FESTIVALS OF THE JEWISH YEAR
A Modern Interpretation
by Theodor H. Gaster
(Written 1952/53)
You will see by the writing of the author he is a modern historic
secular believer. He does not believe the Bible is the "inspired"
word of God. But he does bring out some interesting facts of
history, that most may not know - Keith Hunt
PASSOVER
The Festival of Freedom
The festival of Passover is known in Jewish tradition as the
"Season of Our Freedom." Its central theme is Release. On the
seasonal plane, it marks the release of the earth from the grip
of winter. On the historical plane, it commemorates the exodus of
the Children of Israel from Egypt. On the broad human plane, it
celebrates the emergence from bondage and idolatry.
In each case, the release is accompanied by a positive
achievement; it is not simply an escape. It is also a cooperative
act between God and man. On the seasonal plane, Passover
inaugurates the reaping of the new grain; man sows the seed, but
God - or the cosmic power provides the rainfall and sunshine
which quickens it. On the historical plane, it commemorates the
birth of the Jewish nation: Israel was prepared to face the
hazards of the wilderness, so God, in His providence, brought it
to Sinai, gave it the Law, and concluded the Covenant. On the
broad human plane, it celebrates the attainment of freedom and of
the vision of God: man casts aside his idols and repudiates his
ignorance and obscurantism, and in that very act God reveals His
presence and imparts knowledge.
The three aspects of the festival run parallel to one
another: the dark and dreary winter corresponds at once to the
dark era of bondage and to the black night of ignorance, while
the burst of new life in spring corresponds, in turn, to the
flowering of Israel and the burgeoning of freedom.
Yet the freedom which is celebrated in the Passover festival
is freedom of a special kind. Our own modern concept of freedom
has developed through diverse channels and is today a fusion -
or, perhaps, a confusion - of several originally distinct
categories of thought. It is mixed up, for instance, with ideas
of sovereign independence, personal liberty and democratic
government; yet none of these ideas - however fervently Jews may
today adhere to them - enters significantly into the Passover
ideal. In Jewish tradition, freedom, in the modern sense, is
scarcely a virtue; at best, it is an opportunity. What matters is
volitional dedication, and it is this and this alone that forms
the theme of the Passover story. If Israel had gone forth out of
Egypt, but not accepted the Covenant at Sinai, it would have
achieved liberation - that is, mere release from bondage - but it
would not have achieved freedom, in the Jewish sense of the term.
For the only freedom, says Judaism, is the yoke of the Torah; the
only true independence is the apprehension of God.
The complex of ideas which today make up the Passover
festival is the result of a long process of development and, more
especially, of Judaism's inspired transformation of a primitive
seasonal ceremony.
The nature of that ceremony is described in detail in the
twelfth chapter of the Biblical Book of Exodus. At full moon in
the first month of spring, we read, it was customary for every
family to slaughter a lamb or goat at twilight and then, in the
middle of the night, to eat it in common, along with unleavened
bread and bitter herbs. The eating had to be done "in haste," and
whatever portion of the meat remained unconsumed had to be burned
ere break of dawn. Moreover, as soon as the slaughtering had been
effected, a bunch of hyssop was dipped into the victim's blood,
and a few drops were sprinkled with it on the doorposts and
lintels of each house. The ceremony was known as "pesah," and was
followed immediately by a six-day festival, called the Feast of
Un-leavened Bread, during which no fermented food was allowed to
be eaten, and the first and last days of which were regarded as
especially sacred and marked by a total abstention from work.
(The author, like many Jews, has it wrong: the Passover was one
day, the feast of Unleavened Bread was 7 days in duration - Keith
Hunt)
Shorn of its later interpretations, this ceremony falls into
a common pattern of seasonal festivals in many parts of the
world.
The essence of such festivals is to recement the bonds of
kindred and community at the beginning of a new agricultural
cycle. This is done by partaking of a meal in common--"breaking
bread together"--for thereby a common substance is absorbed. The
practice is well attested in antiquity. When, for example,
persons or tribes entered into compacts with one another, as in
the case of Abraham and Abimelech, or of Moses and Jethro, in the
Bible, the agreement was usually sealed by eating together - a
custom which underlies our own word companion (properly, "one who
eats bread with another") and which survives also in the familiar
usage of "having a drink on it."
On such occasions, however, it is not only how one eats but
also what one eats that is important, for the food consumed is
believed itself to impart new life and vigor. Accordingly,
special precautions have to be taken to ensure that it is pure
and free of putrescence, and in a Near Eastern country this means
that it has to be eaten at once and "in haste," and not lie
around in the sun. It means also that no fermented food may be
absorbed with it, since fermentation is the result of
putrefaction, and that bitter herbs must be eaten at the same
time as an effective cathartic against any impurity that may
inadvertently have been consumed.
Once the meal is finished, it becomes necessary to mark by
some outward sign those who have participated in it and thereby
entered into renewed ties with one another. The usual method of
doing this is to sprinkle some of the animal's blood on the
foreheads of all present or on the flaps of their tents or
doorposts of their houses. This, for example, is the practice
among the Amur Arabs of Palestine and at New Year ceremonies in
Madagascar. Moreover, this sprinkling of blood serves a further
purpose. In primitive societies, the family consists not only of
its human members but also of its god. He, too, therefore is
regarded as being present at the communal meal and as being bound
by the bond which it cements. Accordingly, the mark of blood on
the forehead or the doorpost affords a means whereby he may
readily recognize those individuals or households with whom he
has entered into a pact of friendship and protection. It thus
becomes, in effect, a device for averting supernatural hurt.
