HaChodesh – Those Were the Days

Boy, the way Glen Miller played,
Songs that made the hit parade,
Guys like us we had it made,
Those were the days,
And you knew where you were then,
Girls were girls and men were men,
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,
Didn’t need no welfare states
Everybody pulled his weight,
Gee our old Lasalle ran great,
Those were the days

Theme Song to ‘All in the Family’

I suffer from chronic nostalgia^[1], a condition defined in the dictionary as the “pleasure and sadness that is caused by remembering something from the past and wishing that you could experience it again.”  It is a sentimental and wistful feeling, with just enough heartache sprinkled in to add flavor.[2]

The older I get, the more nostalgic I become.  At the office (or in the car), I listen to the music that I heard on the AM dial in the 60s and 70s.  Late at night, when the house is quiet except for creaking floorboards and my bones, I watch reruns of the reruns I watched when I was a little boy.  I even buy toys and games for my grandchildren that gave me joy when I was a kid in Brooklyn.  And I tell lots of stories of the good old days.  Ed Koch once said that “the good old days weren’t so good.”  He was right, of course.  But he was also very wrong.

The problem with nostalgia – indeed, the problem with memory itself – is that is horribly inaccurate.  This phenomenon is part of the human condition; it is hardwired into our brains, and it is integral to our emotional wellbeing.  I’ve long suspected that this biological defect is a great gift from God in disguise.  We have the enormous capacity to rewrite the past to meet our present needs.

What is true for the individual is equally true for our community.  That is why, in part, our prophets looked back wistfully before pivoting forward hopefully.  And that is why the selected verses from chapters 45 and 46 of Yechezkel was such a bold choice for the special haftorah of Shabbat HaChodesh.

Dwelling in exile, Yechezkel asks his brethren to look ahead to redemption, when the Beit HaMikdash will be rebuilt, and the sacrifices will be restored:

On the fourteenth day of the first month you shall have the Passover sacrifice; and during a festival of seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten.	בָּ֠רִאשׁ֠וֹן בְּאַרְבָּעָ֨ה עָשָׂ֥ר יוֹם֙ לַחֹ֔דֶשׁ יִהְיֶ֥ה לָכֶ֖ם הַפָּ֑סַח חָ֕ג שְׁבֻע֣וֹת יָמִ֔ים מַצּ֖וֹת יֵאָכֵֽל׃
On that day, the prince shall provide a bull of sin offering on behalf of himself and of the entire population.	וְעָשָׂ֤ה הַנָּשִׂיא֙ בַּיּ֣וֹם הַה֔וּא בַּעֲד֕וֹ וּבְעַ֖ד כׇּל־עַ֣ם הָאָ֑רֶץ פַּ֖ר חַטָּֽאת׃

This selection from Yechezkel which relates to Passover is obviously appropriate as we prepare to usher in the month of Nissan.  But such a superficial and literal connection alone misses the far more subtle and intriguing lesson contained in this prophesy.

Unlike some of the other books in Navi, Sefer Yechezkel is not autobiographical.  Yechezkel lived and prophesized in exile.  Years later, when the Jews returned to their homeland, the “Men of the Great Assembly” gathered Yechezkel’s wisdom together and organized his prophesies of into the book that we recognize today.^[3]

But its canonization was not without controversy.  Rashi makes a startling admission on the verse cited above:

Our Rabbis said that they sought to suppress the Book of Ezekiel for his words contradicted the words of the Torah.  Indeed, Hananiah the son of Hezekiah the son of Gurion is remembered for good, for he sat in his attic and expounded on it.	רבותינו אמרו שבקשו לגנוז ספר יחזקאל שהיו דבריו סותרין דברי תורה ברם זכור חנניה בן חזקיהו בן גרון לטוב שישב בעלייה ודרשו
But because of our iniquities, what he expounded on these sacrifices – why a bull is brought on the fourteenth day of Nissan – has been lost to us.	ובעונינו ממנו נעלם מה שדרש בקרבנות האלה פר בארבעה עשר בניסן למה

The comment reflects Chazal’s discomfort with Yechezel whose prophesies seem differ from the Passover rituals and sacrifices that are explicitly commanded in the Torah.  The initial inclination of the Sages was to suppress such apparent heresy.

Rashi’s comment is drawn from two similar anecdotes in the Talmud.  In Chagigah 13a, Rabbi Yehuda relates that Hezekiah “brought up to him three hundred barrels of oil (for light and sustenance), and he sat in an upper chamber and expounded it until he could reconcile Yechezkel’s teachings with those of the Torah”. That is where the story ends.

Incredibly, Hezkiah’s brilliant epiphanies are not preserved for us!  There once was an answer that satisfied the scholars; we just don’t remember it.  The Talmud is teaching us that even if we no longer have the solution to the mystery that stumped our Sages, we should be satisfied that once-upon-a-time the verses were reconciled.

