I find it safe to say that no one is concentrating hard on Passover preparations just now. Why, its not even Purim yet.
However, the current Torah portions focus on the Passover narrative. I take that as justification enough to call attention to a new volume, Exalted Evening: the Passover Haggadah with a Commentary based on the Teachings of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik (OU Press).
The truth is, countless commentaries on the Haggadah are published and virtually no one writes a commentary on the Haggadah. How so?
The Passover story is so central to Jewish life and thought that if youre a Jewish thinker, you end up writing on the themes of Passover, at the least, and on the actual passages from the Haggadah, at the most. This means that many Haggadahs are really compilations of what a Jewish thinker has already written in other contexts essays, books, sermons, etc.
That is the case with the book under review.
Rabbi Soloveitchik never wrote a commentary on the Haggadah. Yet, Exalted Evening captures his thinking on the themes and passages in the Haggadah. A magnificent work it is.
It is not always this way. Many Haggadah commentaries are forced. Just because a Jewish thinker has written essays on freedom (for example) does not necessarily mean that excerpts smoothly fit the passages in the Haggadah.
In Exalted Evening, however, editor Rabbi Menachem Genack, the chief of the largest kashrut organization in the world, the OU, has done a masterful job matching excerpts from the writings of Rabbi Soloveitchik to passages in the Haggadah.
Organizational coherence is insufficient to make a magnificent volume. That rests with the thoughts and eloquence of Rabbi Soloveitchik himself.
Rabbi Genack had the advantage of more than Rabbi Solo-veitchiks published writings, many of which are transcriptions of tapes and by now are voluminous. Rabbi Genack also had his personal notes from many years of study under his mentor.
The first characteristic of Rabbi Genacks Haggadah-driven anthology is a word Ive already noted: eloquence. Like many transition figures from Eastern Europe, Rabbis Soloveitchiks mastery of English, which is not his mother tongue, is compelling. Just as he put his unique stamp on Jewish thought and pedagogy, he taught himself to write English for his own exalted and piercingly clear purposes.
Take this passage on the second of the four sons, the evil one, the rasha:
The rasha, the evil child, challenges us, saying that the Exodus no longer has any significance. However, this is not so, as the great story of our tradition can encounter any opposition or challenge. One may emerge victorious even with the radical atheist if one uses the proper terms and the proper categories. The Torah that G-d gave us is all-inclusive, all-embracing, all-pervading. It has the answers to all problems, even though we cannot always decode its language.
The Torah is not afraid. We do not have to retreat into isolation or solitude because the street is contaminated. To retreat means to lose. The beginning of defeat is flight, the Talmud says (Sotah 44b). The enemy will conquer when the army begins to withdraw, to retreat, to flee.
On the contrary, we face the rasha. The Torah did not say to throw the rasha out of the house. Rather, engage him in debate and show him that he is wrong: blunt his teeth. Talmud Torah [the study of Torah] requires bringing the one who got lost, the child who was alienated, back into the fold. He or she is a rasha now, but there is potential in the rasha.
This is a serious book, some 200 pages long. It includes a short, learned introduction to the Haggadah by Rabbi Genack, a bibliography, a summary of the laws of Passover with the rationale behind them, and a wide variety of comments by Rabbi Soloveitchik:
- exegetical (why is more than one name of G-d sometimes used in a single passage);
- halachic, in practice (may grape juice be substituted for wine in the four cups?);
- halachic, in theory (what principle may explain why women are obligated to drink four cups of wine, hear the Megillah on Purim and light Chanukah candles, but not sit in the sukkah?)
- historical (what circumstance caused Moses name to be omitted from the Haggadah?);
- literary (what are the two separate components of the Haggadah?);
- philosophical (what is time qualitative time and quantitative time?);
- phenomenological (what is the difference between remembering and reliving the Exodus?);
- familial (why did Rabbi Soloveitchiks famous grandfather, Rabbi Chaim Soloveitchik, keep the afikoman at his side during the entire seder, until it was eaten?).
Like most high quality Haggadahs, this one will need to be read primarily before the seder. Many of its comments are too long to be absorbed, let alone transmitted, during the hustle and bustle of stimulating and keeping the interest of the children around the table on seder night. The comments need to be read in advance and paraphrased in ones mind.
The effort will be worth it.
It will help make your seder an exalted evening.
