Torah Sparks

Among the Horses: Passover 5776, Last Days

by Rabbi David Greenstein
Torah Sparks Passover last days 2016
Torah Sparks
Exodus 13:17 – 15:26 & Numbers 28:19 – 28:25 – Pesach 7 (Friday)
Deuteronomy 14:22 – 16:17 & Numbers 28:19 – 28:25 – Pesach 8 (Shabbat)

“To a mare among Pharaoh’s chariots – that is how I have imagined you, my beloved!” (Song of Songs 1:9) It is an old custom, of over one thousand years, to read the Song of Songs, a beautiful song cycle of intense sensuality and emotion, on Passover. Yet, the verse just quoted is the only one in the entire book that has any reference that can be easily tied to the Passover story. Surely, it can hardly serve as sufficient basis for associating this text with our holiday.

If we spend time to examine this verse, however, perhaps we will gain some additional perspective on our Festival of Freedom. The context of the verse is the ongoing dialogue of love and yearning exchanged between two lovers. They seek out each other, wait for each other, and celebrate each other’s beauties and charms.  In their youthful vitality they use highly ornamented speech, replete with nature imagery, including all kinds of references to flora and fauna. Our verse is spoken by a young man. It seems to be meant as a compliment to his lover. She is extolled as strikingly beautiful, as beautiful as a fine horse belonging to Pharaoh. To get the point the reader must remember that the Bible viewed Egypt as a primary center for horse breeding. So the young man is saying, at the least, that his girl is the best of all, a real thoroughbred.

But the image calls forth additional associations. Because we read this Song toward the end of Passover, we cannot escape images from the story that took place on the seventh day of the Passover journey. As we sing this Song of Songs, we recall our very first song that we chanted as a people. The Israelites sang it at the banks of the Red Sea, in celebration of their miraculous salvation. As Pharaoh pursued the Israelites, God “flung horse and rider into the sea.” (Ex. 15:1) In Hebrew these are almost the same words used in the lover’s song. Our image is not simply about beauty. It has darker tones. Can it be that he imagines his beloved as a beautiful horse racing into the sea? Pharaoh’s horses and chariots drowned. Are the overwhelming emotions of passion and desire driving his beloved to run to her doom? Will the lover leap forward and save her in the nick of time? Wil his love perform miracles.

Passover is commonly identified as the Festival of Freedom. The chanting of the Song of Songs on this holiday reminds us of the lovers’ struggles to find freedom as individuals and as a couple. Love is not only a source of pleasure and liberation in the Song. It is also painful, bewildering, enslaving and dangerous. One may drown from love, but “many waters cannot put out the flame of love and rivers cannot wash it away.” (Song 8:7) Pharaoh’s charioteers and their beautiful horses sank into the ferocious waves of the sea while we walked  in between the waters, on dry land. The Song teaches us that Passover is not just about the dry historical or political realities and theories of freedom. If we focus only on the dry path that we trod with care, but we ignore the swirling waters around us and within us, we will never feel enough what freedom really is, and we will never be moved enough to burst forth in song.

Hag Same`ah v’Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein

 


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Image(s): “going for a run” © Ray Dumas altered and used with permission via Creative Commons License

  • Rabbi David Greenstein

    Rabbi David Greenstein arrived at Shomrei Emunah in August 2009 with a rich, broad and deep background as a rabbi, cantor, artist, scholar, and teacher. Being Shomrei’s rabbi, he says, allows him to draw on all of these passions, as well as his lifelong commitment to building Jewish communities.

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