Sermon for Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach
Written by Rabbi Colin Eimer — 17 April 2020
Many years ago, Rabbi Hugo Gryn z”l showed me a wonderful Haggadah called the ‘Polychrome Historical Haggadah.’ The text is printed in different colours, each colour corresponding to the period when it came into the Haggadah: text from the Bible is in Black; from the Mishnah, Red; Gemara, Orange and so on, through to the 1970s. It gives a real sense of how the Haggadah has built up piecemeal over the centuries.
I’m holding up the page from the Polychrome Haggadah with ha lachma anya and the mah nishtanah. It’s not very clear but the 4th question is in orange, not the red of the first 3. The Mah Nishtanah comes from the Mishnah (Pesachim 10:4) But the original 4th question was not about sitting or leaning, as in today’s haggadah, but about whether we should eat boiled or roast meat at the Seder
So, too, the section about opening the door for Elijah’s Cup. The first reference to this custom is in an 18thC commentary to the Shulchan Aruch by a Czech-born rabbi, Jacob Reischer. He says “in these regions (meaning central Europe) it’s customary to pour out a cup for Elijah.” This is done, he says, in accordance with a Talmudic statement that just as the Israelites were redeemed in the month of Nisan, so the Messianic redemption will be in Nisan. (Rosh Hashanah 11b) For Reischer, then, the cup represents Messianic hope.
A generation later, the Vilna Gaon explains that we pour five cups but only drink four because of a disagreement about how many cups we should drink.
In rabbinic tradition, when the rabbis reached a moot point in an argument – ie one they couldn’t resolve – they called it teyku: an acronym of Tishbi yetareitz kashiyot u’ba’ayot meaning, “Tishbi (one of the names for Elijah) will resolve questions and problems.” It’s a way of putting an argument on hold, preventing it rumbling on and on. Given the apparent Jewish predilection for a good broygess, rolling on over the generations, I’m surprised teyku wasn’t utilised more!…. So this 5th cup became “Elijah’s Cup” – the one Elijah will tell us if we should or shouldn’t have been drinking from at the Seder.
But just what was the dispute? The Mishnah tells us we should drink no less than four – more if we want, but more is not a requirement. (Pesachim 10.7) But one rabbi, Tarfon, argued for an obligatory 5th cup. You might remember Tarfon from the Haggadah: he was one of those 5 rabbis at the all-night Seder in Bnei Berak, who had to be reminded by their students that it was time for the morning shema.
We fill and drink 4 cups for the four promises of redemption made by God to Moses at the Burning Bush: “I will bring you out, I will deliver you, I will redeem you, I will take you to Me for a people.” (Exodus 6:6-7) So why did Tarfon argue for a 5th cup? Because the next verse has a fifth promise: “I will bring you to the promised land.” (Exodus 6:8) Tarfon might have been in a minority of one, but he was influential, so they couldn’t just ignore him. They arrived at a compromise: fill 5 cups, but only drink 4 – and, teyku, when Elijah comes, we’ll find out how many we should really have been drinking.
But what was the real argument? At a time like Pesach, it can’t surely be a bad thing even to over-celebrate liberation? Tarfon’s colleagues must have wanted that final, ultimate liberation just as much as he. So what were they really arguing about?
One of the oldest rules of the Seder is matchil b’ganut u’m’sayeim b’shevach “our story should begin with shame but end with praise.” (Pesachim 10:4) Here, too, there was an unresolved difference of opinion about what the shame was. Some saw the shame as that of the physical enslavement. What could be more shameful than that? Therefore we say, avadim hayyinu l’faro b’mitzraim “we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt.” But ‘shame’ might have little to do with an external oppressor. To be truly free, physical freedom is only the first stage. You can remain enslaved in your mind to human, limited values: money, power, sex, addictions and so on. You might be physically free, but you’re still not free, free to make sensible and rational choices. And in Jewish terms, such a person is no less enslaved than the physically enslaved. Hence we also say mitchilah ovdai cochavim hayu avoteinu “originally our ancestors were idol worshippers.”
Two forms of enslavement; two forms of freedom. It’s reflected in that marvellous statement about it having been easy to get the Jews out of Egypt – but much more difficult to than to get Egypt out of the Jews. We can free our bodies from external oppression – but it’s much harder to free our minds of self-imposed ‘slaveries.’
So this dispute was not over some obscure point of Jewish law but actually about one of the core questions of Pesach: what do we need to be truly free? No doubt a question many of us have been asking during these weeks of lockdown – just what does ‘freedom’ mean in these circumstances?
To fill and drink those 5 cups would imply that Elijah has come – not the Elijah who will resolve all moot points – but the Elijah telling us that messianic redemption is just around the corner. But how can we drink that fifth cup when the world is so patently and clearly not redeemed?
You switch on the news and, not surprisingly, there’s little but Covid-related reportage. I reflected with Dee a couple of days ago that no doubt the killing is still going on in Yemen, Syria has become very quiet; who knows what is going on in all the trouble points which filled our news bulletins just a few weeks ago? Only adverts on TV for Water Aid and the like which remind us that millions out there are suffering in appalling ways and that when the Corona pandemic is over, they will probably still be dying.
So we needed that 5th cup at our seder tables; and the real shame and degradation would have been if we were not to have it there at all. Because then we might be celebrating our freedom, our liberation but forget how many are yearning for some, any liberation.
That 5th Cup reminds us of the gap between where we are now and where we need to be in order to able to drink from it. Only then, only when we have closed that gap, will we have earned the right, the privilege, even, to drink from it.
Bimheyrah b’yameinu! May that moment come speedily in ou