Passover: Universal lessons from the environment

The contrast could not be more stark. The joy of celebrating freedom this Passover juxtaposed with banners across Israel proclaiming, “We are all hostages until they are all returned.” 

The slogan speaks on different levels. Its overall message is the core Jewish value “kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh” (All the Jewish people are responsible for each other) (Talmud Shevuot 39a). In this case, we are accountable for the release of the hostages held in Gaza. 

Another Jewish value, found in the Haggada, also informs this orientation. Rabbi Nelly Altenburger points out that one of the goals of the Seder is “to see yourself and to be seen as coming out of Egypt.” Judaism demands not only the care of other Jews, but that their experience is also our experience, our care is not detached; we are informed by an empathetic theology. This outlook is extended to all of humanity through the addition of “ve’kol yoshvei tevel” (and all the world’s inhabitants) at the end of one version of kaddish. 

Finally, one can argue there is a psychological element to the phrase “We are all hostages,” as we are trapped by our outrage of the horror of what happened to and is still happening to the hostages. Returning to a different frame of mind is hard to contemplate. 

There is a debate within Judaism as to when the year should begin – in the fall with the month of Tishrei or now in the spring with the month of Nisan? Michelle Alperin points out, “Sometime between the Torah and the codification of the Mishna, the autumn new year gained ascendance, now transformed into a major celebration, and the Nisan new year was left as a marker of the months and festivals in the calendar year.” 

There are many explanations offered about this move. One is to shift our footing from the particular Jewish redemption story and celebration of Passover in Nisan to the more general and universal creation story of Tishrei. 

Thus we start the year in Tishrei with the more general and universal and then move to the more particular in Nisan. This follows the Jewish approach to move from the general to the particular – the Torah opens with the story of the creation of the universe, the world, and humanity and only then turns to the Jewish people. 

This same pattern is found in the wedding blessings, the Shevah Brachot, after a meal when we recite Birkat Hamazon as well as the order of the daily Jewish liturgy. Following the call to worship in the morning and evening services, we remind ourselves first of Creation and then the Jewish people’s relationship with God. 

Universal and eco-orientation: Recognizing our place in nature

Commenting on the Siddur/Jewish prayer book, Rabbi David Teutsch teaches that we begin those services with a recognition “of our place in nature.” That universal and eco-orientation precedes, and forms, the cornerstone of who we are, even before we turn to our particular Jewish personality. In both the morning and evening service, when we do turn to our Jewish identity we make reference to our redemption to freedom. 

As we focus this week on that defining moment in our history with the celebration of Passover, we are invited to ask, what is the message in framing that daily reminder of that event by invoking nature first? What is the connection between nature and freedom: are there lessons to be drawn?

Freedom, in this exploration, is understood as expressed through democratic political structures. Within that framework, as Franklin D. Roosevelt pointed out, lies four freedoms: the freedom of speech; the freedom to worship in one’s own way; the freedom from want (economic stability and fairness); and the freedom from fear. Roosevelt’s wife, Eleanor, incorporated them into the Preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

“Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people.” 

As democracies around the world face challenges, what instruction does our shared environment teach us about creating healthier and more vibrant democracies derived from a communal understanding of freedom?

Educator Sania Green-Reynolds explains, “Plants provide food and shelter for animals, while animals help disperse the seeds of the plants, allowing them to reproduce and spread. This symbiotic relationship helps both species survive and thrive.” Freedom, as manifested through democratic societies, thrives best within a social contract of mutual responsibility and communal aid. In the asymmetry of the sensational, we are bombarded with violent, intolerant, and non-collaborative images and stories. 

In his must-read book, Humankind: A Hopeful History, Rutger Bregman challenges that startling picture by showing through 200,000 years of human history that we are in fact wired for cooperation over competition. The collaborative mode is our touchpoint of that universal web we emanate from. It resides, as Abraham Joshua Heschel teaches, in the world of “music, poetry, religion – they all initiate in the soul’s encounter with an aspect of reality for which reason has no concepts and language has no names.” Moses was not only a political and religious leader; he was a poet.

Around the world there are political movements and parties created as a backlash to change. Accepting change can be challenging, but essential for democracies to ever improve themselves. Nature reminds us that change can be understood not as an end of something, but as part of an ongoing continuum. Holistic teacher Danielle Levy calls attention to that: “The trees can teach us about embracing change, as they are always shedding their skin. Letting go of the old layers to make room for new growth. The bark falls to the ground, and gets absorbed back into the Earth. Returning to the natural cycle of things. Nothing goes to waste in nature.”

In that light, we can understand change as a necessary part of evolution. Rav Kook insightfully wrote:

“The doctrine of evolution that is presently gaining acceptance in the world has a greater affinity with the secret teachings of the Kabbalah than all other philosophies. Evolution, which proceeds on a course of improvement, offers us the basis of optimism in the world. How can we despair when we realize that everything evolves and improves?”

In fact, change is the constant of the world and the universe. We think of the North Star as unmoving. Joni Mitchell sings, “I am as constant as a northern star.” However, because of the wobble of the Earth, different stars take turns being the northern star over a 25,000-year cycle. The star Kochab, was the northern star at the end of the First Temple period. Today it is Polaris in Ursa Minor/the Little Bear, and in 14,000 CE it will be Vega in Lyra. 

Related, the fear of change often dovetails with an opposition to diversity. Scientist Jonathan Foley elaborates, “Evolution has created a remarkable diversity of life, which is extremely resilient in the face of change. Nearly every flow of energy and matter, and practically every ecological niche, functional trait, and space is being used by something. And if one ecological link fails, others typically pick up the slack. Sadly, humans seem to ignore this lesson. We tend to build monocultures, especially in agriculture, with only one link; if that one fails, the whole system fails. We need to realize that diversity is essential to building strong, enduring, and sustainable systems.” 

As we have seen, nature models some of the essential elements needed for freedom to exist with democratic systems: cooperative interdependent relationships; the acceptance of and understanding of the importance of change, adaptation, evolution, and the celebration of diversity. Underlying all of this, as we examined above, is a universal foundation in how we pray and tell our stories. 

Passover – our particular celebration of freedom that we read about in the Torah, relive daily in our liturgy, and celebrate this week – appears in the Torah and the Siddur only after we first acknowledge a universal ancestry and bearings. 

Related, the motto of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies is “nature knows no borders.” Nature invites us to expand how we see ourselves. Israeli and Palestinian identities sit at the core of this conflict and are essential for both peoples, but they also can build barriers. Imagine if both peoples, not to exclude their particular Palestinian and Israeli identities, also embraced a broader and more expanded sense of being – a Middle Easterner. This present dark chapter between Israelis and Palestinians calls out for new ways to approach each other.

Rabbi Jack Cohen spoke out against the comparative mode, that “Us and Them” orientation, which too often builds walls between peoples, is the antithesis of a transcendent universal outlook. Such an outlook was never better expressed than by the Reverend Martin Luther King:

“All I’m saying is simply this: that all humankind is tied together; all life is interrelated, and we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be - this is the interrelated structure of reality.” 

The writer is a Reconstructionist rabbi emeritus of the Israel Congregation in Manchester Center, Vermont. He teaches at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura and at Bennington College.                                            