How I fell in Love with Israel and Jerusalem - 8th day of Pesach

This past week (Passover) I fell in love….with Israel and Jerusalem. I have always loved Israel but now I am in love with Israel. It happened when I wasn’t even in Israel. All I did was read a book, Abraham Joshua Heschel’s “Israel: An Echo of Eternity.” I have read many books, articles and essays about Israel but I have never been touched in the way that this book touched me.

The book is really Heschel’s reflections on his trip to Israel in the summer of 67 just a few months after the 6 Day War. Allow me to quote one passage:

“Jerusalem, all our hearts are like harps, responsive when your name is mentioned. Jerusalem, our hearts went out to you whenever we prayed…For so many ages we have been lovesick…In our own days a miracle has occurred…What happened on June 7, 1967? G-d’s compassion has prevailed. So many devastations. Thousands of communities wiped out. Synagogues burned, people asphyxiated. No tombstones, no graves, all monuments meaningless.

In its solitude the Wall was forced into the role of an unreachable tombstone for the nameless dead. Suddenly the Wall, tired of tears and lamentations, became homesick for song. “O Come, let us sing to the Lord, let us chant in joy to the rock of our salvation!” (Psalm 95:1). It will be called the Rejoicing Wall.”

As I read this passage and so many others, I fell in love. Heschel tells us that when he arrived at the Kotel for the first time, he understood that the Bible was still Alive. That chapters were still being written.

All Pesach long as I would read these poetic passages and think of Jerusalem, I was confronted with a difficult question. Pesach has everything in it. The seder is so rich. But it is missing one important element. It is missing Israel and Jerusalem.

Sure, there are nods to Jerusalem (e.g., Next Year may we be in Jerusalem). But the seder primarily ignores its importance. To give but one example, consider the four cups. They represent the 4 articulations of redemption.

והוצאתי והצלתי וגאלתי ולקחתי

1.)   I will take out, 2.) I will save you, 3.) I will redeem you, 4.) and I will take you.

But any sensitive reader of the Torah knows that there is a really a 5^th verse which is left out. והבאתי – “I will bring you” to the land of Israel. Sure, some say that this is the Cup of Elijah and others had a custom to have a 5^th cup, but the primary custom left out the 5^th cup. It left Israel out of the seder. Why? How can we leave out Israel which was the goal of the Exodus in the first place?

So I heard an interesting answer to the question. We have to remember that the Passover Hagadah was largely put together in the Gaonic Period (8^th and 9^th century Babylon). It is a book produced in Exile so it has been suggested that it would have been too painful to focus too much on Israel. What kind of Passover celebration would it have been to focus on Israel when they were in Exile. So they left it out.

This answer might be sufficient on the psychological level but not on the theological level.

If we go back to the Covenant of the Parts, G-d promised Abraham that his children will be slaves but then they will go out and return to the Land of Israel. Slavery was just a prelude to Redemption and Entering the Land, so how can Jerusalem and Israel be left out of the Seder and Passover?

This morning (8^th day of pesach), my daughter came down for breakfast and I asked her if she wanted cream cheese on matzah. “Daddy,” she said, “I am sick of cream cheese and matzah.” How about macaroons? Not a chance! Are we not all feeling this way? Dayeinu, haven’t we had enough. What is the 8^th day all about anyways? We have already celebrated leaving Egypt, crossing the sea, what is left?

The answer is a beautiful image from our Haftorah. The beautiful Haftorah for the 8^th day of Pesach is also the Haftorah for Yom Ha’atzmaut. It opens with a messianic image. ויצא חטר מגזע ישי

What is “Geza Yishai”? The stump of Jesse. Jesse is of course King David’s father, representing the Davidic line and Judaic sovereignty. The problem is that it has been cut down. The jews are in Exile. What was once a thriving tree is now a stump. When I think about a tree stump, I always think of “The Giving Tree,” by Shel Silverstein. At the very end, when the boy (now an old man) comes back, the tree has nothing left to give except its stump to sit on. It says in the book that the boy was happy, but I am always sad. The last image is an old man on a tree stump. I look at that and see no future. The man will die and the tree has no hope. Right under the picture are the words, “The End.” This is what I feel. It is the End, no hope, no future.

But what does our Haftorah proclaim? A shoot or a branch will go out of that stump. A miracle. It is not the end. There will be life again. The Davidic kingdom will be restored, Jews will return to the land and a thriving tree will grow out of that stump. It is no wonder why they chose this reading for Yom Ha’atzmaut.

This also makes me think about the Haftorah for Shabbat of Chol Hamoed Sukkot. The Haftorah all about the Dry Bones of Ezekiel. G-d tells Ezekiel to prophecy to the bones. They begin to come together but then they say, “ישבו עצמותינו ואבדה תקותינו” (“Our bones have dried and our hope is lost”). G-d tells Ezekiel to tell them that G-d will open their graves and you will return to the Land and thrive again. The Bones were saying, “we have lost our hope,” and G-d said עוד לא אבדה תקותינו – The hope is still alive. We have not lost out hope (Hatikva).

This is the message of the 8^th day of Pesach. The message is that even though the joy of Pesach has been tempered somewhat for the last 2000 years of Exile, we have not lost hope. Even though the Gaonim might have left Israel out of the Seder and the 1^st days of Pesach, the 8^th day is about the possibility of the Messianic Era. It is about a branch shooting out from the stump. It is about Dry Bones living again. On Pesach we begin by going way back into the past but we conclude with hope for the future.  

This takes me back to Heschel and Jerusalem. Heschel has a beautiful line in the book where he says, “Jerusalem is the Past meeting the Present to encounter the future.” Jerusalem is the only place on Earth where I can be riding on the most modern light rail system, I look around and see people using their smart phones which have chips in them that were invented just kilometers from the train stop. I then get off the train and see modern, sleek hotels built with the most innovative architecture. And then I go in through the Jaffa Gate and I am in the Old City. I travel over cobble stone roads, I pass archeological digs, I see rocks and stones where Isaiah and the prophets shared the word of G-d and then I arrive at the Kotel near the spot where Abraham almost sacrificed Isaac. In a matter of moments, I have gone from the newest of the new to the oldest of the old and then back to the new again. Jerusalem is certainly the place where “Past meets present and present encounters the future.” This is the trajectory of Pesach as well. We begin from the beginning of our peoplehood. We were slaves to Pharoah. G-d took us out. But then at the end of Pesach, we look to the future. We look to the revival to what is new and renewed. The branch will come forth from the stump. On Pesach, the Past meets the present and the Present encounters the future.”

But I would like to take this one step further. This motto is not just a description of Jerusalem. It is not just a description of Pesach. It is what Judaism is all about.

“Judaism is our attempt to allow the Past to meet the present so that we can encounter our Future.” It is through our celebration of Pesach and our Love for Jerusalem that we join this redemptive process!