You may, or may not, recognise this song
מה נשתנה הלילה הזה מכל הלילות
שבכל הלילות אנו אוכלין בשר צלי שלוק ומבושל הלילה הזה כולו צלי
On all other nights we eat meat roasted, boiled or stewed, on this night only roasted.
It comes from the original version of the Mah nishtana, as appeared in the Mishnah,[1] a document so old that much of it can be dated back to Temple times, two thousand years ago.
Two thousand years ago, when the Temple still stood, the Children of Israel would arrive in Jerusalem, each family grouping leading their own Paschal offering – a sheep or a goat - which would be prepared for the Paschal Meal – the seder night.
And the Paschal offering was roasted.
In ancient times the forging of the nation of Israel in the moment we came forth from Egypt was deemed to be a forging in fire, and so we ate the Paschal lamb forged, roasted in that fire.
And then, of course, the Temple was destroyed.
No more Paschal offering,
The question from the mah nishtanah goes, replaced by something to do with leaning.
And as for the Paschal offering the sheep, the goat
We are left with shells, shadows, vestiges
רַבָּן גַּמְלִיאֵל הָיָה
אוֹמֵר:כָּל שֶׁלֹּא אָמַר שְׁלשָׁה דְּבָרִים אֵלּוּ בַּפֶּסַח
, לֹא יָצָא יְדֵי חוֹבָתוֹ
Rabban Gamliel used to say, all who do not mention these three things at Passover has not fulfilled their obligation
פֶּסַח שֶׁהָיוּ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ אוֹכְלִים בִּזְמַן שֶׁבֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ הָיָה קַיָם, עַל שׁוּם מָה?
The Paschal offering that our ancestors used to eat when the Temple was still standing …
And of course the song –
Chad gadyah, chad gadyah
The goat, once the very centrepiece of the Passover meal has become a nursery rhyme recited partly in exhaustion and partly in intoxication.
A sad end to a journey for the once proud and mighty Paschal sacrifice.
So this is my question – how should we deal with the fact that we can no longer offer up a Paschal offering?
The sheep is gone, now what?
Or let me set the question more broadly, how do we deal with the loss of something we knew, and loved, and could count on that suddenly is gone.
Replaced by a world we no longer recognise, no longer so familiar, no longer so secure.
It’s a question I’ve been pondering this week in the light of the G20, it’s a very good question for us, here at New London, and I think, Paul, Beth, it is also a very good question for parents of a young boy who is turning into a man before your eyes.
The sheep is gone, now what?
The sociologist Claes Janssen has a theory about how we deal with change thrust upon us.[2]
He calls it the four rooms of change.
Imagine, says Janssen, a house of four rooms.
In the first room everything is just how you like it.
Your favourite sofa, comfy chairs, wallpaper just so. It’s all perfect. This is the room of Contentment.
Then something happens and, like it or not, you are forced out of the room of contentment and into another room.
Now this room looks just like the room of contentment, but there is something very different. You can’t quite put your finger on it, or bring yourself o articulate what has changed, and so you pretend that nothing has changed. You keep sitting in the sofa, which isn’t as comfy as it once was, and you start getting frustrated that the pattern on the wallpaper now seems to be giving you a headache. Something is wrong and, all too often, you can’t quite work out why.
The good news is that there is door out of the room of Denial, so you head through it. But in this new room everything is clearly different, it’s all new, none of it is to your taste and whereas you didn’t quite know why you were feeling awkward in the room of Denial you are quite clear that this new room, the Room of Confusion, is not where you want to be.
You heading back to the room of Denial, hoping to get back to the room of Contentment, but that door is sealed forevermore.
So you wander back and forth between the room of Denial and the room of Confusion feeling irritable and ill-at-ease until eventually you see a door in the far side of the room of Confusion.
You’re amazed you had never seen it before, but there it is.
In the far side of the room of Confusion is a door into a room of Renewal.
And you give up on ever getting back into the room of Comfort, so clearly sealed off, and head off into the new future – this new creative beginning.
Four rooms
You get thrown out of the room of Comfort into the room of Denial.
You wander back and forth between Denial and Confusion.
Eventually you give up on what once was and then the door to Renewal appears.
It’s an interesting model.
It certainly presents an intriguing way of viewing the work of the G20.
The wealthy nations were all very comfortable in their never-ending cycles of boom and boom.
Well that’s now gone. There’s no more credit and our leaders, God bless them, are desperately trying to find ways to get us back into the room of Comfort. And we don’t like this confusion, with its increased unemployment and decreased levels of expenditure. But we aren’t yet ready to give up on the model of capitalism we once knew. There is a lot to give up. For one thing we need to cut our carbon footprint in half. For another we need to find a way to take 1 billion people out of sickening levels of poverty. The door to room of Renewal is still pretty well hidden from the eyes of the leaders of our Great Nation States.
