It’s traditional to use this sermon before Pesach to remind everyone of some of the laws of the festival, and impress upon everyone the seriousness of the coming days. I hope to do some of that in a few minutes, but first, I want to look at an important subject that appears in this week’s parasha: the leprosy of houses. This idea, that the houses (and clothes!) and not only humans can suffer from tzara’at calls into question the whole idea of the identification with leprosy, but I still use that translation to highlight the weirdness of it all. Houses can get sick — instinctively, we feel whether a house that we enter is lively and in good health, or sickly and weak. The Torah speaks about such sick houses, specifically in the land of Israel:
כִּ֤י תָבֹ֙אוּ֙ אֶל־אֶ֣רֶץ כְּנַ֔עַן אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לָכֶ֖ם לַאֲחֻזָּ֑ה וְנָתַתִּי֙ נֶ֣גַע צָרַ֔עַת בְּבֵ֖ית אֶ֥רֶץ אֲחֻזַּתְכֶֽם ׃ וּבָא֙ אֲשֶׁר־ל֣וֹ הַבַּ֔יִת וְהִגִּ֥יד לַכֹּהֵ֖ן לֵאמֹ֑ר כְּנֶ֕גַע נִרְאָ֥ה לִ֖י בַּבָּֽיִת ׃ וְצִוָּ֨ה הַכֹּהֵ֜ן וּפִנּ֣וּ אֶת־הַבַּ֗יִת בְּטֶ֨רֶם יָבֹ֤א הַכֹּהֵן֙ לִרְא֣וֹת אֶת־הַנֶּ֔גַע וְלֹ֥א יִטְמָ֖א כָּל־אֲשֶׁ֣ר בַּבָּ֑יִת וְאַ֥חַר כֵּ֛ן יָבֹ֥א הַכֹּהֵ֖ן לִרְא֥וֹת אֶת־הַבָּֽיִת ׃
When you enter the land of Canaan, that I am giving you as a holding, and I place an affliction of tzaraat on a house in the land of your holding, there shall come the one whose house it is and report to the priest, saying: Something like an affliction has been seen by me on the house! Then the priest is to command that the house be cleaned… (Leviticus 14:34-36)
It must have been shocking for the people of Israel to learn that after escaping the plagues in Egypt, God plans to strike their future homes in the land of Canaan with plagues too. But there’s a small detail here which is also interesting. The person coming to the priest doesn’t report that his house has an affliction [nega], but that “Something like an affliction [kenega] has been seen by me on the house”. There’s an element of uncertainty in describing the problem. Why doesn’t the owner simply say that the house has been affected? The different commentators give around seven or eight different answers to this question (and this itself is a quintessentially Jewish act, writing hundreds of pages to explain the meaning of one letter in the Torah!) Some say that one shouldn’t speak explicitly about bad events that happen to us. Others say that one shouldn’t criticise the land of Israel directly, only indirectly. Others point out that only the priests have the right to declare impurity, and that saying ‘Something like an affliction’ is both a sign of respect to the authority of the priest, and a precise description of reality, since until the declaration of the priest the impure affliction doesn’t really exist. Rashi says
כנגע נראה לי בבית. שֶׁאֲפִלּוּ הוּא חָכָם וְיוֹדֵעַ שֶׁהוּא נֶגַע וַדַּאי, לֹא יִפְסֹק דָּבָר בָּרוּר לוֹמַר "נֶגַע נִרְאָה לִי", אֶלָּא "כְּנֶגַע נִרְאָה לִי":
Even if the owner of the house be a learned person and knows for sure that it is a plague, they shall not decide the matter as a certainty saying, "a plague hath shown itself to me" but, “something like a plague hath shown itself to me".
Elsewhere, this comment of Rashi is connected to the language of Moses in announcing the tenth plague - he says (Exodus 11:4) “Around midnight [kachatzot halayla] God will strike Egypt”. Why doesn’t he say ‘at midnight’? God should be precise, no? But it seems that people shouldn’t. The Talmud [Berachot 4a] learns from the way that Moses expresses himself, adding uncertainty to the timing, that a rabbi or a teacher should ‘teach their tongues to say ‘I don’t know!” Because who knows anything?
