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 Korban Pesach: Paschal Lamb
Pleasing to the L-rd, as in days of old and former years.
by Dr. Aryeh Hirsch
About a month after the assassination of Yitzchak Rabin, I was in Los Angeles. My brother saw a notice that Amos Oz would be speaking about Rabin and the "Peace" Process at Temple Sinai, and we decided that it might be interesting to here Oz's version of the "matzav" (current situation). Near the end of his talk, Amos gave his explanation of how it happened that "peace" had exploded with hundreds of Israelis gunned down or bombed by Arabs who were supposedly our partners in peace: "It's like surgery. We are surgically separating from the Palestinians, and as everyone knows, surgery entails blood. So the dead Israelis are simply sacrifices for Peace". I decided that this was as far as I'd let Oz's idiocy go without an answer, so I said in a voice loud enough to be heard by the few rows of people around me: "I'm a doctor, and I've never seen a surgeon go into an OR without hemostats, sutures and electrocautery to stop the bleeding. 'Sacrifices for Peace' is nuts". As fists were being waved, my brother had to pull me out of the place before another episode in the "Peace process" could end in violence.
"The strong Hand was the plague of Pestilence (Dever), and the outstretched Arm was the Sword", says the Passover Haggadah. Rav Yitzchak Weinberg, the Talner Rebbe (Moadim, pages 29-35), asks the classic question: "But there was no Plague of Sword?". The Rebbe answers that Pestilence is juxtaposed to Sword at this point in the Haggadah because for Dever the Torah says "and the Lord will distinguish between the herds of Israel and the herds of Egypt" in order to teach about the sharp, delicate surgery that God did in Egypt, "separating Israel from Egypt like a fetus from its mother" (Shmot 9,4; Ramban on 9,3). Thus the Almighty created a great divide between Israelite and Egyptian, making Israel into a new (hence, "Hachodesh hazeh", Shmot 12,2) creation. Furthermore, as Rav Matis Weinberg says, all that is new is holy ("chodesh" linguistically is related to "kodesh", which literally means "separated"), as we see in the Pesach halachah of Chadash, new barley grain. We Jews are thus a nation apart (Bamidbar 23,9), as surely as we are not human fodder to be physically torn apart, sacrificed on the "altar of Peace".
Rav Kook expands this idea (Haggadah, 1996 edition, pages 205-207) in explaining how Shabbat Haggadol got its name. There are two bases for the Sabbath: the Creation (Breishit) and the Exodus from Egypt. The former is the basis for natural ethics, for obvious, common-sense human justice and morality possessed innately by all bnei Noach (humans). This is a result of the Creation, and is expressed in the Friday night Kiddush as "zikaron l'maaseh vreishit", a remembrance of Shabbat Breishit, the "Shabbaton" (grammatically, "little Shabbat"; the suffix "on" expresses the diminutive, as in the word "ishon", pupil of the eye, which comes from the word "ish", man). But there is also the great Shabbat, the Shabbat Hagadol of the Exodus, when we became Yisrael; this is expressed in the Friday Kiddush as "zecher l'Yitziat Mitzrayim", and is greater than the Sabbath of Creation as "zecher" is greater than "zikaron" (having the diminutive "on" suffix). With the surgical separation of the Exodus (Yetziat Mitzrayim), with the "Morah GADOL zeh gilui shechina (the GREAT fear, the Revelation of the Divine Presence on the night of the first Pesach), we received a higher Ethic for our Yisrael nature. This set our bnei Noach character on a higher plane; God wanted that even our human side be totally Yisraeli. This higher morality divided ("pasach"; Exodus 12,27) us from gentiles in a night that established every Jewish house as a mizbeach (sacrificial altar) fit for sacrifices (the Paschal lamb; Rav Kook Haggadah, page 182).
This leads one to consider the Haftorah read on Shabbat HaGadol (Malachi 3). It is not accidental that "the last prophet, speaking of the ultimate distant future, proclaims the bringing of offerings " (Rav M. Breuer, Hirsch Haftorot). Because this is how the Egyptian exile and the history of the nation of Israel began in the first place: "And He said to him : 'I am the Lord who took you from Ur Kasdim to give you this land as an inheritance'. And Avram said: 'How (BAMEH) will I know that I am to inherit it?' And He said to him: 'Take to Me three calves..You shall certainly know that your children will be strangers in a land not theirs, and they will enslave them and oppress them.'"