The Israelites took over this primitive rite and gave it a
meaning all their own, thereby relating it to their own historic
experience and justifying its continued observance.
(Do you see now how the author goes into secularism to determine
how the Israelites adopted this Spring feast - Keith Hunt)
The Exodus from Egypt, they said, had coincided with the
traditional pesah ceremony, and because their ancestors had so
meticulously carried out the prescribed regulations and dashed
the blood upon the doorposts of their houses, Jehovah had been
able instantly to recognize His own proteges when He came to
smite the firstborn in the land. All of the elements of the
traditional ceremony were then fancifully explained as memorials
of that momentous event. The unleavened bread recalled the fact
that, in their hurried departure from bondage, there had been no
time to wait for the dough to rise and the bread had therefore
been baked without yeast, while the eating "in haste"
commemorated the haste with which the departure had been made.
Indeed, the very name of the festival (the original significance
of which is obscure) was now connected ingeniously with the
Hebrew word 'pasah,' "skip," and taken to imply that, on seeing
the sign of blood, God had "skipped" or passed over the houses of
the Israelites and spared them from the plague.
Much of this explanation is, to be sure, historically frail.
Modern scholarship has made it virtually certain that the
Biblical narrative of the Exodus represents a foreshortened and
anachronistic account of what really took place. In the light of
historical and archaeological research, it has become
increasingly improbable that all of the tribes of Israel, as they
later existed, ever went down to Egypt or came out of it. It is
now generally conceded that the confederation was of later origin
and grew up gradually in the Holy Land after the Conquest, so
that the story of a common ancestor who went down to Egypt with
all his sons is as anachronistic as it would be to speak of
"Uncle Sam" and his forty-eight children at the time of the
Revolutionary War. Only a certain portion of what subsequently
became the Children of Israel--according to some scholars, only
the Joseph-tribes--ever went down to Goshen, and the conquest of
Canaan was the result not of a single coordinated invasion but of
the successive expeditions and gradual infiltration of various
Hebrew tribes, which had begun before the Exodus and continued
for some time after the arrival of the "redeemed" Holy Land.
Then, too, it must be borne in mind that the Biblical
narrative is a saga, not a factual report and therefore
embellishes the record of events with all kinds of fantastic and
legendary details drawn from the storehouse of popular lore.
Moses' staff, for example, has parallels in the magical wands and
weapons borne by heroes and deliverers in the folk tales of many
nations; the miraculous parting of the Red Sea finds counterparts
in the ancient Indian myth of Krishna's flight from the
tyrannical King Kamsa and in the statement of various Greek
writers that the Pamphylian Sea drew back and gave passage to the
troops of Alexander the Great when they were marching against the
Persian hosts of Darius III.
(Well it is now very evident the author does not believe in the
inspiration of the Holy Bible - Keith Hunt)
Nevertheless, even though the story of the Exodus cannot yet
be confirmed from any extra-Biblical source, and although we may
readily detect in it several obviously legendary traits, in broad
substance it is indeed consistent with everything that we now
know about political conditions in the Near East at the period in
question. Historical records have confirmed that there indeed
existed at that period, in virtually all parts of the Near East,
a special class of persons (not, however, an ethnic unit) known
as Hebrews, who did not enjoy full civic rights and who lived
largely as mercenaries and freebooters, and who on several
occasions made marauding raids upon Palestinian and
Syrian cities. History also confirms that the land of Goshen
(modern Wadi Tumilat), on the eastern confines of Egypt proper,
had long been recognized as a free grazing ground or reservation
for neighboring nomads, and it establishes that in the fourteenth
century B.C.E. there was indeed a change of regime in Egypt which
was unfavorable to aliens, for at that date the Hyksos, or
Foreign Princes, who had been in control of the country for some
two hundred years, were finally expelled and replaced by a native
Egyptian monarch. Furthermore, we know that the new Pharaoh's
successor, Ramses II (1298-32 B.c.E.) did indeed renovate - for
himself the abandoned Hyksos capital in the Delta and call it
after his own name, and that he also built a storecity named
Pithom, just as is described in the Bible. Lastly, an inscription
of Pharaoh Merneptah (1232-2¢ B.C.E.), discovered in his mortuary
chapel at Thebes, mentions the presence of the Israelites in the
Holy Land in 1227 B.C.E.
(Yes, the author has to admit certain truths, for extra-Biblical
writings have been found to substantiate what the Bible records
- Keith Hunt)
Against this general background, it would seem not at all
improbable that a particular group of Hebrews--what the Bible
describes as the "family of Jacob" should have migrated from the
Holy Land to Goshen, to settle under the more favorable regime of
the Hyksos; that it should at first have thrived and prospered
but subsequently, after the fall of that regime, have been viewed
with suspicion and enslaved; and that it should eventually have
sought freedom by linking up with other Hebrews in a concerted
attack on the Holy Land. And that, when the legendary trimmings
are stripped away, is substantially the story related in the
Bible. Nor, indeed, is it in any way remarkable that these events
do not find mention in Egyptian records, for it must be
remembered that to the Egyptians of the period, the Children of
Israel were in no sense a formidable or important power, but
merely a motley crowd of gypsies on a relatively distant
reservation.
In Judaism, however, the story of the Exodus has long since
been lifted out of a purely historical context. The Jewish
attitude toward it stems from the premise that events transcend
the moments of their occurrence - that anything which happens in
history happens not only at a particular point in time but also
as part of a continuous process and therefore involves as its
participants not only a single generation but also - and more
important - all who went before and all who follow after.
