Hitzonim | Outsiders

Shabbat HaChodesh. | Friday, April 5, 2024, 9:16pm EST

This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly.

Exodus 12.11

Everyone Welcome; No One Has To Come

We lit six candles tonight.

Usually it’s four.

Gideon, our youngest, is always eager to lead the blessings, often for the wine, which is funny. “Dada,” how incredible that, at eight, and a super verbal eight, he still calls me Dada, “can I do the boreh?!” As in, boreh p’ri hagafen, or “creates the fruit of the vine,” the modifier for this particular blessing formula that refers to the wine. We offer a sip, and he just sniffs and turns up his nose. Same each week.

Noah, the middle guy, the amazing, amazing Noah, who is everything, everywhere all at once; the sweetest creature to visit this plane, he’s a bull in a china shop and a stand up comedian. A few months ago I asked Noah if he was the class clown. “I’m a jokester, Dad,” was his dead pan response.

Noah doesn’t really do Shabbat.

If we promise to be quick, or he ducks out after candles, he may stop by the table, but Noah doesn’t really do Shabbat.

Shabbat is optional in our house, and that’s how it will always be. Everyone is welcome, and no one has to come.

But Noah did do Shabbat tonight! Maybe it was the six candles thing. Maybe it was just the flow and movement of the house, and he let it carry him.

Because Gid wants to do blessings, we really encourage him. Tonight we managed a fairly impressive unison recitation, and after I almost swayed, bowed, and hit ‘em with a bruch’hu (this is not true), Noah says loudly and matter of factly, “I have no idea what you’re saying.”

I love my boys fully, and in completely different ways, and Noah has a love that is beyond description.

Isaac wants to light the candles.

Big brother.

Lighter.

This is not some character insight other than birth order still seems to be a thing that governs sibling dynamics.

Isaac spent the night at his grandparents tonight, so he wasn’t here for Shabbat. This also is completely fine and always will be. See earlier resolution.

We lit six candles because with this Shabbat in particular, we have a pretty good yom tov on our hands, a good day. It’s Shabbat HaChodesh. Not really a party, though, which we’d usually refer to with the more positive yom tov or a chag samaeach, happy this or that; this one is more like an invitation.

The Head of the Month

Rosh Chodesh, the head of the month, of any month on the Hebrew calendar, is the beginning of the month, usually signaled by a new moon, and a little extra this or that is in the prayer book, but for this upcoming month, the Hebrew month of Nisan, the Passover festival occurs. Shabbat HaChodesh is the last Shabbat before the Rosh Chodesh of the month of Nisan, and accordingly, this Shabbat takes on special significance. Sometimes Shabbat HaChodesh falls on the actual Rosh Chodesh, and that means we read some other stuff, but that’s not this year. (No matter, I pulled in some of that other stuff we read because I like it.)

So this is the significance carried by Shabbat HaChodesh: A marker in time to alert us that if you haven’t already started, it is time to begin the physical and spiritual preparations for Pesach.

This is six candles significance.

Or that’s how I did it up. It worked out. I needed a little hiddur mitzvah; a little enhancing the mitzvah, man, a little bit of let’s fucking act like something matters because sometimes it’s all a lot, and it’s like let’s spin up some meaning here, friends, and get connected with some traditions. This is the entire point of my adventures, mistakes, misgivings, and misguided interpretations here; asking what good is a tradition if it doesn’t draw us into dialogue with something bigger, older, stranger, if not completely obsolete, and then just freaking own it. That’s my take on whatever this is.

Speaking of traditions, Pesach says no leavened bread of any kind, and, of course, some take it all too far, which is exactly the right amount of far to take Pesach. This is what I mean when I begin discussing preparations.

I’m not observant, and I’m the only observant one in the house, if you catch my meaning. I won’t take Pesach too far.

But that’s how far to take it, for sure. Too far.

It’s not like, don’t eat leavened bread. I mean, yes, it is, don’t eat it, for a week.

