Rolling the Dog

 I was struck today by how things that, at one time, seemed new, different or unusual, have become commonplace. I was also able to see things through the eyes of others, to whom what I have now come to accept is still strange.

Some background. Sparky the angry, blind dog is, indeed blind. He has been less angry recently but, alas, still cannot see. People come over to me and ask if my dog is really blind, so I hold two fingers up in front of his face and ask "Sparky, how many fingers?" When he doesn't respond, I say, "He can't see my fingers at all so he can't tell me how many I am holding up. He's blind!"

This usually buys me enough time to walk away.

Occasionally, people persist and want to talk about it. After I get them softened up by waxing poetic about perseverance and the can-dog spirit, I sigh and say "It's sad that we wasted all that time teaching him ASL."

Sparky, along with being blind and sometimes angry, is also lazy when it comes to me. Others can get him to walk, but he knows that I'm an old softie (and I'm emotionally weak, which goes along with my age and texture) so he can manipulate me into carrying him or pushing him in a stroller when we take in the airs. So there we go, dog sitting in a place where one would usually see a baby (or a midget smoking a cigar, pretending to be a baby in a cartoon), and the two of us sauntering down the street.

Originally, this seemed to me to be weird and, as the young people say it, awkward. I mean, he is in a stroller and he is a full grown adult! Cray, cray. But as the months and strollers have rolled on, I have become so accustomed to this that it seems strange to see other people NOT pushing their dogs in strollers.

Today, on one of our outings, we were passed by a car (we don't walk quickly). As the car passed, it slowed down and the driver gawked. Full on, complete gawk mode. A twisted smile, eyes bugging out and even a little point of the ol' finger. Now Sparky is blind, but he knows. He knows.

What struck me, though, was that I thought of the driver as the one acting strange. All I'm doing is wandering down the street with a dog in a-

oh

I flipped the scenario on its head and realized that, while from my perspective this is all fine, dandy and skippy I have to remember that to the majority of the rest of the known world, a dog in a stroller is probably unexpected and, yes, a tad eccentric looking.

When did I stop seeing it as the exception, but as the rule? How long does it take for any new behavior to be the only way to be? When does "new" stop being "new?"

Don't ask Sparky -- he's blind, so he cannot answer. 

Why Matzah?

I'm working on a Torah idea so I'm just going to float this out there:

 

There is a bit of a confusing mixed message in the Hagaddah -- the matzah is listed in one place as commemorating the bread we ate on the way out of Egypt when we had no time to wait and let the dough rise, and yet, earlier on, it is spoken of as being the bread that our forefathers ate while still IN Egypt.

So which is it? Is something special about the lack of rising time? Wouldn't be something they had gotten used to eating while slaves?

The way I see it, they ate it in Egypt because they had to. They had little and were not given time to enjoy eating food, so, as poor people with a paucity of ingredients, they ate matzah. It was a bread of poverty and affliction, and someone else's control over their time.

One would think that the Exodus would solve that! God says, "I'm getting you out, so relax and have a real slice of bread..." but the people, carrying that mentality of servitude run for the hill and now make matzah because they didn't know HOW to wait. They were conditioned. Unlike their dough.

Fast forward to the desert and the construction of the tabernacle. God commands that 12 loaves of showbread (lechem hapanim) are in the tabernacle each week. They are matzot (chabad.org has a nice article on them) but now they signify time and servitude to God, not man.

So at the seder, we eat them to bridge this gap. We WERE slaves to Pharaoh and eat the matzah that he forced us to eat, but then we left to serve God and channeled that sense of rushing not away, but towards, using the weekly Shabbat as a way to turn the bread of affliction to a demonstration of loyalty to Hashem.

We can take even a mark of our lowest descent and use it to signify our wish to rise to the highest heights.

Purim Sheini

 I'm working on an idea but I haven't fully fleshed it out so I'll use this space as a sketch book, only instead of a sketch, I'll put in words that I type as they spill out of my brain and such.

Some holidays have a "second" -- that is, a version of themselves or an echo, a month afterwards, or at some other time of the year. There are Yom Kippur Katans sprinkled throughout the calendar. There is a Pesach Sheini one month after Passover. There is even a Purim Katan a month BEFORE the actual Purim in a leap year. I'd like to posit that Pesach serves as a Purim Sheini.

It seems like many of the themes of Purim reappear on Pesach. In fact, the Talmud rules that in a leap year, the celebration of Purim is in the second Adar so that it has proximity to Pesach and the redemptions commemorated in each are close together. Each one has an obligation of telling the story of that holiday's historic redemption and a text has emerged which allows one to fulfill that obligation: the haggadah and the megillah.

On each holiday, there is a tradition of dressing in a non-standard way -- some wear costumes on Purim and many men wear a kitel at the seder. Each one has an obligation to give charity specifically earmarked for the poor to buy food for this holiday (Ma'ot Chitim and Matanot L'Evyonim).

Each one in, a sense, begins at the beginning of its month even though it doesn't actually begin until 2 weeks later. Mi shenichnas Adar, the joy begins as soon as one enters the month of Adar, and the beginning of Nisan marks our new year and we begin certain practices (and make liturgical changes) as of then.

The central and defining feature of Purim is the notion of reversal -- v'nahafoch hu; the salvation and victory were snatched from the jaws of imminent death and defeat. Passover is marked by the similar, miraculous inversion. We went m'avdut, from slavery, to cheirut, freedom, m'yagon l'simcha, from sadness to hapiness. Haman of Purim reappears later as Ha Mann in the desert (and the Amalek confrontation of Purim is closely tied to the initial encounter with the nation of Amalek in the desert shortly after the exodus).

What does this mean? Mostly that Pesach needs to be a vibrant celebration of all the specific miracles like Purim to balance its myriad rules, and Purim needs to have in mind the complexity and gravitas of Pesach to temper its gaity.

While many sources might show connections between the two, I haven't seen anything which makes a direct connection in the context of a "sheini" a second celebration. Any suggestions welcome.