Take, for example, the American Civil War. What was secured
by this conflict was not simply the Union of that particular day
and age, but the Union per se, so that, in a wider perspective,
both the Founding Fathers on the one hand and we ourselves on the
other were also actively involved in it and personally shared in
the victory which ensued. In exactly the same way, the Exodus of
the Children of Israel from Egypt involved also both the
patriarchs of the past and their children's children of the
future, for it validated the mission of the former and determined
the destiny of the latter.
It is this ideal Exodus - this Exodus detached from a
mooring in time - that is really celebrated in the traditional
Seder service on the first two evenings of the Passover festival.
The Seder - the word means simply "order of service" or "formal
procedure" - is at once a substitute for the ancient paschal
sacrifice and a fulfillment of the Biblical injunction (Exod.
13:8) to retell the story of the Exodus to one's children.
The principal feature of the ritual is the eating of various
foods traditionally associated with the departure from Egypt.
These are: matzah, or unleavened bread; bitter herbs (e.g.
horse-radish), taken to commemorate the bitterness of servitude;
and haroseth, a mixture of chopped apples, nuts, raisins and
cinnamon, which symbolizes the mortar in which the Israelites
labored while they built the store-cities of Pithom and Raamses
(Exod. 1:11). Moreover, the meal is introduced by the
consumption of parsley dipped in salted water. During the course
of it, a minimum of four cups of wine must be drunk, recalling
the four expressions used in Exodus 6:6-7 to describe God's
deliverance of Israel, viz., "I will bring you out from under the
burden of the Egyptians, and I will rid you of their bondage, and
I will redeem you ... and I will take you to Me for a people."
In addition, besides the food actually consumed, the shankbone of
a lamb and a roasted egg have to be placed on the table. The
former symbolizes the paschal offering, while the latter is, in
all probability, a later importation from pagan custom and, like
the corresponding Christian Easter egg, exemplifies the beginning
of life in spring.
(Ah, we begin to see the added Pharasaical adoptions for the
"seder" - Keith Hunt)
There is a strict religious protocol about the manner in
which the ritual foods are to be eaten. The matzah, for example,
consists of three cakes placed one above the other and popularly
known as "the priest, the Levite, and the Israelite." At the
beginning of the service, the celebrant breaks the middle cake in
half and sets one of the halves aside, wrapping it in a napkin.
This, known as 'afikomin,' is subsequently distributed among the
company and constitutes the last thing eaten at the ceremony. The
bitter herbs, in addition to being eaten separately, are also
served in a "sandwich," between pieces of matzah, thereby
carrying out to the letter the Biblical commandment (Exod.12:8)
which enjoins that unleavened bread and bitter herbs be eaten
together as an accompaniment of the paschal meal. At the
conclusion of the supper, an extra cup of wine is filled for the
prophet Elijah who, it is believed, will come on Passover night
to herald the final redemption of Israel. The main door of the
house or apartment is flung open for a few moments to permit his
entrance.
Those present at the Seder ceremony are expected to adopt a
casual, reclining posture, symbolizing that of freemen at ancient
banquets. In some parts of the world, however, everyone appears
in hat and coat, with satchel on back and staff in hand, thus
re-enacting the Departure from Egypt.
The narrative portion of the ceremony is known as the
'Haggadah,' or 'Recital,' and consists in a repetition of the
Scriptural story of the Exodus, embellished by rabbinic comments
and elaborations and rounded out by the chanting of psalms, hymns
and secular songs.
The narrative is introduced by a series of questions (Mah
Nishtanah), asked by the youngest member of the company: "Why is
this night different from all other nights?" All that follows is
regarded as the answer.
High points of the Haggadah are: the "Section of the Four
Sons," the "Litany of Wonders," and the chanting of "Hallel."
The first of these is based on the fact that the Bible speaks
four times of "thy son's" inquiring about the meaning of
Passover, and each time poses his question in different terms.
Once (Deut.6:20), he is represented as asking, "What mean these
testimonies and statutes and judgments which the Lord our God
hath commanded us?" Another time (Exod.12:26), he demands
brusquely, "What means this service of yours?" A third time
(Exod.13:14), he asks simply, "What is this?" And a fourth time
(Exod.13:8), the question is not even framed, but merely implied.
This variation, said the sages, is purposeful; in each case the
form of the question typifies the character and attitude of the
inquirer, who is respectively wise, wicked, simple and too young
to ask. Each must be answered differently, in appropriate
fashion.
The "Litany of Wonders" is a cumulative poem reciting the
benefits conferred by God on Israel at the time of the Exodus.
Not only did He lead them out of Egypt, but He also punished the
Egyptians; not only did He part the Red Sea, but He caused them
to pass through it dryshod; not only did He lead them to Mount
Sinai, but He gave them the Law; not only did He give them the
Law, but He brought them to the Promised Land; not only did He
bring them to the Promised Land, but He built the temple in Zion.
As each of these benefits is recited, the company responds loudly
with the word 'Dayyenu,' "Alone 'twould have sufficed us" In all,
fifteen benefits are enumerated, alluding, so the rabbis said, to
the numerical value of the Hebrew word Yah, one of the names of
God (cf. Exod.15:2; Ps.68:4).
