Deep Church

Put yourself in the story of Passover

2011-04-19T05:36:00.001-07:00

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Put Yourself in the Story of Passover

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Published: April 17, 2011

Though only read once or twice a year, it has probably had more wine spilled on it than any other book ever published. Over the centuries, it has been paraphrased, abridged, translated, transliterated and transformed. It has been sung, chanted, illustrated and supplanted. And in 5,000 or so editions since the invention of the printing press, it has invoked ancient Egypt, Eldridge Cleaver, third-century rabbis, the invention of the sandwich, sixth-century Palestinian poetry, the Holocaust, the ancient Greek symposium, unleavened bread, homosexuality, temple sacrifices, bitter herbs, the civil rights movement and children’s counting songs.

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Library of Congress and Harvard University Press, 2011

A page from the Washington Haggadah, with the song “Dayenu” and an informal scene. More Photos »

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As Jews begin the celebration of Passover on Monday with the ceremonial Seder meal — and according to a recent survey, 79 percent of American Jews observe this occasion — the Aramaic and Hebrew text known as the Haggadah will be their guide.

It was compiled not for communal worship but for the home, and despite its variants, its basic structure has remained relatively unchanged since the 13th century. Using Talmudic excerpts, biblical citations, songs, liturgical prayers and folk material, it commemorates the liberation of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt.

It began to coalesce in the centuries after the destruction of Jerusalem’s temple by the Romans in A.D. 70, becoming a freestanding book in perhaps the 13th century. In recent decades, the Haggadah has also been used as a mold into which celebrants have inserted their own tales of liberation, generalizing Passover’s preoccupations and giving the book almost as much metaphorical reach as the Exodus itself.

The Haggadah, though, is so peculiar a text that it may be both less than is usually thought and also much more. Strangeness is part of its power. To make any sense of it, one must first see just how strange it really is.

Consider a Haggadah manuscript from 1478 on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through June 26. It is part of the extensive collection of Hebrew manuscripts at the Library of Congress, which is why it has become known as the Washington Haggadah. Signed by the scribe Joel ben Simeon, who worked in Italy and Germany, it is open to a single set of pages, which will be turned at the beginning of each month. Harvard University Press has published a facsimile along with a fine introduction (and translation) by David Stern and a survey of ben Simeon’s use of imagery by Katrin Kogman-Appel.

In addition, Abrams has just published a version of the Haggadah with 20th-century illustrations by the Polish artist Arthur Szyk, who created it in the mid-1930s, in the shadow of Nazism.

Let’s begin with ben Simeon’s. Before printing, such manuscripts were commissioned by wealthy families. Here the patron is unnamed and the illustrations are sparse, but the effect is remarkable. The images in vivid tempera and gold on parchment have a seemingly naïve charm, as if they recorded the scribe’s personal associations with the text. We don’t see elaborate historical illustrations or ceremonial displays. Most images, set in the margins, are informal domestic scenes: a servant using bellows on a fire, a man pouring goblets of wine.

These are not calculated to inspire devotion. The page now open at the Met shows two finely dressed women working over a pan of broth; one, holding a cup of it aloft with a look of fear and disgust, hesitantly offers it to a man slowly turning a spit on which a rack of lamb is cooking over an open hearth. But he has no need of broth. He is drinking from a full goblet of bright red wine; he already seems a little dazed, his eyes half-closed. He is a vagabond, his green robe is in tatters and two goiters protrude from his neck: “an iconographic sign of deprivation,” Ms. Kogman-Appel explains.

The Haggadah includes a statement, “Let anyone who is hungry come and eat,” and it is considered an obligation to feed the poor and invite all to join in a Seder. Clearly something like that is happening here. But the artist is not idealizing the gesture. Without diminishing the text or the act of charity, he is insisting on the difficulty of both.

The illustration is placed on a page where a well-known Seder song, “Dayenu,” appears. (It translates as “It would have been sufficient.”) But the animal on the spit is clearly meant to illustrate the Paschal lamb, one of the Seder’s three central symbols. That subject isn’t reached until the last line of the next page. Is this a deliberate misplacement? Or is the illustration doubling as commentary on the song’s subject of sufficient assistance?

The illustrations of other central symbols are even more unsettling. Adjacent to a paragraph explaining the importance of matzo, ben Simeon shows a grim yellow chimp, shaking a tambourine that appears to be — a matzo!

Since these illustrations accompany rabbinical commentary, their invocations of the grotesque seem almost mischievous. But it happens repeatedly, as if the scribe were using his illustrative marginalia to show us something not about the text, but about the world within which its rituals are practiced. This is how we live, it seems to say, the context for our celebrations and aspirations.

