This is how you shall eat your Passover offering: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it b’hippazon (Exodus 12:11)—in hurried, harried, anxious haste. Everything will not be alright in the morning. For then, you will have to leave even your meager peace of mind. The way out of Egypt begins at the blood-painted door that no longer secures safety. The negef —pestilence—kept at bay last night becomes a nagif —a virus. Everything will not be alright in the morning. You will take your hippazon —your vulnerability—with you. A far-seeing prophet imagined a time of leaving the final Egypt behind. Only in that moment would there be no hippazon, no panicked flight (Isaiah 52:12). Until then, hippazon remains a true carrier of experience. Without its necessary weight, we risk making light of the story. Why is this year different from all other years? This year’s hippazon —the harried, hesitant uncertainty—must not hide behind the comforting, familiar words and songs of the Seder. Everything will not be alright in the morning; to pretend so is to undermine the deep, necessary truth of the story that must be told in order to move forward. Seeing himself like one who has come out of Egypt, Yehuda Amichai understands that uncertainty is the very continuity of his life: What is the continuity of my life? I am like one who left Egypt With the Red Sea split in two and I passing through on dry ground With two walls of water on my right and on my left. Behind me Pharaoh’s force and his chariots and before me the wilderness and perhaps the promised land. This is the continuity of my life. Walls of water on either side, thundering danger behind, an uncharted wilderness before, and only a “perhaps” out of sight, beyond the horizon. Let the truth of the hippazon be of service. Everything will not be alright in the morning. |
-
Archives
- February 2023
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- June 2022
- June 2021
- December 2020
- October 2020
- April 2020
- February 2020
- October 2019
- April 2019
- October 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- December 2017
- October 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- December 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- June 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- September 2015
- July 2015
- March 2015
- January 2015
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- September 2013
- August 2013
- May 2013
- March 2013
- December 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- February 2011
- January 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
-
Meta
Thanks Steve. Hits it only too well. Chag Sameach in spite of it all. Avi
On Mon, Apr 6, 2020 at 10:06 PM Sicha – Continuing the Conversation wrote:
> Rabbi Steven G. Sager posted: ” This is how you shall eat your Passover > offering: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in > your hand; and you shall eat it b’hippazon (Exodus 12:11)—in hurried, > harried, anxious haste.Everything will not be alright in the morning. ” >