(I think of last Saturday night, when Israelis learned that hundreds of missiles were heading their way from Iran. The media reported: “In about six hours, they’ll arrive”. Everyone was certain that something big was going to happen, but uncertain about the details: when will they land? will they land? will it be a tragedy? will our army manage? do we still have allies in the world? And even now, in trying to understand the next step of this awful war, the political commentators are flooding us with opinions when maybe they should teach their tongues to say I don’t know.)
There are two mitzvot related to the liberation from slavery. One is zecher yetziat mitzraim, remembering the exodus from Egypt, and this is done every day at the end of the recital of the Shema. The other is Sippur yetziat mitzraim, recounting the story of leaving Egypt, which is done once a year at the Pesach seder. One of the differences between ‘remembering’ and ‘recounting’ is that the latter requires a dialogue in the form of questions and answers. Those who chant ‘Mah Nishtanah’ from the book as if it’s a prayer or a lullaby have probably not done enough; children and adults should be encouraged to ask real questions. Even someone doing the seder on their own needs to ask questions to themselves and answer them. We saw before that Rashi says that even a wise person should say ‘something like an affliction’, in order to engage in dialogue with the priest. We have almost the same phrase in the Haggadah, telling us that even wise scholars who think they know everything about the story need to ask each other questions and answer them.
וַאֲפִילוּ כֻּלָּנוּ חֲכָמִים כֻּלָּנוּ נְבוֹנִים כֻּלָּנוּ זְקֵנִים כֻּלָּנוּ יוֹדְעִים אֶת הַתּוֹרָה מִצְוָה עָלֵינוּ לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרָיִם. וְכָל הַמַּרְבֶּה לְסַפֵּר בִּיצִיאַת מִצְרַיִם הֲרֵי זֶה מְשֻׁבָּח.
And even if we were all sages, all discerning, all elders, all knowledgeable about the Torah, it would be a commandment upon us to tell the story of the exodus from Egypt. And anyone who adds and spends extra time in telling the story of the exodus from Egypt, behold he or she is praiseworthy.
A famous midrash, included in the Haggadah, speaks of four kinds of personalities, or four children, who ask questions: a wise child who concentrates on the details, a rebellious child who challenges identity boundaries, a simple child who goes straight to the essence, and a child who does not know how to ask. For me, this year, the most confusing is the last one. I’ve never met a child who does not know how to ask. Maybe very young babies — but even my one-year old daughter is able to interrogate us in some way, and as for my four-year old, every second sentence begins with ‘Why?’ As a response, it’s very good to answer ‘I don’t know’ sometimes. But are there really people who don’t know how to ask anything? It seems to me much more likely that there are people who don’t know how to listen, and don’t allow the questions to be expressed.
In these weeks leading up to Pesach, I’ve received dozens of questions from adults and children, from Jews and non-Jews, in Paris and from around the world. Sometimes I had to say ‘I don’t know’, and sometimes I had to learn (what exactly happens in the self-clean cycle of an electronic blender? how is white vinegar produced in France, and at what concentration does it become inedible?). Sometimes I tried to be intentionally imprecise, knowing that different contexts of peoples lives required different adaptations of the halacha, and trusting that the halacha is flexible enough to be authentic in multiple manifestations. But what I didn’t do so well is to listen to those who weren’t asking me questions, perhaps because I wasn’t listening well enough, perhaps because I wasn’t accessible, perhaps because rabbis make it seem that one needs to be wise in order to say what’s on their heart. I don’t think that’s true, but I probably didn’t show it enough.
I want to dedicate this upcoming festival of Pesach to not knowing more than to knowing, to encouraging questions and for making space for them, to listen to the one who isn’t asking, and to acknowledge the uncertainty of our world to those who do ask. We need to celebrate what we have and acknowledge all the goodness that we have been blessed with: our external and internal liberty, and our health and possessions and our security. We know how fragile all of these are, and that’s precisely why we celebrate them so dearly.
Shabbat shalom, and chag sameach!