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April 22, 2022 (21 Nisan 5782) Passing Over with Compassion Dear Friends, I hope this correspondence finds you doing well and enjoying a wonderful Pesach holiday, following meaningful Seders filled with plenty of Matzah, Marror, Charoset and Wine. Please join us this Friday and Saturday at 10:30am in the sanctuary as we conclude the festival and offer our Yizkor prayers. As always, the services will be broadcast simultaneously over Zoom. We also invite you to join us for our Yom HaShoah commemoration on Wednesday, April 27 at 7:00pm, at which time we will be joined with world-renowned Holocaust researcher, Alan Brauner. In exploring the “issues of the day,” I want to take a moment to reflect on the meaning of the Hebrew word “Pesach,” specifically, the origin of the name of Pesach, which we also call “Passover.” Pesach first appears in the Bible in Exodus 12, where Moses tells the Israelite slaves to sacrifice a lamb and mark their homes with its blood, so they will not be harmed by a plague that kills Egypt’s first-born. “For when the Lord goes through to smite the Egyptians, He will see the blood on the lintel and the two doorposts, and the Lord will pasach on the door and not let the Destroyer enter and smite your home.” The people are then commanded to keep the observance throughout the generations, “and You shall say to your children, ‘It is the Pesach sacrifice to the Lord, because He pasach on the houses of the Israelites in Egypt when He smote the Egyptians but saved our houses.’” In these contexts, it is easy to see why Saint Jerome, who in the fifth century translated the Bible into Latin, suggested that the verb pasach, means “to passover.” Nonetheless, centuries earlier, Onkelus, who translated the Bible into Aramaic, suggested that the term has a different meaning altogether. Onkelus wrote, “God will appear to strike the Egyptians, and He will see the blood upon the lintel and upon the door posts, and God will be compassionate on your threshold and not permit the destruction to enter your houses to smite.” The same idea is reflected in the commentary of Rashi, the most influential Jewish biblical commentator, who translates God’s conduct of “u’Pasach,” in Exodus 12:23, as “will have compassion.” Other Jewish intellects of history, who also reflect this tradition, include Mekhilta d’Rabbi Yishmael, Rabbi Saadia Gaon, and famed biblical grammarians Ibn Janah and Menahem ben Saruk. Significantly, this less well-known translation also pivots God from being passive to active in His interactions with our ancestors. Rather than simply “passing over” (an act of omission), this interpretation allows us to read the holiday of Pesach as an active sign of Hashem’s devotion to the People, offering to each household Divine compassion and love. As we head into the final days of the holiday, I pray that we all will find both old and new meanings in our tradition and that our families, friends, and our holy congregation will experience the glory of God’s compassion and love. Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach, Rabbi Eric Wasser, EdD, Hon.DM
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