(Breishit 15, 7-13). The Midrash says that the thrust of the question was regarding the inheritance of the Land of Israel, and whether Avraham's descendants would always feel a patriotic love of and sense of belonging to the Land. The Maharal (Gevurot Hashem, chap.8) prefers the Talmud's approach (Megilla 31b): the question was the age-old mystery of Jewish survival, for "if my children sin You will destroy them as You have done to every evil civilization in History, then what will be of my inheritance?". To this God answered: Sacrifices, my boy, sacrifices.For every other human has the inherent deficiencies of the Human Condition. But you and your descendants are above the physical (Rashi Breishit 15,5). The other nations, the bnei Noach, with their lower level ethics and character, sinned and are no more. But sin is not natural to Israel, and as such its stain can be rubbed off like tarnish from silver, via "sacrifices".
Therefore the Haftorah of Shabbat HaGadol begins: "Then the offering of Yehuda and Yerushalayim will be pleasing to the Lord, as in days of old and former years. YOU Children of Jacob, HAVE NOT BEEN DESTROYED " - exactly as per the Talmud's understanding of the conversation at the Covenant of the Pieces (the real "Piece" process by which Israel inherits the Land; as opposed to the sinister "sacrifices" of the childish dream of the peaceniks from the Land of Oz). And the Haftorah continues as a veritable mini-Haggadah. The Haggadah constantly hints at Avraham's "bameh" question, and is constructed around the question "meh/mah": "Mah nishtanah?; Chacham Mah hu omer?; Pesach, Matzah uMaror al shum Mah?". Similarly, the Haftorah continues with its own four sons, paralleling those in the Haggadah: "bameh nashuv (with what do we repent; verse 7)?", the question of a wise son. Then "bameh kvanucha (verse 8), how have we limited God?", the question of a simple son, who would limit his Judaism to the limited, fixed set of Laws that he learned at Sunday school / Sinai, and then after the school-bell, run away from Judaism as fast as his feet can carry him. And then the son who does not know enough to ask, who can rightly claim "Mah nidbarnu alecha? (verse13)", how have we spoken against You, if we cannot even ask? Finally, the Rasha, the evil son: "Mah betza? (verse14)", where's the beef, how can you make a profit from this Judaism stuff?
The Haftorah finishes with the clincher (verses 16-19): "And you will repent and see the difference between Tzadik and Rasha (righteous one and evil one), between the Oved Elokim, the one who serves God, and the one who does not". For Oved Elokim is the whole point of this night. In an instant we left the servitude of Pharoah, and entered the service (avodah) of the Lord. Avodah par excellence consists of those sacrifices spoken of in the the Covenant of the Pieces, and in the Haftorah/Haggadah: "the korbanot" of kirvah, getting close to God (Maharal, ibid). And as Rav Matis Weinberg says, the Almighty was pointing out to Avraham that there IS no zechus, no merit, no " Bameh" with which we merit Eretz Yisrael.
This unique Land is simply THE PLACE (haMakom, the Temple of Sacrifice) where Man, Adam, can fully fulfill Adam's mission of "l'avdah", to work (avodah) and develop the Garden of God. If one works the Garden, he merits to be there; only by the tears, sweat and (hopefully, symbolic animal-sacrificial) blood of his labors can Man merit the Place, the land of Israel. But Man can make a Garden of Eden only if he develops his awareness (da'at, a key word in the book of Exodus) on this night of the " yearly recurrence of the hour that witnessed our arising, by God's Hand, from the spiritual and physical death of the nations (Rav Breuer, Hirsch Haftorot)". This surgical, sacrificial separation from the nations will finally be complete only when "He sends Elijah the prophet, before the great and awesome day of the Lord".
Dr. Aryeh Hirsch is a physician at Magen David Adom/Terem in Jerusalem. He is proud to be a settler, residing in Beit El.
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ב״ה