The Met, probably inadvertently, makes this message even more compelling. The museum has selected medieval objects of daily life that seem to replicate those pictured in this Haggadah. These are not Judaica, but secular objects: goblets, pottery, pitchers, cloth. Here, slightly lopsided and flawed, is an early medieval glass goblet that resembles the one offered the vagrant. And mounted on the wall is a fragment of silk velvet made between 1500 and 1700 that seems to be taken from one of the two women’s shirts.

The effect is uncanny. These common objects of prosperous medieval life are precisely the ones that would have been used in a Jewish household that might have commissioned such a Haggadah. The book, we are reminded, is not an accompaniment to something otherworldly. The Seder involves drinking, singing, discussing — all in a world filled with imperfections.

This also seems aligned with the Haggadah’s specification that each person should look at the biblical story of liberation as a personal event: not just “you are there,” but what happened there is about you. This is also a source of freewheeling analogy. If biblical liberation and my experience coincide, then the Seder is not about just the departure from Egypt, it is about my own trials.

And in the Haggadah’s long history, such elaborations have been plentiful. A 1306 image of the parting of the Red Sea in the Harvard book portrays the pursuing Egyptians as metal-helmeted Germanic Crusaders, resembling the knights who, in the 12th century, had massacred entire communities of Jews in France and Germany.

Look, too, at the haunting illustrations Szyk (pronounced SHICK) created for his 1930s Haggadah in Lodz, Poland. Passover is meant to be celebratory. But Szyk’s medievalesque figures are stern, fierce. The only smile is on the face of a simpleton. The effect is unsettling. Everybody still seems to be enslaved in Egypt, as Szyk himself metaphorically was, though his British publisher asked him to delete overt references to the Nazis. (Once he came to the United States, they became his main subject in nationally published political caricatures.)

In such cases, the Haggadah is generalized to encompass medieval massacres and Fascism, episodes in the Jewish historical experience. Analogies have also gone much further, incorporating both political parody and polemic. As Michael Medved recalls inCommentary, Rabbi Arthur Waskow, whose Freedom Seder was published by Ramparts in 1969, took radical countercultural politics as an analogy, even treating the 1968 black urban riots as forms of celebration and liberation.

So how flexible is the Haggadah? Does it allow such analogies? Here is where its peculiarities insist otherwise. If the Haggadah were just retelling the Exodus story, then analogies would be limited only by political or religious tastes. But it does something very different.

It sets things up by giving a central role to children who, near the start of the Seder, ask formal questions about why this night is different from all others. But the answer is cryptic: “Because we were slaves.” And then we enter a whirlwind of rabbinic debate accompanied by song, prayer and ritual.

That miscellany from a millennium of traditions may be part of the answer. The Haggadah’s power lies not just in what is said, but in what is shown. The story is not the key; how we treat it is. The Exodus story is analyzed, debated, invoked in symbol and ritual. It is freewheeling, but also highly structured. (“Seder” means order.) Laws and limits are not overturned, but are inseparable from liberation.

And in all of this we are not transported to another time and place or some sacred realm. We are always right there, sitting at the table, in the ordinary world, trying to make sense of the past and its connection to the present, acknowledging boundaries — even welcoming them — while celebrating freedom. This is what is necessary, the Haggadah seems to say, if you wish to treat this story as if it is happening to you. The text shows how a particular people, over centuries, labored to recall, commemorate and praise, and wrestled over meanings and observances.

Liberation, the Haggadah seems to say, is not the only thing that is hard won; so are ritual and memory.

A version of this article appeared in print on April 18, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.

Demand structural changes that favor the reign of God

2011-03-24T13:30:00.001-07:00

"The church is obliged by its evangelical mission to demand structural changes that favor the reign of God and a more just and comradely way of life. Unjust social structures are the roots of all violence and disturbances. … Those who benefit from obsolete structures react selfishly to any kind of change."

- Archbishop Oscar Romero, November 1979. Today is the 31st anniversary of his martyrdom.

hat tip to Sojourners online

Yoda quotes...Deep Church?

2011-02-27T18:02:00.001-08:00

Yoda quotes from Wookiepedia:

Yoda's quotes from the movies Edit

Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom MenaceEdit

"Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

―Yoda — Listen (file info)^[src]

"Confer on you, the level of Jedi Knight, the Council does. But, agree with your taking this boy as your Padawan Learner… I do not."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

"Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you. Need that you do not. Agree with you, the Council does. Your apprentice young Skywalker will be."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the ClonesEdit

"Lost a planet, Master Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing... how embarrassing."

―Yoda^[src]

"Go to the center of the gravity's pull, and find your planet you will."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan^[src]

"Meditate on this, I will."