The Hallel ("Praise") is the group of psalms, 113-118, which
is recited at all new moons and at all festivals and which is
introduced by the word 'Hallelujah,' "Praise ye the Lord." In the
present instance, they are deemed especially appropriate, because
one of the psalms (Ps.114) in fact describes events connected
with the Exodus. (These psalms, it may be added, were very
probably the hymns intoned by Jesus and his disciples at the Last
Supper.) 1
(There is no such proof of that statement in the NT - Keith Hunt)
Properly understood, the Seder ceremony is no mere act of
pious recollection, but a unique and inspired device for blending
the past, the present and the future into a single comprehensive
and transcendental experience. The actors in the story are not
merely the particular Israelites who happen to have been led out
of bondage by Moses but all the generations of Israel throughout
all of time. In an ideal sense, all Israel went forth out of
Egypt, and all Israel stood before Sinai; and all Israel moved
through darkness to the Presence of God, in the wake of a pillar
of fire.
Whenever the trumpets sound in history, they sound for all
ages; and when the bell tolls, the echo lives on forever.
This is not a rarefied piece of modern rationalization. The
conception of the Seder as an experience rather than a recitation
runs like a silver thread through the whole of Jewish tradition
and finds expression on every page of the Haggadah. "Every man in
every generation," says a familiar passage (quoting the Mishnah),
"must look upon himself as if he personally had come forth out of
Egypt. It was not our fathers alone that the Holy One redeemed,
but ourselves also did He redeem with them." Similarly, in the
Litany of Wonders, it is not "they" but we who are said to have
wandered for forty years and to have been fed upon manna in the
wilderness, and finally to have reached the Promised Land.
Everywhere the emphasis is placed squarely on the durative
and ideal sig
......
1 'Matt. 26:30; Mark 14:26. The English Bible renders, "When they
had sung a hymn," but the Greek original would also permit the
rendering, "When they had sung hymns."
......
nificance of the Exodus rather than on its punctual and historic
reality. The Haggadah is the script of a living drama, not the
record of a dead event, and when the Jew recites it he is
performing an act not of remembrance but of personal
identification in the here and now.
The Seder ceremony, said the sages, is valid only when the
"bread of affliction" and the bitter herbs are actually before
you. In a sense larger than they intended, these words epitomize
its essential significance. Wer nie sein Brot mit Traenen ass ...
It may be said, in fact, that the central theme of the Seder
is not - as commonly supposed - the Exodus from Egypt. That is
merely its highlight. The central theme is the entire process of
which that particular event happens to have been the catalyst. In
Jewish tradition, the deliverance from Egypt is important only
because it paved the way to Sinai - that is, to Israel's
voluntary acceptance of its special and distinctive mission; and
what the Seder narrative relates is the whole story of how Israel
moved progressively from darkness to light, from the ignorance
and shame of idolatry to the consciousness and glory of its high
adventure.
All through the ages, the very structure of the narrative
has evinced its purport. In ancient times it began, on a note of
shamefaced humility, with the words, "At first our fathers were
worshipers of idols," (or, in an alternative version: "A
wandering Aramean was my father") and ended with the triumphant
chanting of the Psalms of Praise. Today, even though later
accretions have somewhat obscured this dramatic sequence, it
still opens (in most parts of the world) with a reference to the
"bread of affliction" and closes in a breathless and inspired
climax with the defeat of the Angel of Death. Moreover, the very
sentence which begins with the words, "At first our fathers were
worshipers of idols," ends significantly with the proud
affirmation: "But now the Presence of God has drawn us to His
service."
The several features of the ritual and the several elements
of the narrative in turn reinforce this sense of continuousness.
For neither ritual nor narrative is the product of a single age
or environment--a mere heirloom or museum piece passed down
intact and piously conserved. On the contrary, some parts of each
go back to the days of the Second Temple, while others are no
earlier than the fifteenth century. Ritual and narrative alike
are therefore dynamic, not static creations - virtual
kaleidoscopes of Jewish history - reflecting in their growth and
development the various phases of Israel's career.
(Yes, over time things were added and adopted to make up the
present "seder" service for the religious Jews - Keith Hunt)
The form of the meal, for example, with the reclining on
cushions, the preliminary dipping of parsley in salted water, and
the customary consumption of eggs as an 'hors d'oeuvre,'
reproduces the typical pattern of a Roman banquet, and one may
even suppose that the recital of the narrative and the conclusion
of the repast with the chanting of psalms may have been modeled
after the Roman practice of having literary works read aloud at
meals and regaling oneself afterward with choral entertainment.
Indeed, it is not at all impossible that the initial invitation
to the hungry and needy, and the prescription that at least four
(originally, three) cups of wine must be drunk, are likewise of
Roman origin. For the fact is that it was common Roman practice
for "clients" to wait upon their patrons during the day in order
to pay their respects to them; and for this attention they were
often rewarded by a formal invitation to join the company at
supper (coena recta). Similarly, 'pace' the traditional
explanations of the three or four glasses of wine, it is not
without interest that a normal Roman dinner actually entailed a
minimum of three cups--one for the preliminary libation to the
gods, a second for the mutual toasting of the guests, and a third
in honor of the hosts or, under the Caesars, of the emperor. (To
be sure, this minimum was usually exceeded; but so, too, are the
minimum three or four cups of the Seder!).
On the other hand, the 'afikomin' is distinctly Greek,
although the term now bears a meaning quite different from that
which attached to it in Hellenic speech. The Talmud says that
"men must not leave the paschal meal epikomin." This last word
was really the Greek 'epi komon,' a popular expression for
"gadding around on revels" - the common nightly pastime of the
"gay blades" of Hellas.