Matzah pizza, matzah babka, matzah ball soup, lox on matzah, matzah brei, a dish made from matzoh softened in water, then mixed with eggs and fried; matzah at the seder plate; hidden matzah afikomen for the seder activity for kids; matzah in the back of my cabinet from last year; matzah in the oven, slightly too thick, a little charred because can’t you just buy a box of matzah like a normal person and not try to bubbeleh yourself and make homemade matzah?

But more than just eating this, not that, in the worst food substitute diet swap program you’ve ever heard of, you are to clean leavened products completely from your home: Scrub, vacuum, wipe, dust, crumb, give away to others what you can’t eat, and in a last ditch effort, lock what ever remains away in its own damn cupboard before the festival begins. Like, literally lock it. Away.

I mean, dude, in the Bible it refers to the agent that does the slaughtering, by which the Protection sacrifice (“Pesach”) is the sign to be spared, as The Destroyer. Shit! Clean those cupboards. I’m not having The Destroyer pull up and catch me with some dense bagels! This is all fun and games, but there is more happening. On a whim, two weekends ago, I raised the garage door, put on music, and began what has now become a two week effort of completely cleaning, organizing, and decluttering our entire home.

I have no idea why I did this.

“It was time,” I told my spouse when she got home from work to find me knee-deep in hand-me-down clothes we had accumulated from kind friends with older kids. From garage, to closets, bedrooms, to our kitchen, the whole family is pitching in.

This has nothing or everything to do with Passover. I have a family tree, and probably a lot of us one side of that tree cleaned the chametz (leavened products) out of our homes for, like, probably many, many generations, right around this time of year, so I’d like to think that my internal clock says it’s time to make preparations, but we’re the outcome of our environments, too, so who knows.

It just feels like something is stirring.

The Biblical prescription for this, the part you read when Shabbat HaChodesh falls on Rosh Chodesh, is from Exodus, where an unblemished lamb is to be sacrificed and eaten with unleavened bread, sharing the lamb between two families is acceptable, which I always enjoy reading because even 3,000 years ago we were like, “Hey thanks for grabbing the lamb, I’ll Venmo you for my half.”

Says the Torah: This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly (Exodus 12.11).

“Playtime is Over”

I grew up at a church. I mean, going to church, but my dad is a pastor, the jewish pastor’s kid and all that, and so not only did I grow up going to church, I just sort of grew up there.

I skipped town at 19 or 20.

These are not related, but each datum is salient for this.

I just up and moved to South Jersey. Rode in the back of a Hyundai hatchback before Hyundai was Hyundai, and off I went, with a guitar, skateboard, and a duffle bag. Bailed on nearly everything. Very stupid. Lots of experiences gained. Sometime just before that, or just after moving back to my hometown, I don’t remember exactly when, an old woman at church, who was legendary with her sister, both living together in their 80’s and 90’s respectively, may their memories be for blessings, snatched up my hand and yanked me down to her 87 year old level.

“Play time is over,” she said sternly.

Shabbat HaChodesh is like this.

But First, The Cupboards

So, we lit six candles, and I’m in red wine training for the four glasses we’ll drink for the Seder in a few weeks.

All of us make it pretty well day to day, and we should be a lot prouder of ourselves than I worry many of us are. I’ve needed to put in a little extra to get from one day to the next recently. That’s cryptic, but I’m intensionally compartmentalized here. This is the me you get on this weird place. I’ll say only that I’m on chemo, and I’m having an existentialism.

I wonder if it’s not some bullshit pseudoscience to say I’m ready for Passover. For some new beginnings. For some freedom and liberation and envisioning a world to come of nonviolence and abundance. That maybe my body knows it; senses it; communes with the ancestors about it. I guess in the coming posts I’ll try to say interesting, insightful, informative things about the ancient and the modern, and I hope you keep opening the emails.

But first. The cupboards.

Shabbat Shalom, man. Hinay ma tov. Pesach is coming, and playtime is over.