Second Night Seder: Toward A New Promised Land

This message was originally delivered at the Mishkan's virtual seder on April 16th, 2022. You can watch the whole thing on our YouTube channel. Mishkan also invites you to our post-Passover party, The ReLeavening, on Saturday April 23rd at Half Acre Brewing. Yes, there will be pasta. And beer. And burgers. And you?

Today's episode is sponsored by Broadway In Chicago. Tickets to The Prom are available now! Use Mishkan's special offer code PARTY49 for $49 tickets, valid for April 19 and 20 (evening only), and April 21, in the Orchestra, Dress Circle and Loge seating area.

Produced by Mishkan Chicago. Music composed, produced, and performed by Kalman Strauss.

Transcript

Transcript

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You're invited to The Prom. The next Broadway in Chicago show at the Cadillac Palace Theatre playing for one week only April 19 through 24th. This show is described as having a Jewish soul. The Prom is a musical comedy about big Broadway stars on a mission to change the world and the love they discover that unites them all. Okay, real talk. I saw this show on Broadway and was dancing in my seat the whole time when I wasn't crying. Okay, sometimes I was dancing and crying at the same time. The Prom makes you believe in musical comedy again, and he's so full of happiness that you think your heart is going to burst. Everyone deserves a chance to celebrate at the Cadillac Palace Theater for one week only April 19 through 24th and Mishkan Chicago gets a special discount code. The code is party49 for $49 tickets valid for April 19 and 20th Evening shows only and the 21st in the orchestra dress circle and louge seating area. Again party49 So get tickets now at BroadwayInChicago.com.

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Welcome, to Contact Chai. You’re listening to Rabbi Lizzi perform Debbie Friedman’s classic take on the Birchot Havdalah. I’m going to tell you right now that I think it’s so beautiful, we’re going to let the whole thing play out before this week’s message begins. That message, by the way, comes from Mishkan’s third annual virtual seder, entitled: Toward A New Promised Land. Over a hundred people joined us Saturday night, and we hope you’ll join us next Saturday night at Half Acre Brewing for The ReLeavening, our post-Passover Party, where we’ll make up for lost leavened carbs with pizza and beer. There’s a link in the show notes. Now, keep taking it away, Rabbi Lizzi. 

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This is our third zoom Seder. In 2020, in April of 2020, exactly two years ago, we had like 500 screens of people doing Seder with us, which is not surprising, because everybody was on complete lockdown. And we had no idea what was going on. In our second year, last year, the vaccine rollout had begun, but most people still hadn't gotten it. And most people were still being very, very cautious. And so we did another zoom Seder and 300 or so screens came out 350 screens. And this year, here we are well into well into people are getting their like their fourth vaccine shot their second booster, lower COVID rates, people are gathering with family and friends in person. And a lot of people are just like, can't take zoom anymore. And nonetheless, there are like over 150 people who are gathered here like 116 screens, at least who have signed up to be here tonight. And they I don't know I'm heartened by that. And I'm so happy to see multiple people in in screen boxes and individuals and families and in all of us here together. So we were calling this Seder this year toward a new promised land toward a new promised land. So I want to share a quote. This is the historian Michael Walzer. Maybe you've heard this one before. It's how he ends his book, Exodus and revolution. Wherever you live, it's probably Egypt. Wherever you live, it's probably Egypt. Yet there is a better place, a world more attractive, a promised land. And the concept of a promised land. So that's that's what we're theming this Seder around tonight, the idea of like moving in a direction having a vision of where we want to go articulating it, holding it out as a beacon that calls us toward that vision. And even as we realize, we may never get there in our lifetime, we still can get closer and closer and closer. And we have to, and we have to it's what we want to do. And so the Jewish tradition is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks as a unit Jewish tradition as well. Like fractals, you know, like, like one part of it is the same as another part of it that may look very different in a different part of the calendar, you know, but um, you see the same themes popping up and cropping up over over the entire calendar. And so in the Torah, the Jews are liberated from Egypt. And they are pointed in the direction of the promised land. This land of milk and honey and figs, and olive and date trees, a paradise, but in the Torah, they never get there. They never get there. The Torah ends with Moses and the Jewish people sort of on the cusp of entering, but they never get to the promised land. And even once the Torah is over, and you get to the later books in the Hebrew Bible, we do get to the promised land. But it turns out that not even the Promised Land really lives up to the promise of the Promised Land. Right, the Promised Land was going to be this place that God gave to the children, the grandchildren, great grandchildren of Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob as an inheritance. And if they steward the land responsibly, and took care of the orphan, and the widow and the stranger, and they practiced equitable farming, and economic practices, all of which the Torah describes in great detail. If they exercise judgment righteously, and there's harmony, and cooperation from the leaders of the people, then they will be able to thrive in the land, the Torah describes, and guess what? It didn't last. Right? The reason why we practice Judaism today, all over the world is because there was a temple in Jerusalem at the center of that holy land that was destroyed. Sending us all over the world, as refugees and as wanderers. And we built a tradition that could survive in the wilderness. And yet, we kept turning our faces eastward,

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to look longingly toward that promised land toward that holy city and the idea, the idea of a promised land more than the actual place even as we even as we experienced the disappointment, of knowing what happens in a promised land. So this there's this real tension in the idea even of a promised land. But we know, we know. And this has carried us through this pandemic. That hope is what keeps people alive, and working toward a better world, imagining and describing it and working toward it. And so at Cedars since we were that since the Seder was created for 1000s of years, we have been saying at the end of every Seder, and as we will tonight, next year in Jerusalem, as a way of expressing that yearning for a perfected world for a redeemed world. And even today, if you're in Jerusalem, if you're sitting in Jerusalem doing Seder, you still end Seder with next year in Jerusalem, as if Jerusalem is more of an idea to be fulfilled than than the reality that exists in this time and space. And so we look forward to the potential the promise and the hope that we will one day inhabit that time and space that we will call Jerusalem next year in Jerusalem. Right. As Michael Walzer says, Wherever you live, it's probably Egypt. So zooming out, as we thought about the timing of this Seder, we know that it may feel to many, like we're exiting the pandemic. But a to many the dangers of COVID are still very real, if people on this call tonight who you know, who are who are on the call, because they're sick, and they're at home. And they're quarantining. And that's still very real for people, people are still missing work and missing travel and not doing well, because of this pandemic. It's still very real, but be the inequities that COVID exposed and exacerbated are still very much a part of our world. Right? Like the extreme inequality between and the access between those of us who could work from home during the pandemic and those who could not, and had to risk health, especially before there was a vaccine, those with money in the bank that grew during the pandemic, and those who would have lost their homes. Were it not for an eviction moratorium, right, the people who could afford to pull their kids out of public school and go to a private school where where the introduction was happening in person and those who could not do that, and who lost months and months of in school time. So, as it has been said,  We're all in the same COVID Sea. But we we're not all in the same boat. We're all in the same COVID sea, but we're not in the same boat. And so the idea of moving backward of going back to what we had before, that's actually not the promised land. Going back, you know, back to normal is not the promised land, we have the opportunity to imagine what the future could look like and could look like better. So Michael Walter writes, the way to the Promised Land is through the wilderness, and there is no way to get from here to there, except by joining together, and marching.