April 8th: Pesach
THIS WEEK IN THE TORAH
Rabbi David E. Ostrich
As we pray through the Haggadah this week, many of us will greet the familiar passage about Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah and how he learned something new in his old age. “Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah said, "Behold I am like a man of seventy years, and I have never understood why the story of the Exodus from Egypt should be told at night until Ben Zoma explicated it. He quotes Deuteronomy 16:3, 'In order that you remember the day of your going out from the land of Egypt all the days of your life,' and explains as follows. If the Torah would have said merely 'the days of your life,' then we could conclude that the story should be told only in the daytime. However, the fact that the Torah says, 'all the days of your life' indicates that we should tell the story during the nights as well.”
Though the main point is about when we should tell the story of Yetzi’at Mitzrayim / the Exodus from Egypt, I want to focus on Rabbi Elazar’s surprise at learning something new. He was the head rabbi of his generation—learned and insightful and powerful—and might have figured he knew everything. However, Ben Zoma’s deduction from a well-known text was something completely new, and Rabbi Elazar’s surprise learning can be an example for us all. Even in often repeated texts, we may see something we did not notice before, or hear a different perspective, or have had recent experiences that render us more responsive or aware.
This was certainly my experience a few weeks ago in Israel. We were visiting Herodian, a man-made hill just outside of Bethlehem. The site was originally a summer palace for King Herod, but, late in life, he decided to cover the palace with dirt and have his tomb built there. The tomb itself was also buried, and the whole complex lay hidden for centuries—until recent decades of archeological excavations. It is a wonderful and eye-opening place for tourists to visit.
However, there were some surprises. Some 130 years after Herod’s 4 BCE interment, the abandoned and buried palace complex was used as a hide-out by Jewish rebels in the Bar Kochba Rebellion (132-136 CE). Though all covered by dirt, inside was a warren of service tunnels, water cisterns, and drainage tunnels in addition to the various living and gathering spaces of the palace. From this secret lair, the rebels could mount their attacks and find refuge afterwards.
Here is where a well-known Seder passage comes in. “While observing the Seder at B’nai B’rak, five ancient rabbis lingered all night long. Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon were so intent on celebrating and discussing the story of the Exodus from Egypt that they were still talking about it when the sun began to rise. Their students had to interrupt them with, “Rabbis, it is time to recite the morning Shema!”
I always figured that their scholastic and religious kavannah was so intense that they simply did not notice it getting light outside. However, our guide—quoting an insight of his study partner, wondered about their obliviousness. Did no one in the discussion see the dawn? Any veteran of “all-nighters” knows that, at some point, someone looks up and notices daybreak. What really happened?
The Tradition tells us that these five rabbis were among the leaders of the Bar Kochba Rebellion, and the commentary has always been that the “Exodus from Egypt” they were discussing was really plans for the Rebellion against Rome. Our guide’s friend’s theory is that these rabbis were hiding underground—perhaps in a place like Herodian—and literally could not see the sun rising. Guards up on the hilltop saw the dawn and descended into the hiding place where they interrupted the meeting with, “Rabbis, it is time to recite the morning Shema!”
As we were crawling through the narrow passages and learning about the rebels’ defensive strategies, another Talmudic passage came to light. This one is found in Sanhedrin 14a and Avodah Zarah 8b, but most know it from the Martyrology section on Yom Kippur afternoon. Despite the Roman prohibition of training and ordaining rabbis, Rabbi Judah ben Bava defied the order and ordained five into the rabbinate. When the Romans arrived to execute him and his students, he told the students to run away. He would stay and single-handedly stop the Romans. He said, “I am cast before them like a stone that cannot be overturned,” or, in other translations, “I will be like an immovable rock.”
How could one man stop the Roman soldiers? If the old rabbi and his students were in an underground hiding place like Herodian, here is what could have happened. The narrow, twisting, and dark tunnels would have been very difficult for the Roman soldiers to negotiate. They had their armor and weapons and a torch in one hand to see in the darkness, and they would have been forced to walk in single file. This meant that a single defender, hiding around a dark corner, could have easily taken out the lead soldier—whom the following soldiers would have to climb over. Then the defender could have easily taken out the next lead soldier and then the next and the next. Thus could the elderly Judah ben Bava have defended several narrow positions and let his students escape—even if eventually he were overcome.
Our religious texts usually focus on faith and courage, but our Tradition is also full of strategy and practicality—all necessary for our sacred survival.
Our generation is not the first to notice the repetitive nature of our holidays and holy texts, and remarks like that of Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah remind us to keep paying attention. There is also the advice of the ancient sage Ben Bag Bag: “Turn it over and over again, for everything is there (in the Torah). And look deeply into it; And become gray and old therein; And do not move away from it, for you have no better portion than it.” (Pirke Avot 5.22)
“Knowing” a story only means that we know some of what the story has to teach. Our Tradition is built of layers upon layers upon layers. Even when we know the story, there may be more for us to learn, more for us to appreciate, more for us to understand. The Buddhists say, “When you are ready to learn, a teacher will appear.” Perhaps we should say, “When you are ready to learn, an already-known story can reveal new truths we are finally ready to hear.”