The Four Room model also, I think, offers a fresh perspective on the recent history of this holy community, New London Synagogue.
Rabbi Jacobs – the very epitome of comfort for so many of us – became older and we didn’t like it. And we didn’t like the changes that this unavoidable reality thrust upon us and wanted to go back to the room of Comfort and it took a long time to find the door to the room of Renewal. It took a while for us, as a Synagogue, to feel comfortable looking ahead, rather than looking back.
And I think it is a model, dear Paul, Beth, for the journey you face as parents in these coming years.
Oscar’s no longer a child. You’ve left that room, and the teenage years are difficult years in which to parent. Everything is in flux, nothing fits anymore, the journey to the room of Renewal is bumpy.
Four rooms
You get thrown out of the room of Comfort into the room of Denial.
You wander back and forth between Denial and Confusion.
Eventually you give up on what once was and then the door to Renewal appears.
So how do we get to this fabled room of Renewal.
Do we really have to leave everything we knew and once loved behind?
I don’t think so.
I think, rather, the secret might be in yet another piece of the Hagadah
זֵכֶר לְמִקְדָּשׁ כְּהִלֵּל. כֵּן
עָשָׂה הִלֵּל בִּזְמַן שבֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ הָיָה קַיָים: הָיָה
כּוֹרֵךְ מַצָּה וּמָרוֹר וְאוֹכֵל בְּיַחַד, לְקַיֵים מַה שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: עַל מַצּוֹת וּמְרֹרִים יֹאכְלֻהוּ.
A zecher.
We do this like Hillel would while the Temple was still standing, fold the matzah and the herbs around the meat and eat them together as it says, ‘eat it – that’s the Paschal offering we no longer eat – with matzah and bitter herbs.’
The term zecher is usually translated as a memory, but that is not quite right. It’s more than that.
A zecher is a memory that drives us to do something.
This zecher drives us to perform a ritual that both acknowledges the Temple is destroyed and reminds us of our history.
It hold both our memory and allows for our renewal in one moment.
Jews love this notion of zecher - a memory built into a ritual, at seder night most especially.
The ritual holds the meaning and memory – the past - and still allows for renewal and future.
In the language of neuroscience, the ritual allows the same synapses in our brain to spark away, keeping alive what can be kept alive, letting go of what has forever gone.
At the seder we still bring the Paschal offering, it’s there in the shankbone, it’s there in the zecher lmikdash chillel.
It’s there in the song about the goat.
But we have moved on; there is a new question in the mah nishtana,
Indeed the whole seder night ritual is no longer predicated on each of us turning up in Jerusalem leading our Paschal offering up to the Temple Mount.
The whole ritual is a renewal, a new kind of celebration.
This is the incredible power of ritual, Jewish ritual, our tradition.
It allows us to acknowledge what has been lost and move on holding what we can of the past, open to the challenges and opportunities of the future.
גם כי אלך בגיא צלמות לא אירא רע
Once we know we can walk through the valley of the shadows of death fearing no evil what fears does a room of Denial, or a room of Confusion hold for me?
Jewish ritual gives us a way to journey forwards while still being true to the traditions and values of our past.
It is an incredibly powerful gift
And there is no Jewish ritual more powerful than the Seder night.
For it is the Seder night, with its absence of the goat and its had gadyah which holds us all as we sit round the Seder table and remember grandparents and great-grandparents who are no longer with us, and yet we still cook the same food and sing the same tunes as we learnt when we first paraded before the grown-ups to sing the mah nistanah.
The seder night is the ritual par eminence which holds the meaning and the memory – the past - and still allows for renewal and future.
We lost, we’ve struggle for a while, and we’ve found ourselves again, renewed.
Year after year, Seder after Seder.
We’ve left one room of Comfort after another, from the destruction of the Tempe, the expulsion from Spain, from Eastern Europe and Northern Africa, we’ve used our past to bring with us those most important dreams.
Dreams of an end to slavery.
Dreams of freedom.
Dreams a God who puts an end to the work of the angel of death.
And we have found a way to be both free – renewed - and true to our glorious heritage.
We fold the matzah around a Paschal offering that is no longer there and perform a zecher – a memory folded into a ritual.
And we sing a song about a goat.
Chad gadyah, chad gadyah,
It is a heritage of extraordinary worth, we would do well to care and tend for it, at this time of year, perhaps above all others.
A good Pesach to us all,
And Shabbat shalom,
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