Parashat Bo 5784
20 years old is a strange time to live with a Kabbalist. But there I was, a college Junior, living in the Old City with Sarah Yehudit Schneider, author of many books including the famous (in my circles) Kabbalistic Nature of Masculine and Feminine. As I was searching for a place to live before heading to Israel for my year abroad, someone at my shul in Boulder, CO put me in contact with SY (as I now call her), who has an extra room in her airy, Jerusalem Stone apartment on Rechov Chabad in the Old City. At the same time, while I was waiting for a response to the introductory email, I went onto Craigslist (for context, this was 2007) and searched there for housing. I responded to a post for a room in the old city, not knowing that all roads led to SY.
I thought of this two weeks ago, when I was walking up the path to Zion gate to SY’s apartment, my feet on the slippery Jerusalem stone that I had thought about at least daily for the last three months. Longing to be there, to touch the land, to breathe the air, to hug the people.
As some of you know, and I will be giving a more full debrief this coming Tuesday evening, I was there on a mission trip with other Associate Rabbis and synagogue educators. We were there to help with agriculture, see the destruction from 10/7, and to meet with people on the ground–Israeli intelligence officers, pilots, Arab-Israeli coalition groups, activist groups like Standing Together, and so much more.
But, on the Shabbat before, I wandered up to SY’s place for Seudat Shlishit and learning, desperate for some piece of Torah that I could hold onto as I ventured into this trip.
It was a small, throwaway comment, a little Kabbalistic letter jumbling from the Tanya that carried me through my trip. The Tanya, written by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi (the founder of Chabad) says that Chochma, the word for wisdom, is made up of two words: koach and ma. Strength and What.
True wisdom, he writes and SY shared, is the power to ask a question, the power to be in the unknown, the power to admit your not-knowing. As I embarked on my journey, I brought this Torah with me. What would it mean for me, for us, to truly admit my not knowing? In what ways could that be the wisest thing? Perhaps wisdom is the ability to stay open, to keep our hearts flexible and curious towards one another and the world.
In this week’s Parsha Bo, the last three of ten plagues befall Egypt. After the horror of the final plague, the death of the firstborn, Pharoah’s resistance has worn, and he tells the Jewish people to leave. In this liminal space before their departure, G!d instructs the Israelites in mitzvot, structured ways to connect to G!d during this scary time. Included in the mitzvot that are given is sacrificing a lamb and putting its blood on their doorposts.
The Sfat Emet writes so beautifully: “The Exodus from Egypt was only the beginning, the time when they came out from under Pharaoh’s hand...this is hinted at in the smearing of blood on the lintel and the doorposts: so that they know this is only the beginning.”
There is nothing that symbolizes both life and death as much as blood.
When reading of blood, it’s hard for me not to think of the blood that I saw in Sderot, still freshly stained on the pavement and the outer wall of the bomb shelter by the police station. Blood of elders who were brutally murdered there, merely three months ago, their blood still visible to our eyes, the feeling of their unjust death in the air all around us.
In some ways this blood, like all blood, and like the blood on the doorpost, symbolizes an enormous transition for our people. Similar to our parsha, we do not know where we are headed, what comes next. But, we know that we will never be the same as we were before this blood was spilled.
In times of liminality, of change, of not knowing where we are going, how can we keep our hearts wise in the way the Tanya defines wisdom, strong in our questioning, in our curiosity, in our awareness of how much we do not know?
May we be blessed with the strength to lean into the questions, letting the place of not-knowing bring us towards greater truth, justice, and peace.
Shabbat Shalom.