This is simultaneously comforting and frustrating.  In the ‘good old days’, the Rabbis had the key to understanding the prophesy.  Alas, that window was closed but it can be reopened.  In other words, it is nostalgia at its finest.

The anecdote in Menachot 45a includes some details that are omitted in the parallel text of Chagigah.  Before jumping into the story of Hezekiah’s seclusion in the attic, the Talmud there tries to satisfy us with this ditty:

Rabbi Yoḥanan says: This passage is indeed difficult, and in the future Elijah the prophet will interpret it.

א”ר יוחנן פרשה זו אליהו עתיד לדורשה

Eliyahu HaNavi is not just an invited guest at our Seder who sneaks in and out unobtrusively.  He is not just a Paul Revere figure who will one day proclaim the coming of Mashiach.  He is the Adjudicator-in-Chief of all halachic matters; he is the Explainer Par Excellence of all secrets hitherto unknown.

Rabbi Yoḥanan was not particularly concerned with his inability to make sense of the difficulties in Yechezkel’s prophesies.  He humbly accepts the limits of his knowledge and insight.  In accepting his own limitations, Rabbi Yoḥanan is challenging us to also accept the boundaries of our knowledge and insight.

Of course, it’s not easy to accept the unknown with grace.  Asking us to wait for Eliyahu to explain it in the future is no more fulfilling to our inherent sense of curiosity than a seven-year-old is satisfied when his father says: “you’ll understand when you are older.”

Both Talmudic sections focus on the tenacity of Hezekiah, who locked himself in his attack until inspiration struck.  And both Talmudic sections decline to let us in on Hezekiah’s resolution.  This, I offer, is precisely why Yechezel’s mysterious and problematic prophesy is plucked out of his long book and read on the Shabbos preceding Rosh Chodesh Nissan.^[4]

The Sages were admittedly uncomfortable with what, on the surface, looks like Yechezkel’s radical departure for Torah law.  They even pondered whether to reject the Prophet – and God’s messages with it – for the sake of conformity.  They seriously debated whether “ignorance is bliss”.  Ultimately, however, they choose to keep it even as they struggled mightily with the text.  Moreover, by not transmitting their solution to us, they invited us to struggle with the Torah as well.

Confronting personal and national history often requires us to come to terms with ‘the good old days’, when the truth of yesterday can be obscured by the fog of today’s experiences.  That is why the Sages of the Talmud instructed us to tell the story of Passover, warts and all, beginning with our degradation and culminating with God’s redemption.  That is also why debates about the meaning of certain sections of the Haggadah are proudly preserved and read aloud at the Seder.

At the Seder, our children struggle to understand the meaning of yesterday’s Passover and the rites and rituals of the night.  They ask:

“What are the testimonies, the statutes, and laws which the Lord our God has commanded you?”	מָה הָעֵדֹת וְהַחֻקִּים וְהַמִּשְׁפָּטִים, אֲשֶׁר צִוָּה ה אֱלֹקינוּ אֶתְכֶם?
“Whatever does this service mean to you?”	מָה הָעֲבֹדָה הַזֹּאת לָכֶם?
“What does this mean?”	מַה זֹּאת?

These are indeed difficult questions.  Each, child, in his/her own way, is asking the same question that our Sages asked concerning Yechezkel’s prophesy.  How do I make sense of it? How do I integrate yesterday’s memories into today’s experiences?

Looking at the Seder through this lens, it’s worth considering anew the BIG, mostly unanswered question that we pose at the very beginning of the Seder. מַה נִּשְׁתַּנָּה הַלַּֽיְלָה הַזֶּה מִכָּל הַלֵּילוֹת?. How is this night different?

The answer may be as simple as this:  The Seder night should not be all that different from every other night! Sure, we eat different foods and in a different manner.  OK, we sing songs and tell stories and recite Hallel.  We drink wine and we focus on the hardships of slavery and the glory of the exodus.

But truth be told, all of our days and nights should be filled with singing the songs of our youth and remembering the stories of our past, even if we do so imperfectly. After all, just because we sometimes butcher the lyrics does not mean that we shouldn’t sing the songs aloud.  Nor does our imperfect memory make the poetry of the lyrics any less beautiful and inspiring.

If this night is different, perhaps it is only because we don’t try hard enough to make next week’s nights as meaningful as they ought to be.

 

 

 

[1] Pronounced /näˈstaljə/

[2] Swiss physician Johannes Hofer coined the term in his 1688 medical dissertation, from the Greek nostos, or homecoming, and algos, or pain.

[3] See, TB Bava Batra 15(a), אַנְשֵׁי כְּנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה כָּתְבוּ יְחֶזְקֵאל.

[4] Or, on Rosh Chodesh Nissan itself, as it is this year.