The term, however, was subsequently misunderstood, and the
sentence wrongly rendered: "Men must not leave out the afikomin
after the paschal meal." The curious, unintelligible expression
was then taken to refer to some special condiment or "dessert"
which had to be served at the conclusion of the repast, and
thence arose the custom of distributing small pieces of
unleavened bread and calling them 'afikomin!'
Similarly, when the door is opened "for Elijah," we are
plunged at once into the Middle Ages, for the real purpose of
this act seems to have been to provide an effective rebuttal of
the terrible 'Blood Libel' which asserted that Jews employ the
blood of Christian children in the preparation of 'matzah.' The
door was flung open so that all might have a chance of beholding
the complete innocence of the proceedings.
Lastly, the secular songs and ditties with which the service
now concludes and which constitute its most recent - though most
familiar - feature take us straight into Renaissance Europe. One
of these songs, the famous 'Shad mi yodea' ("Who knows one?"),
for example, has been traced by students of comparative
literature to a popular and widespread "counting-out rhyme," the
earliest specimen of which appears in Germany in the fifteenth
century. (In that earlier version, incidentally, the successive
numbers refer to God, Moses, and Aaron, the three Patriarchs, the
four Evangelists, and the five wounds of Jesus!) Similarly, the
'Had Gadya' ("Only One Kid") finds its earliest prototype in a
fifteenth-century German folk song, 'Der Herr der schickt das
Jockli hinaus,' though here again, the wide popularity of the
song is shown by the fact that early versions of it have turned
up in most European countries.
It should be observed also that, in Oriental lands, quite a
different set of popular chants is appended to the 'Haggadah.'
The 'Sephardim,' for instance, have many such chants written in
the Ladino, or Judeo-Spanish, dialect current especially in the
Levant, while elsewhere, Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Persian songs are
in use. The inclusion in it of those "native" compositions
likewise bespeaks the true character of the Seder as an
expression of the total, continuous experience of the Jewish
people.
(It adopted and adapted what it needed to do in various parts of
the world, and with some outlandish albeit 're-made' sections for
a tradition less vulgar and distasteful - Keith Hunt)
Even the illustrations which adorn the older editions of the
Haggadah conspire to create a picture of the entire stretch of
Jewish history. The "wicked son" (who balances on one leg from
one Seder to the next) is simply a Roman centurion; the one who
is "too young to ask," and who holds up his hands like a
questioning child, is taken directly from an earlier print of a
slave in supplication before Hannibal; while the store-cities of
Pithom and Raamses, which the Israelites were compelled to build
for Pharaoh, are the walled towns of fifteenth-century Europe!
All the centuries seem, as it were to blend and blur.
(Yes, false Christianity of Rome, that adopted and adapted, the
customs and ideas of paganism, baptizing them with so-called holy
water, making them supposedly clean and pure before God, has also
been done by the Pharasaical Rabbis of Judaism through the
centuries - even at the time of Christ it was so in Judah, hence
the words of Christ in Mark 7, denouncing them for following
traditions that made void the commandments of God - Keith Hunt)
.......................
To be continued
History - Phariseeism - Passover #2As Catholicism so Judaism
From the book "Festivals of the Jewish Year" by Gaster (1952)
Continued from previous page:
Nor is it only in the accidental development of its form, or
in the externals of the traditional "book of words," that the
"continuous" character of the ceremony is evinced. Several of the
poems which have been added to the narrative portion of the
Haggadah revolve around the theme that Passover was the occasion
not only of the deliverance from Egypt but also of all the main
deliverances - and, indeed, of all the main events - in Jewish
history. This, of course, is pious fiction, but the fact that it
was invented shows that in the minds of successive generations of
Jews the Seder has always exemplified a continuous and durative
experience. Moreover, that experience is projected into the
future as well as retrojected into the past. Every detail of the
Exodus, it is maintained, foreshadows an element of Israel's
ultimate redemption. In the words of a medieval hymn: 2
They went from Egypt in the dead of night,
Yet was the glow of life their guiding light
That glow which yet shall pierce the darkest skies
When God cries out, "Thy dawn is come! Arise!" 3
When that He did the sea from them divide
The waters were a wall on either side, 4
So, when the new day breaks, the Lord shall keep His word,
and by still waters lead His sheep. 5
On the final night of deliverance - the "night of vigil," as
the Bible calls it (Exod.12:42)--God will come to Israel as a
lover serenading his beloved and eventually winning her as his
own:
......
2 From the poem, "Pesah usheru be-or ha-hayyin le-or," by
Jekuthiel bar Joseph, chanted in some synagogues on the eve of
the eighth day of Passover.
3 Isa. 60:1.
4 Exod. 14:22.
5 Isa. 40:10-11, 49:10.
......
O night of vigil and O witching hour,
When God rode forth from Egypt in His power!
The night shall come when He shall ride once more
As once he rode in those far days of yore.
But we with song shall fill that eventide;
To us He comes a lover to his bride.
O night of vigil and O witching hour!
Tho' God with darkness all the world o'erpower,
Lo, in His hand is day as well as night,
And over us shall break His morning light;
For ne'er that other night shall be forgot
When Abraham led his men to rescue Lot. 6
O night of vigil and O witching hour!
As once when steers would His poor sheep devour,
The Shepherd fought with them and lay them low,
So, as He rescued us so long ago,
He yet shall come, and this long night be done.
Deliverance cometh with the rising sun.
