Passover (פֶּסַח - pronounced Pesach) begins at sundown tonight. This eight day observance celebrates liberation from “The Narrow Place” (מִצְרַיִם - pronounced Mitzrayim, the Hebrew name for Egypt) — but is also a solemn time of mourning the deaths of the Egyptians that occurred during our liberation. Passover is a difficult time for me — I wrote about that before, here. This year, I will let Pesach begin with an excerpt from a very moving post on the Radical Torah blog, and I urge you to read the full post by Alana Suskin:
We are used to thinking of scholars as rather dry people, alone in their hidey-holes, poring away at some arcane bit which can’t possibly have any relevance to one’s life. And it’s true that some are – but that’s not the Jewish tradition. The Jewish tradition of scholarship is, for one [thing], not for the elite. It’s for everyone. That’s why the Talmud requires a scholar to live only in a place where there is a teacher for the young. That’s why Jews were one of the first cultures with public education.
To study is shmirat hanefesh – guarding one’s soul. For the soul is not something which need[s] no tending. It is a gift, but a gift of a very special kind, like the pitch pines of Louisiana, which require fire to reseed itself. It must be burnt to the ground, and yet doing so, it never “goes out.” In order to grow, to see the sunshine, one must light a fresh fire, to release new seeds and begin new growth.
