Revisiting Ritual
Today is Friday, January 12th. It is also the 98th day of the Israel-Hamas War, which means nearly 100 days of captivity for some 130 hostages, 100 days of living in an altered war-time reality for Israelis, and the same number of days of mass displacement, violence and destruction for Palestinians in Gaza. Here in America, we're moving into a long weekend of reflecting on the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and also kicking off our 2024 presidential election season with the Iowa Caucuses this Monday. On the Hebrew calendar, we have just entered Sh'vat, the month that reminds us that while it may feel like winter outside, spring -- and the promise it brings of rebirth and renewal -- lies just around the corner. If all of this feels like a lot to hold -- that this moment is sending us in a whole lot of emotional directions -- that's because it is. Thankfully, we have Torah and ritual to ground us.
This week, we - together with Jewish communities everywhere - read the second Torah portion of the book of Exodus: Parashat Vaera, Exodus 6:2-9:35. Its text launches us into the famous showdown between Pharaoh and Moses/God, and recounts the first seven of the Ten Plagues brought upon the Egyptians:
dam - blood
tz'fardea - frogs
kinim - lice
arov - swarms (of either wild animals or insects)
dever - cattle disease
sh'chin - boils
barad - hail
If you're like me, you may find it hard to read this list of plagues without instinctively taking a finger and beginning to pantomime the action we do at the Passover Seder, of removing wine from our cup, drop by drop, while reciting each of these words. Growing up, this was a memorable feature of every seder I attended. I remember paying close attention to the fact that some seder guests used their pinky fingers, while others used their index finger or even a spoon to remove the drops of wine. While techniques varied, the explanation I always heard for this ritual -- some version of which was written in each haggadah or explained by every seder leader -- was consistent: that by spilling drops of wine from our cup, we express that our own joy is diminished by the suffering of the Egyptians. (Perhaps you were taught similarly?) This has always struck me as such a beautiful sentiment: that even as we recall our own suffering and oppression, we are obligated to make space to empathize with others as well.
As I re-read Parashat Vaera this week, I kept thinking about this seder tradition and decided to do a little digging into its origins. I'll admit that I was surprised by what I found! Apparently, this familiar explanation is a modern one. While the core idea it expresses appears in multiple ancient midrashim as well, this interpretation of the wine-spilling/plague-recitation ritual is attributed alternately to two German Jewish scholars: Rabbi Dr. Eduard Baneth (d. 1930) and Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (d. 1888). It seems to have really taken off in the 1940's and later, become particularly ubiquitous in American/ English-language haggadot. Truly, I had no idea! (In case you're interested in geeking out a bit on the historical background of this ritual, here are two great sources I found online: a well-footnoted article by Dr. Rabbi Zvi Ron and a scholarly responsum by Rabbi Prof. David Golinkin of the Schechter Institutes.)
So, it turns out that the idea of spilling wine as an expression of empathy is relatively new; however, the tradition of removing drops of wine while recounting the plagues has been around for quite a while. Both of the scholars cited above point to a Passover sermon of Rabbi Eleazar of Worms (~1176-1238) as the earliest known reference to this custom. His explanation for the spilling of wine drops, though, is quite different; Rabbi Eleazar of Worms says that we do this "as if to say: it will not harm us." (Note that he says nothing about the Egyptians' suffering; rather, this feels like a possibly superstitious(?) expression of hope that the plagues not cause us any harm.) Similarly, other medieval rabbis in Ashkenaz seem to have sprinkled wine outside of their cups as well, explaining the custom as a way of indicating "that we should be saved from these plagues" and "may they come upon our enemies" [but not upon us]. The experience of Jews in medieval Europe was inconsistent, with periods of flourishing punctuated by periods of terrifying antisemitic violence. I can only imagine that it would have been powerful to sit at a seder table in the 12th or 13th century and spill drops of wine as a kind of prayer for Jewish safety and for vengeance upon those who might seek to do Jews harm.
I'm intrigued that the ritual we know so well today -- of recounting the plagues that appear in this week's parasha as we spill drops of wine from our cups -- has been around for nearly a thousand years, even while the explanation for this custom has been a moving target. I especially love the idea that, with the help of scholars who have dug through manuscripts, we now know that our ritual is multi-valent. Individuals can sit around a Passover seder table together, sticking their fingers into their cups while reading the Ten Plagues, not because doing so means only one thing, but precisely because it has meant so many different things at different points in Jewish history.
As we read the story of the plagues this Shabbat and think about our enslaved Israelite ancestors and also of the Egyptians, against the backdrop of all that's swirling in our own moment, perhaps we might give ourselves permission to spill some drops of wine and mean more than one thing by it.
Shabbat Shalom, and wishing you meaning(s) in all the rituals of the day,
Rabbi Rachel Nussbaum