O night of vigil and O witching hour!
Tho' dark the earth and tho' the heavens lower,
This is the hour when God His tryst shall keep
With His beloved, rouse her from her sleep,
And, like a bridegroom leading home his bride,
Lead her in peace to Zion at His side. 7
In another sense, too, the Passover story is a continuous
experience. For if it is true that the punctual event which it
celebrates possesses also a durative character, involving the
children of all generations, it is equally true that the
particular historical occasion of the Exodus represents a
situation which is in itself seemingly
......
6 Cf. Gen. 14:10-16.
7 From the poem "Lel shimmurim '6M6 El hatsah," chanted in some
synagogues on the first evening of Passover.
......
perpetual and which is by no means confined to a single moment of
time. In a larger sense, the villain of the piece is not a
particular Egyptian Pharaoh - Seti I or Ramses II - but all the
tyrants who have ever opposed Israel at any time; the Sea of
Reeds is not the particular Lake Timsah (or any other similar
expanse of water) which the Israelites had to cross on their way
to Sinai, but all the obstacles which Israel has ever encountered
throughout its career and which have yielded when the emblem of
God was lifted above them; the manna is not the peculiar gum of
'Tamarix gallica manni f era,' as learned botanists assure us,
but that divine sustenance on which Israel has been fed
continually while it has been roaming the world's desert to the
place of Revelation - that "bread of angels" which has to be
gathered afresh every morning and which (as the sages acutely
observed) tastes different to every man. And the journey through
the wilderness, in the wake of a cloud by day and a pillar of
fire by night, is the eternal progress of Israel toward the
Kingdom of God.
Nor is it only on the historical plane that this continuous
significance of the festival is brought home. On the seasonal
plane, Passover marks the time when, in Palestine, the heavy
rains of winter give place to the light showers, or "dews," of
spring; and for this reason special prayers for "dew" are
included in the morning service of the first day. But this dew is
not merely a blessing of nature; it is also a symbol of God's
beneficence toward Israel both in the past and in the future. It
is the dew which was mentioned in Isaac's blessing upon Jacob
(Gen. 27,28); to which Moses compared his final discourse (Deut.
32:2); which fell upon Gideon's fleece as a sign that Israel
would be saved from the Midianites (Judg. 6:37-38). It is also
the dew of rejuvenation and resurrection - the "dew of youth"
with which God annoints His Messiah (Ps.110:3), and the "dew of
lights" which, as the prophet says, will eventually fall on the
"land of the shades" (Is.26:19):
Behold, there is a word of God which saith.
"My dew shall fall upon the land of Death," 8
And they that slumber now the long night through
Shall yet awaken with the morning dew....
Lily and rose shall blossom, 9 and the corn
Gleam in the valleys with the dew of morn....
Lo, angels shall unlock the treasuries
Of hea'n and pour the dewdrops from the skies;
And pilgrims wending to the festival
Shall see My dew upon Mount Hermon fall; 10
And all the scattered shall come home again
Unto a land of corn and wine, where rain
Drops gently down from heaven, 11 and the Lord
No longer passes with a flaming sword. 12
The Passover festival then has two basic messages for modern
man. The first is that deliverance from the scourge of bondage
and the night of ignorance lies just as much in his own hands as
in God's. If it is true that God delivered Israel from Egypt "not
by the hand of an angel, nor by the hand of a seraph, nor by the
hand of any one man sent, but by His own glory and His own self,"
it is equally true that in the world of men it
......
8 Isa. 26:19.
9 Cf. Hos. 14:5.
10 Cf. Ps. 133:2.
11 Deut. 33:28.
12 From the poem, "Tahath elath "opher," by Eleazar Kalir (IX
cent.), recited in some synagogues as part of the Prayer for Dew.
......
is by the hands of men that His glory and His being can alone be
revealed.
The second message of Passover is that deliverance is
continual. "The festival is celebrated," says the Haggadah, in
its answer to the "wise son," "because of that which the Lord did
for me, when I came forth out of Egypt." And the wise son
understands.
OMER DAYS
The seven weeks between Passover and Pentecost are known as
the Days of the 'Omer.' Omer is a Hebrew word meaning "sheaf,"
and the name derives from the Biblical commandment (Lev.23:I5)
that from the day when the first sheaf of barley was offered to
God in the sanctuary seven full weeks are to be counted until the
final celebration of the harvest-home and the presentation to Him
of the two loaves of new bread.
The counting, which cornmences on the second night of
Passover,
(That was the Pharisee practice and teaching. It was INCORRECT -
in this case it was the Sadducees that had the correct counting;
they cut the sheaf shortly after sundown on the weekly Sabbath
during the Unleavened Bread feast, and started to count to
Pentecost from the first day of the week after the weekly Sabbath
that fell during the UB feast. See all of my in-depth studies
under "Pentecost" on this Website - Keith Hunt)
is performed in ceremonial fashion every evening at sunset. It is
prefaced by a blessing recalling the Biblical ordinance, and is
followed by the recitation of the Sixty-seventh Psalm ("The earth
hath yielded her produce; God, our own God, is blessing us."). A
prayer is also offered for the rebuilding of the Temple and the
restoration of its ancient services.
The Omer Days are observed as a kind of Lent. At least
during the earlier portion of them, it is not permitted to
solemnize marriages, cut the hair, wear new clothes, listen to
music or attend any form of public entertainment.
The traditional reason for the austerity is that it is a
sign of mourning, commemorating the fact that during this period
of the year many of the disciples of Rabbi Akiba, the illustrious
teacher of the first century C.E., were wiped out by the plague.