―Yoda^[src]

"Clear, your mind must be if you are to discover the real villains behind the plot."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan^[src]

"Pain. Suffering. Death, I feel. Something terrible has happened. Young Skywalker is in pain. Terrible pain."

―Yoda^[src]

"Around the survivors, a perimeter create!"

―Yoda^[src]

"Powerful you have become, Dooku. The dark side I sense in you."

―Yoda to Dooku^[src]

"Master Obi-Wan, not victory. The shroud of the dark side has fallen. Begun, the Clone War has!"

―Yoda^[src]

"Much to learn, you still have."

―Yoda to Dooku^[src]

Star Wars: Clone WarsEdit

"Like fire across the galaxy, the Clone Wars spread. In league with the wicked Count Dooku more and more planets slip. Upon the Jedi Knights falls the duty to lead the newly formed Army of the Republic."

―Yoda^[src]

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the SithEdit

"Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not. Miss them do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is."

―Yoda^[src]

"Careful you must be when sensing the future, Anakin. The fear of loss is a path to the dark side."

―Yoda to Anakin Skywalker^[src]

"Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

―Yoda to Anakin Skywalker^[src]

"Go, I will. Good relations with the Wookiees, I have."

―Yoda^[src]

"Too much under the sway of the Chancellor, he is. Much anger there is in him. Too much pride in his powers."

―Yoda^[src]

"If a special session of Congress there is, easier for us to enter the Jedi Temple it will be."

―Yoda^[src]

"If into the security recordings you go, only pain will you find."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

"Destroy the Sith, we must."

―Yoda^[src]

"To fight this Lord Sidious, strong enough, you are not."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

"Twisted by the dark side, young Skywalker has become."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

"The boy you trained, gone he is, consumed by Darth Vader."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

"I hear a new apprentice you have, Emperor. Or should I call you Darth Sidious?"

―Yoda to Palpatine^[src]

"At an end your rule is... and not short enough it was."

―Yoda to Palpatine^[src]

"Not if anything to say about it, I have!"

―Yoda^[src]

"Into exile I must go. Failed, I have."

―Yoda to Bail Organa^[src]

"If so powerful you are, why leave?"

―Yoda^[src]

"Faith in your new apprentice, misplaced may be. As is your faith in the dark side of the Force."

―Yoda^[src]

Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes BackEdit

Luke: "I feel like..."

Yoda: "Feel like what?"

―Luke Skywalker and Yoda^[src]

"Looking? Found someone you have I would say, mm?"

―Yoda^[src]

"Help you I can! Yes! Mm!"

―Yoda to Luke — Listen (file info)^[src]

"Awww, cannot get your ship out...eh-heheheh!"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"How you get so big, eating food of this kind?"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Mine! Or I will help you not!"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Mudhole? Slimy? My home this is!"

―Yoda to Luke — Listen (file info)^[src]

"Mine! Mine! Mine! MINE!!!"

―Yoda to R2-D2^[src]

"No, no no, stay and help you I will! Hehe! Find your friend, mm?"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Ohhh...Jedi Master! Yoda. You seek Yoda!"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try."

―Yoda to Luke — Listen (file info)^[src]

Luke: "I'm looking for a great warrior."

Yoda: "Wars not make one great."

―Luke Skywalker and Yoda^[src]

"Ready are you? What know you of ready? For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi. My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained! A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind. This one a long time have I watched. All his life has he looked away... to the future, to the horizon. Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph. Adventure. Heh. Excitement. Heh. A Jedi craves not these things. You are reckless!"

―Yoda — Listen (file info)^[src]

Yoda: "I cannot teach him. The boy has no patience."

Obi-Wan: "He will learn patience."

Yoda: "Hmm. Much anger in him, like his father."

Obi-Wan: "Was I any different, when you taught me?"

―Yoda and Obi-Wan Kenobi^[src]

Luke: "I won't fail you. I'm not afraid."

Yoda: "You will be. You will be."

―Luke Skywalker and Yoda^[src]

"Yes. A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. Consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

Luke: "Vader... Is the dark side stronger?"

Yoda: "No, no, no. Quicker, easier, more seductive."

Luke: "But how am I to know the good side from the bad?"

Yoda: "You will know... when you are calm, at peace, passive. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never for attack."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"So certain are you. Always with you it cannot be done. Hear you nothing that I say?"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

Luke: "I don't believe it..."

Yoda: "That is why you fail."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try."

―Yoda to Luke — Listen (file info)^[src]

"Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size do you?"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"And well you should not! For my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us... and binds us. Luminous beings are we, not this... [nudging Luke's arm] crude matter! You must feel the Force around you. Here, between you, me, the tree, the rock... everywhere! Even between the land and the ship."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Through the Force, things you will see. Other places. The future...the past...old friends long gone."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Hmm. Control, control. You must learn control."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Decide you must how to serve them best. If you leave now, help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered."

