Reading between the lines isn’t always easy, particularly when there’s nothing there. White space.A question was brought to Moses: Will no good deed go unpunished? We were burying our dead and, as a result, we are ritually defiled and therefore ineligible to participate in the Passover ritual. Why should our act of genuine mercy preclude us from the communal feast celebrating our redemption? (Numbers 9:7, according to the commentary of the 16th-century Italian Rabbi Sforno) Moses, a most humble man, recognizes the injustice and asks God to fill in the white space. (Would that we could!) The Lord offers a remedy. One month later, there will be another opportunity to celebrate redemption, complete with maror (bitter herbs) and matza, the foods reminiscent of bondage and redemption.Included in this holiday of second chances will be both those who were temporarily ritually unfit and those who were on a long journey. One thing was God asked, two did He answer.In the white space above the Hebrew word for “long” in “long journey” is a sign to read between the lines. A single dot in the Torah scroll; a road sign on the long journey each of us takes. Millennia before statistics on synagogue affiliation rates, the sages of the Mishna picture a pilgrim at the threshold of the Jerusalem Temple, gazing toward the altar, unable or unwilling to cross into the sacred space. The Jerusalem Talmud suggests that it is not the journey that is distant, but the traveler who is distant from community, celebration, and the redeeming presence of God.In the expansiveness of God’s answer, as interpreted by our tradition, the rabbis recognized that sometimes we are unable to participate in what passes for religion. On occasion, the rules themselves are our obstacles. Fidelity to the system as a whole dictates temporary exclusion, as was the case in our Torah portion. In our post-biblical reality, the situation is somewhat reversed. Burying the dead prior to a holiday does not interfere with the mourner’s participation in the holiday, but the holiday cancels the mourning rituals of shiva. The community is not available to support the mourner because of the demands of the holiday, so shiva is canceled, leaving the mourner bereft.On other occasions, we find ourselves too skeptical of, or too disengaged from, the system to cross that threshold into communal religion.Our sages acknowledge and validate the alienation and disaffection we sometimes feel – and offer us a second chance with lower barriers to entry. Our Torah portion deals with the Second Passover, one month after the first, which has no prohibitions against leavened products. There’s no scouring prior and no deprivation during. Nor is there the requirement to discuss our central story, the redemption from Egypt. Today, all that’s required is eating matza and maror.According to the 2001 National Jewish Population Survey, twothirds of American Jews attend a Passover Seder. If there were only three children in the Haggadah rather than four, one of them would not even be at the Seder table! That’s who the Second Passover is really for, the ones who didn’t show up, the ones lost in the white space.Let them eat matza and maror.Our sages are telling us to forego the cognitive component and, for this marginalized population, focus on the experiential.The Talmud asks if one is allowed to swallow the maror without chewing. No, says the fourth century Babylonian teacher Rava, we must chew. Rashbam (12th century France) explains that the essence of eating maror is not the consumption, but the taste. The bitterness must be tasted. On the Second Passover, however, there are not necessarily four cups of wine to bring one from the bitterness of bondage to the release of redemption.What first seemed like a gracious, outstretched arm now smacks more of the mighty hand. Our “holiday” emerged at the request of those disappointed that they couldn’t participate in the real deal.Later legislation turned it in to an obligation, even for those who had initially, and intentionally, shunned Passover. If this wicked one again reads himself out of the community for the Second Passover, his act would be reciprocated by being excised by the community. (The only other imperative which, when ignored, carries this consequence is that of circumcision.) The absenting Jew was graciously given a second chance along with a symbolic mixture of blandness and bitterness: this is life outside the community. Return. Please. Today’s white space is filled with flourishes our sages could scarcely have imagined.At our crossroads of tradition and modernity, we are obliged to infuse the meal with meaning, to complement the mandatory with the celebratory.Singing our redemption song, translating it like Ezra the Scribe for new generations returning to the threshold, with wine stains on the white spaces – that’s how we’ll continue on our long journey. Shai Cherry is the Director of Shaar Hamayim: A Jewish Learning Center in Solana Beach, California