This, however, is simply a historical rationalization of a far
more ancient and primitive usage. The true explanation is to be
found in the universal custom of regarding the days or weeks
preceding the harvest and the opening of the agricultural year as
a time when the corporate life of the community is, so to speak,
in eclipse, one lease of it now drawing to a close and the next
being not yet assured. This state of suspended animation is
expressed by fasts and austerities and by a curtailment of all
normal activities. 13
(Once more this is adoptions from the pagan nations around the
world; hence the Jews have their "lent" to correspond with the
Roman Catholic "lent" - Keith Hunt)
Especially interesting in this connection is the ban on
marriages - originally a method of showing that, at the time when
the annual lease of life is running out, human increase also is
arrested. Among the ancient Romans, marriages during May were
considered unlucky. The poet Ovid declares flatly that such
marriages will not last, and adds: 14 "If proverbs mean a thing
to you, men say 'A wicked baggage is a bride in May.'" Moreover,
this belief survives to the present day in many European
countries. In Italy, for instance, it is regarded as inauspicious
to marry in May because that month is "dedicated to the Virgin";
while a North Country rhyme current in Britain asserts that "If
you marry in Lent,/You will live to repent." or, according to
another version, "Marry in May - rue for aye." Similarly, in
several parts of Germany, marriages in May are discountenanced,
and a work on Kentucky superstitions, published as late as
......
13 See below, pp. 53 ff.
14 Fasti, V, 487.
......
1920, bears evidence that the notion has percolated also to the
New World.
On the thirty-third day of the 'omer, known by the Hebrew
name of 'Lag b'Omer,' 15 the lenten restrictions are suddenly
relaxed, according to some authorities, for twenty-four hours
only; according to others, right up to the advent of Pentecost.
Lag b'Omer--which falls on the eighteenth of Iyaris not regarded
as a sacred occasion and is not distinguished by any special
service in the synagogue; it is simply a folk festival. Various
explanations of it are offered in Jewish tradition. It is said,
for instance, that it commemorates the date when the plague which
had been ravaging the disciples of Akiba suddenly ceased. This,
however, rests on nothing more substantial than a misreading and
misinterpretation of a passage in the Talmud. Alternatively, it
is claimed that it marks the day when the manna first began to
fall in the wilderness. But this flies in the face of Scripture
itself, for, according to Exodus 16:13, that event occurred on
the sixteenth, not the eighteenth of the month!
The true explanation, it may be suggested, is that Lag
b'Omer had originally nothing whatsoever to do with the Omer
period as a whole, but was simply a rustic festival which
happened to fall within it. It is the equivalent of the European
May Day.
This conclusion is borne out not only by the close
correspondence of dates but also by the virtual identity of
ceremonies.
......
15 'Lag' is an artificial word made up of the Hebrew letters L-G
which have the numerical value of 33.
......
It was customary on Lag b'Omer for children to go out into
the woods and shoot with bows and arrows. Although this usage has
fallen into desuetude in Western countries, it is still
maintained in the Land of Israel. A popular ditty sung on the
occasion runs as follows:
Up, and to the greenwood,
With arrow and with bow;
There the world is blossoming,
There the flowers blow.
There, on every branch and bough,
The little birds are seen;
And there, as far as eye can reach,
All things are bright and green.
Tradition gives various reasons for this custom. It is said,
for instance, that it symbolizes the readiness of the Jews to
take up arms against those who destroyed the Temple, or - even
more fancifully - that it symbolizes the fact that the great
second-century teacher, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, who died on the
day, was so pious and virtuous that throughout his lifetime no
rainbow ever appeared in the sky to portend disaster on earth!
The true explanation lies, however, in the common practice
of shooting arrows at demons and evil spirits on days when they
are believed to be especially rampant. May Day is preeminently
one of these occasions, for, according to popular tradition, the
preceding night - the socalled Walpurgis Nightie 16 is the time
of the witches' sabbath.
In Germany, it is common usage for country folk to go out
into the woods on May Morn and shoot arrows; any-
......
16 The name derives from Walpurgia, an English nun of the eighth
century, who founded religious houses in Germany, and to whom the
Church dedicated the day.
......
one who hears the noise from a distance is expected to cry out:
"Shoot my witch away!" The most interesting example of the custom
obtains, however, in the rural areas of England, where it takes
the form of contests in archery in imitation of the exploits of
Robin Hood. A fascinating description of these ceremonies as
observed in the time of Henry the Eighth, is furnished by John
Stow in his famous "Survey of London" (1603):
"In the month of May, namely on May-day in the morning, every
man, except impediment, would walk in the sweet meadows and green
woods, there to rejoice their spirits with the beauty and savour
of sweet flowers and with the harmony of birds praising God in
their kind; and for example hereof, Edward Hall hath noted that
King Henry the Eighth .... in the seventh year of his reign, with
Queen Catherine [of Aragon] his wife, accompanied with many lords
and ladies, rode a-maying from Greenwich to the high ground of
Shooters Hill, where, as they passed by the way, they espied a
company of tall yeomen clothed all in green, with green hoods,
and with bows and arrows, to the number of two hundred. One,
being the chieftain, was called Robin Hood, who required the king
and his company to stay and see his men shoot, whereunto the king
granting, Robin Hood whistled, and all the two hundred archers
shot off, loosing all at once; and when he whistled again, they
likewise shot again, their arrows whistled by craft of the head,
so that the noise was strange and loud, which greatly delighted
the king, queen and their company. Moreover, this Robin Hood
desired the king and queen, with their retinue, to enter the
greenwood, where, in arbors made of boughs and decked with
flowers, they were seated and served plentyfully with venison and
wine ... and had other pageants and pastimes."