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"Strong is Vader. Mind what you have learned. Save you it can!"

―Yoda to Luke^[src]

"No. There is another."

―Yoda to Obi-Wan^[src]

Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the JediEdit

"When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good, you will not, hm?"

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker — Listen (file info)^[src]

"Strong am I with the Force, but not that strong. Twilight is upon me, and soon night must fall. That is the way of things... the way of the Force."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"No more training do you require. Already know you that which you need."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"No. Unfortunate that you rushed to face him... that incomplete was your training. Not ready for the burden were you."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"Remember, a Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware. Anger, fear, aggression. The dark side are they. Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"Your father he is."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"Luke...Luke...Do not...Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor, or suffer your father's fate, you will."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"Luke, when gone am I, the last of the Jedi will you be."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

"Luke, there is another... Sky...walker."

―Yoda to Luke Skywalker^[src]

Expanded Universe Edit

Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (novel)Edit

"Pity your new disciple I do; so lately an apprentice, so soon without a Master."

―Yoda^[src]

Star Wars: Battlefront IIEdit

"War does not make one great."

―Yoda^[src]

"Proud I am, to stand by Wookiees in their hour of need."

―Yoda^[src]

"Yoda I am, fight I will."

―Yoda^[src]

"Tired I am, rest I must."

―Yoda^[src]

ShatterpointEdit

"When all choices seem wrong, choose restraint."

―recalled by Mace Windu^[src]

"If no mistake have you made, yet losing you are ... a different game you should play."

―recalled by Mace Windu^[src]

Yoda: Dark RendezvousEdit

"A trial of being old is this: remembering which thing one has said into which young ears."

―Yoda^[src]

Yoda: "Think you I have never felt the touch of the dark? Know you what a soul so great as Yoda can make, in eight hundred years?"

Dooku: "Master?"

Yoda: "Many mistakes!"

―Yoda and Dooku^[src]

"Think you the relationship between Master and Padawan is only to help them? Oh, this is what we let them believe, yes! But when the day comes that even old Yoda does not learn something from his students-then truly, he shall be a teacher no more."

―Yoda^[src]

"On many long journeys have I gone. And waited, too, for others to return from journeys of their own. Some return; some are broken; some come back so different only their names remain."

―Yoda^[src]

"When you fall, apprentice, catch you I will."

―Yoda to Dooku^[src]

"Secret, shall I tell you? Grand Master of Jedi Order am I. Won this job in a raffle I did, think you? "How did you know, how did you know, Master Yoda?" Master Yoda knows these things. His job it is."

―Master Yoda to Scout^[src]

"Honor life by living, Padawan. Killing honors only death: only the dark side."

―Yoda^[src]

"To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night, Padawan: but choose!"

―Yoda to Whie Malreaux^[src]

"When you look at the dark side, careful you must be ... for the dark side looks back."

―Yoda^[src]

"You think Yoda stops teaching, just because his student does not want to hear? Yoda a teacher is. Yoda teaches like drunkards drink. Like killers kill."

―Yoda^[src]

"Humility endless is."

―Yoda^[src]

Labyrinth of EvilEdit

"A labyrinth of evil, this war has become."

―Yoda^[src]

"Sworn by oath to uphold you, we are."

―Yoda to Palpatine^[src]

"From the dark path, no returning there is. Forever, the direction of your life it dominates."

―Yoda^[src]

"To the Force, look for guidance. Accept what fate has placed before us."

―Yoda^[src]

Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of CorruptionEdit

"Yoda, you seek?"

―Yoda^[src]

"My ally is the Force"

―Yoda^[src]

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, VA - connect with us online!

2010-11-09T18:28:00.000-08:00

You can find Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, VA HERE or at www.emmanuelgreenwood.org and you can "subscribe" to our website on the lower right-hand corner of the site in order to get updates each time we post a news item.

You can also "fan" us HERE on Facebook. Become a fan of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, VA an Episcopal Church in the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia!

Come and visit us online, and then pay us a visit in Greenwood, VA, just 15 miles West of Charlottesville and 5 miles East of the Blue Ridge Parkway on RT 250.

~The Rev. Peter M. Carey, Associate Rector

Deep Church

Put yourself in the story of Passover

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Put Yourself in the Story of Passover

By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN

Published: April 17, 2011

Library of Congress and Harvard University Press, 2011

Multimedia

Blog

A version of this article appeared in print on April 18, 2011, on page C1 of the New York edition.

Demand structural changes that favor the reign of God

Yoda quotes...Deep Church?

Yoda's quotes from the moviesEdit

Expanded UniverseEdit

Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, VA - connect with us online!

Yoda's quotes from the movies Edit

Expanded Universe Edit