At the Confluence of Shabbat haGadol’s Expansiveness & the Narrowness of War
Shabbat HaGadol (Big/Expansive) is the Shabbat that precedes Passover. This year, as war will cast a shadow on our seder tables and the festival, can we lean into expansiveness?
This evening, we enter Shabbat haGadol, the Big/Enlarged Shabbat that precedes Passover. May we all experience an expansive renewing of spirit in this vast Shabbat, and pause before entering the week of Pesach. The seders that will be hosted throughout the diasporic Jewish world on Monday and Tuesday nights, and the festival week that follows, will certainly be diminished this year by a deep and aching sense of loss, sadness, pain, frustration, anger, fear, and existential angst as we continue to watch the events unfolding in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank and other parts of the Middle East.
From our seats, at a distance from the daily devastation this war unleashes on Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims, Christians, and Jews, we may watch in silent horror, turn away to protect our sense of equilibrium, or raise our voices in protest. Though we do not directly experience the trauma of this war, we likely are frayed, confused, and weary from the incessant media cycles of information and disinformation, political strategy and angry rhetoric. The pain of this is almost unbearable. And from a distance, so many of us see a clear right and wrong, good and evil, victim and terrorist, oppressed and oppressor.
This Pesach/Passover, we grieve the empty places at the tables of families whose loved ones were murdered on October 7th, and those who have been killed in the war that has followed. And we ache for those families who still don’t know if their empty chairs will one day hold a loved one who is still being held hostage, or if they will bury that loved one when this war finally ends. And we grieve the unimaginable numbers of Palestinians who have died since October 7th. Their families have been decimated in the war on Hamas’s terrorism and the shameful behavior of political leaders who continue to choose power over peace for the people they claim to serve. This war’s casualties will define generations to come.
And still, we will prepare our seder tables and gather together our families and communities to celebrate this ancient holiday of hope. We will gather to tell the story (ha’agadah) of leaving narrowness, bitterness, and death’s grip to journey toward an expansive future. We will be reminded of a hardening of the heart of the oppressor and we will ask many questions — some of which will not have an answer. Yet we will still tell and wrestle with this mythical and metaphorical story of exodus — from enslavement to expansiveness, from constrain to freedom, from harsh treatment to compassion, and where all who are hungry can eat, and all are free, and all live in harmony with the Land and her rhythms. May it be so! Keyn yehi ratzon!
As we speak to one another in the coming week and the months and years ahead, may we remember that difficult conversations are vital and require open hearts, open minds, and infinite compassion (rachamim) and lovingkindness (chesed). Political opinions, generational divides, and our responses to trauma all shape the conversations we have in our individual lives. I hope that you will find inspiration, as I did, in this video. During this Shabbat haGadol, may we commit to growing the parts of ourselves that connects with expansiveness of heart, mind, and soul, and to one another and the ecosystems and Land that hold us.
Shabbat haGadol Shalom,
Rabbi Jessica Shimberg