Scholars have long pointed out that the familiar figure of
Robin Hood is simply a transmogrified form of "Robin o' the
Wood," chief of the hobgoblins and mischievous sprites. The
seasonal ceremonies associated with his name are therefore
nothing but distorted portrayals of the antics of these creatures
and of the measures used to drive them away, at the beginning of
spring.
In this connection, the use of the bow and arrow is of
particular interest, for it is motivated by the idea that evil
spirits should be given a taste of their own medicine, requited
with their own weapons, it being a fairly universal belief that
their principal means of attacking mortals is by hurling darts at
them. In the Ninety-first Psalm, for instance, the pious
Israelite expresses his confidence that Jehovah will deliver him
"from the arrow which flieth by day, the pestilence that stalketh
in darkness, the destruction that ravageth at noon" - all three
of them well-known demons of Semitic folklore. Similarly, the
anguished job complains (6:4) that "the arrows of the Almighty
are within me, the poison whereof my spirit drinketh up"; while
in the Iliad of Homer (I, 43-49), Apollo sends plague upon the
Achaeans by shooting his arrows at them. In the same way, too, a
man who was suffering from aches and pains was said in old
English to be "elf-shot," and to this day the Germans call a
"stitch" in the side a Hexenschuss, or "witches' shot."
Moreover, the method of forefending these demons with their
own weapons has several interesting parallels. At ancient Indian
weddings, for example, arrows were shot to protect the bridal
couple; and among the Bechuanas, the bridegroom discharges an
arrow into the bride's hut when she leaves it on marriage. 17
Of interest also is the fact that in the Lag b'Omer
ceremonies, the children go with their bows and arrows not only
to the greenwood but also to the cemetery. Here we have another
link with May Day customs, for the
......
17 A familiar equivalent is the custom of having bride and groom
walk under an archway of crossed swords at military weddings.
......
fact is that dances and convocations in cemeteries were a common
feature of the celebrations on that occasion. It is recorded, for
example, in a medieval Scottish chronicle that in 1282 the priest
of Inverkeithing himself "led the ring" in the village
churchyard, the dancers being his own parishioners; and John
Aubrey, the seventeenth-century English antiquary, informs us
that, in his day, village lads and lasses used to dance in the
churchyards not only on May Day, but also on all holy days and
eves of holy days. 18 This curious practice goes back, of
course, to the common primitive custom of communing with or
propitiating the dead at major seasonal festivals.
In Palestine, Lag b'Omer is distinguished also by another
celebration. On this day, it is said, Rabbi Simeon ben Yohai, the
father of Jewish mysticism, passed from the world, after first
revealing to his disciples the secrets of his mystic visions. In
tribute to his memory, a pilgrimage is made, on the previous
evening, to the traditional site of his grave in the village of
Meron, near Safed. Since, however, the illustrious teacher
departed this life in joy rather than in sadness, the anniversary
of his death is celebrated as a festival, not as a day of
mourning. Accordingly, the pilgrimage is followed immediately by
the kindling of bonfires and by all-night singing and dancing.
This latter celebration is known as "the 'hillula' of Rabbi
Simeon ben Yohai." 'Hilluld' is an Aramaic word (akin to the more
familiar 'hallelujah'), meaning "frolic" or "revel"; but, since
it is also the technical term for wedding festivities, it is
popularly interpreted, in this context, as referring to the
mystic "wedding," or union, of all planes of existence which
......
18 See Margaret Murray, "The God of the Witches" (New York,
1952), p.107.
......
took place when the soul of the sage ascended to heaven. Here
again, what we really have, under the guise of memorial exercise,
is the last lingering survival of a typical May Day ceremony. For
the fact is that it is custo mary in many parts of the world to
kindle bonfires at the end of April or the beginning of May as a
means of forefending demons and witches at the moment when the
cattle are first let out of the barn. In ancient Rome, for
example, such fires were lit at the rustic festival of the
Parilia, on the twenty-first of April; and in England, they are
kindled at crossroads on St.George's Day (April 23) 19
Similarly, the Celtic festival of Beltane, on May 1, was
marked by the kindling of fires, a custom still maintained in the
Scottish and Irish Highlands; in Bohemia and Moravia, it is
common practice, on the same day, to "burn out witches"; and in
Sweden, "huge bonfires are built in every hamlet, around which
the young people dance."
It is not, of course, to be assumed that the Jewish festival
was actually borrowed from Europe. We are dealing solely with
parallel phenomena. But the parallelism shows clearly that here
too, as in the case of so many other festivals, Judaism has
molded ancient clay into new shapes.
......
19 Shakespeare alludes to this in a memorable passage of "King
Henry VI" (I, I, i, 153-154), where the Duke of Bedford, resolved
to go to France and fight the Dauphin, exclaims: "Bonfires in
France forthwith I am to make,/To keep our great Saint George's
feast withal."
......
......................
Note:
As the author said, "Judaism has molded ancient clay into new
shapes" - they, like the Roman Catholic church, took old pagan
ceremonies and customs, and figured if they sprinkle them with
holy water, they would be clean, and God would accept such in
worshipping Him. Nothing could be further from the truth, as
fully expounded on my blog and website.
Keith Hunt
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