Welcome back, precious students, it has been nearly four weeks since we were all together with Journeys and Pesach Break.
As I sat in shul this week for the last day of Pesach my mind wandered during the
festival Torah reading. My mind was
thinking ahead to the end of Pesach that night when I would be able to eat real
pizza or have a real slice of cake, but the words of Torah startled me.
During the Torah reading
for the last day of Pesach there is an unusual mitzvah (commandment/divine
exhortation) saying “Seven days you are to eat matzah – the poor bread – as
you left Egypt in a rush – le’ma’an tizkor – in order that you remember the day
of your Exodus from Egypt all the days of your life.” (Devarim 16:3.)
A commandment to remember
the Exodus, really?!? Weren’t these the
same people who actually were liberated from slavery and rescued by the parting
of the Sea? They needed a commandment to
remember? How could they have forgotten?
Think about our own
lives – how easy it is to forget.
So here comes a mitzvah of
remembrance precisely because we forget too easily. Then, as my colleague
Salomon Gruenwald asks, "I wondered whether we are supposed to remember the
bitterness of slavery or the sweetness of freedom." The Torah is ambiguous here.
Like Salomon, I believe the
answer is “both.” We are to remember both the bitter and the sweet. Some of us are inclined only to remember
sweet moments – others only bitter ones.
It is how some of us are wired.
Torah comes to remind us
that a full life, a meaningful life, is filled with some of each – not all
bitter and not all sweet. On the last day of Pesach,
Torah is reminding us to take it all in, carry forward each of our memories,
don’t discard them.
Isn’t that why during the
Seder we eat Matzah, bitter herb and sweet charoset all together because our
lives are blended? The two transform
each other. The bitter is tempered by
the taste of something sweet. We are
able to appreciate the sweetness more powerfully when there is something bitter
with which to contrast it.
So, precious students, as
we enter the fourth quarter of the year. Take a moment to think back over the
last few weeks since we all sat together.
Take a moment to remember
something from your Pesach or your break that caught you up short, that stung
or hurt. Maybe it was a conversation you regret, a gesture you wish you could
take back, an opportunity you let pass.
Reflect on the lesson you can learn from it going forward.
Now take a moment to
remember something from your Pesach or your break that was sweet – maybe it was
a relationship renewed, or a risk you were brave enough to take, or an
accomplishment that makes you smile.
Reflect on the lesson you can learn from that going forward.
Follow the lesson of the
Pesach Torah reading – remember, don’t forget, remember the bitter with the
sweet, use it all in the days and weeks ahead.
May you have a wonderful
quarter – filled with lessons from moments that are bitter and delight from
those that are sweet.
As the satirical online magazine "The Onion" mock reported, Maryland resident
James Alderman said "Seriously, can we wrap this up already? Because,
you know, I'm pretty sure we've all had our hearts ripped out of our chests and
stomped on enough times for one seven-day period, thank you very
much." 
