The bitter and the sweet...what we're learning

Somehow a song has played in my head all week long.  Although it was written by Naomi Shemer in Israel after the Yom Kippur war, I believe it speaks to our situation today as we celebrate Pesach in the midst of a pandemic.

FOR ALL THESE THINGS
Al hadvash ve'al ha'oketz                               Al hamar vehamatok                      Al biteynu hatinoket shmor eyli hatov. Every bee that brings the honey Needs a sting to be complete And we all must learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.

Chorus:                          Al kol eleh, al kol eleh,                 Shmor nah li eyli hatov                      Al hadvash ve'al ha'okets                                 Al hamar vehamatok. For the sake of all these things, Lord, Let your mercy be complete Bless the sting and bless the honey Bless the bitter and the sweet               Ana shmor li al kol eyle              Ve'al ahuvey nafshi              Al hasheket al habékhi              ve'al ze hashir. Guard for me, oh Lord, these treasures All my friends keep safe and strong, Guard the stillness, guard the weeping, And above all, guard this song. Chorus:            Al kol eleh, al kol eleh,              Shmor nah li eyli hatov              Al hadvash ve'al ha'okets              Al hamar vehamatok.

For the sake of all these things, Lord,
Let your mercy be complete
Bless the sting and bless the honey
Bless the bitter and the sweet.

Bless the sting and bless the honey Bless the bitter and the sweet.

There are many reasons this song is resonating with me today. For most of us, this was our first Pesach celebrated within the confines of our own home.  In the past, often the joy of Pesach was combined with visits from family and friends, tables set for guests, and a sense that although the world had worries, we could divorce ourselves from those worries for at least a week.  This year we’ve had to learn to taste the bitter with the sweet.  There have been no guests, there has been no cooking for days on end, and there has been no end to the pandemic that is snuffing out the lives of individuals all over the globe.

Yet, we have figured out how to bless the honey while feeling the sting.  We have discovered embracing our friends in non-physical ways, reaching out with phone calls of caring, attending services to see each other’s faces and actively listening to one another as we share our fears and anxieties.  We have seen friends step forward to deliver meals to the doorsteps of individuals who are not leaving their homes.

We have learned to not take our health for granted; to not assume that we are invincible.  We have discovered the power of relationships that are healthy and our need for giving and receiving love.  We have realized that we are intimately connected to all humankind on this planet and that we need to act responsibly in order to protect one another not just ourselves.  On a larger scale, we have also hopefully learned to be grateful for increased cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis, new innovations and treatments against the virus and, of course – Zoom.

Would these lessons have been learned so rapidly just by reading about them?  Probably not.  But our well-being, not just physical, but spiritual and emotional as well, has required that we learn these lessons quickly now and our learning has been enhanced by living the experience first hand.

Pesach has always been about the lessons that we are just now beginning to actively learn.  Pesach reminds us that we have to taste the bitterness of bondage in order to understand that we will never inflict it upon anyone else’s spirit.  It teaches us that when we feel the pain of others as our own pain, then we can work to improve this world by working for the causes of freedom and dignity for all.

When we eat the maror on Pesach, we dip it in charoset.  Why?  We are actually commanded in the Torah to eat the maror, but there is no mention of the charoset in the Torah.  In fact, it is the only item on the seder plate that is not commanded for us to eat in the Torah.  Yet charoset, is mentioned in the Mishnah and even the Rambam, provided us with a recipe for the “sweet mortar” that we are to eat. Although it is not a commandment to eat the charoset, we do so because it’s sweetness offsets the bitterness .  It provides us with the inspiration to understand that even in Egypt, the bitterness of slavery was offset by the miracles performed by the righteous women who refused to follow Pharoah’s orders to kill the male infants being born.  They preserved life even in difficult times. They looked to G-d, trusted G-d, and did what they knew was right.

We are working to do the same today.  These are difficult times.  The news is grim.  The sense of the unknown is sometimes overwhelming.  Yet, I believe it is exactly at times like this that we can learn from the story of Pesach.  When we get to the other side of this crisis, I hope the honey will offset the bitterness and leave us with a sense of the good that can still be felt even when times are difficult and scary. ( I will temper that statement, however, that wherever families and friends are experiencing a loss of precious life, it will not be the honey that one thinks of first).  May the sweet taste of reaching out to one another, providing support for one another, and actively nurturing our souls offset the bitterness of the days that we are currently experiencing.  May we learn to use these unique days of being narrowly constrained, to separate ourselves from negative patterns and elevate ourselves on paths of holiness.

So, as the song says, “ Guard for me all these treasures, all my friends keep safe and strong, Guard the stillness, guard the weeping, and above all guard this song.

           Al kol eleh, al kol eleh,
             Shmor nah li eyli hatov
             Al hadvash ve'al ha'okets
             Al hamar vehamatok.