure that frames the arrival of redemption in more palatable ways. As long as we can welcome and invite Elijah, whatever might happen afterwards appears less frightening.
We trust Elijah so much that in the middle of the Passover night, we open our doors wide to let him come into our homes – an act of trust that feels harder in these times, when we might rather barricade our Jewish homes and not stand at our light-filled thresholds, singing, visible and vulnerable. Yet that’s what we will do at our seders this year as well: Fill a cup for Elijah and invite his presence into our homes and synagogues.
There’s a tension in this modification of the Bible text, a tension that is characteristic of Judaism: On one hand, there is, in the latter prophets, undeniably a linear timeline hurling towards a final day of resolution, akin to what our Christian neighbors might be more familiar with. At the same time, rabbinic Judaism moved this expectation further out of reach, though not out of sight. It refuses to await an imminent resolution and focuses instead on a spiral timeline that offers renewal as a return to “days of old”: A slow-cooking rather than a fast-burning redemption.
But redemption is always on Judaism’s liturgical and theological horizon. And the perception of Jewish time will always be informed by the ideas of a spiral. Here’s another example for that:
The month of Nisan is the first month of the Jewish religious year. The Jewish religious year is like our secular school year: Just like the latter doesn’t go from January 1 to December 31, the Jewish religious year doesn’t go from 1 Tishrei to 30 of Elul. Rather it begins on the 1 of Nisan and ends with the 30 of Adar.
Nisan is the month that, according to Torah, marks the beginning of Jewish time-keeping. But you can only keep time if it returns, instead of evaporating on a linear timeline.
As some of you know, I am fascinated with the Jewish fascination of retracing time. I love to watch the sky and get a sense of the changing colors, the way the shadows fall and lengthen, the way the facades of the buildings shimmer in the last hours of sunlight. It makes me feel embraced by the universe, closer to the divine, and that feeling for me is expressed in the words of the Maariv Aravim blessing that follows the Barchu in the evenings:
“Blessed are you, Adonai (…) who thoughtfully alters the time and changes the seasons, and arranges the stars in their heavenly courses according to plan (…) rolling light away from darkness and darkness from light (…)”
An awareness of the passing of time is inherent in Judaism’s religious cycle and halachic observance. As is the anticipation of eternal renewal: “rolling light away from darkness and darkness from light.”
So, too, do the festivals roll away from and towards each other: Passover is always the first festival of a new cycle. Purim in turn is the last festival of an old cycle. Both festivals are intimately connected, though they appear so very different. One festival appears light-hearted and fun but has darker, serious undertones, while the other appears serious and earnest although it celebrates light-hearted spring-time renewal. And: both celebrate God’s redemptive power. I was inspired by these layers of connection when I wrote the poem I am sharing below, called Two Brothers.
I hope you will enjoy it – and I wish you wonderful Shabbat dinners around the tables of our community this Friday evening, when “darkness is rolled away from light, and day is transformed into night.”
And may we all have sweet Passover celebrations next week, sharing the redemption story of our people together with our loved-ones and friends — and with the prophet Elijah.
Two Brothers
Purim was a charming imp,
humming, singing, smiling
in the safety of his mother’s lap,
turning heads with gifts of food and laughter.
The happiest of brothers,
he got away with his transgressions;
he was different, sensitive,
a special child of concealed zeal,
miraculously cheerful in somber hours.
He made everyone forget
what they were enjoined to remember.
Pesach watched his youngest brother
with the vigor of the first-born son.
Like their father,
he had an outstretched arm, a strong hand,
but Purim warmed Pesach’s earnest heart,
despite feelings of superiority,
a beat or two of jealousy,
despite the burden he was enjoined to carry.
The laws.
The blood dripping from cups of freedom.
They were one.
A family’s tale of two-fold redemption,
bound together on the calendar.
Shabbat Shalom and Hag Pesach Sameach!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch