Community Development

Chancellor's Parashah Commentary

Parashat Tzav 5759
Shabbat Hagadol
Leviticus 6:1-8:36
March 27, 1999       10 Nisan 5759

Ismar Schorsch is the chancellor of The Jewish Theological Seminary.

The most distinctive feature of Shabbat Hagadol, the Great Sabbath just before Passover, is that it called for a sermon. For in the pre-emancipation synagogue, the rabbi customarily spoke but twice a year: on the Shabbat prior to Passover and on the Shabbat between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, Shabbat Shuva. These sermons tended to be halakhic in character, reminding congregants of the elaborate and proper observance of the holy day to come.


What changed the nature of the rabbinate was the process of emancipation in the 19th century by which Jews eventually became citizens of the states in which they lived. As communal constrains declined and individual opportunities expanded, Jewish identity and loyalty rapidly deteriorated. In this competitive setting, the synagogue became an arena in which to fight for the allegiance of the assimilated Jew. It was no longer merely a venue for carrying out the obligation to daven with a minyan. Architecture, decorum, music and the spoken word were configured to inspire and edify those in attendance, The rabbi had now to persuade those in attendance that Judaism was an advanced religion of intellectual cogency, spiritual power and universal import.

Increasingly, all Jewish expression became confined to the synagogue, freighting the weekly sermon with even greater significance. Youngsters ceased attending Jewish schools and spent even less time on acquiring a mastery of Jewish texts and skills. The religious content of Jewish homes diminished precipitously, leaving Judaism to stand or fall on the constricted basis of the synagogue alone. In 1949 Mordecai Kaplan stingingly described the dire consequences of these developments: "Where Jewish education is neglected, the whole content of Judaism is reduced merely to an awareness of anti-Semitism. Judaism ceases then to be a civilization, and becomes a complex (The Future of the American Jew, p. 44)." The modern day rabbi had become little more than a desperate lobbyist for a Judaism in contraction.

Yet a weekly sermon is hardly enough to sustain Jewish consciousness. The home had always been the major seedbed of Jewish character formation. In the second-half of the nineteenth century, the popular German-Jewish genre painter Moritz Oppenheim executed a series of 20 grisailles depicting traditional Jewish family life. Of the eleven devoted to Shabbat and festivals, ten depict the observance of the day within the Jewish home. Even the celebration of the bar-mitzva was situated at home. Part of Oppenheim's great achievement in placing art at the service of Judaism was to impress upon his international audience that Judaism was once practiced naturally and joyously outside the confines of the synagogue. A Judaism that finds expression only in the synagogue is at risk.

Passover is above all a holiday meant to be celebrated at home. Ridding the house of hametzand readying it for the sedarim are preparations that take time and collaboration. I still remember grinding by hand the carp, pike and whitefish for my mother's gefilte fish. After she could no longer make it from scratch, she would "doctor up" the processed kind. She often dozed contentedly at the first Seder from the long hours of work that proceeded it. Hey joy was always commensurate with the intensity of her preparation.




Shabbat shalom u-mevorach,

Ismar Schorsch
