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I am again editing volumes of Dirshuni, the series of contemporary women’s midrash (interpretations of classical texts). Many women have sent me midrashim that relate to the war, several that touch directly on Passover. And with Passover at the door again, many are attempting to decipher what our third seder since October 7th should look like. The texts by these women may help with that.
Two of the midrashim were written by survivors of the hellfire of October 7th (I shared these same authors’ laments for Tisha B’Av in the summer of 2024):
Liora Eilon, who survived the massacre in Kfar Aza, wrote a midrash entitled, “On Leaven and Missed Opportunities” [Al Hametz ve-Hahmatza]. Eilon lost her son that day, when he left the shelter room to defend the kibbutz as part of the civilian security squad. (After he was shot, but before he died, he managed to warn the security commander of nearby Kibbutz Sa’ad, thus preventing a massacre there.) Her midrash interprets the mishnah from Tractate Pesahim 1:1 and the talmudic discourse on it, which clarify how to clean hametz in a place that is hard to reach.
According to the mishnah, were hametz to be stuck in a hole between two houses, the people who live on each side have an obligation to clean the hametz in the hole as far as their hands can reach. What neither can reach, they must annul in their hearts.
Eilon, moving from one place to another after being evacuated from her home, dedicated many hours to meetings with different Jewish communities, in Israel and around the world. She joined the Parents Circle – Families Forum, a grassroots organization of Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost family members due to the conflict.
On Leaven and Missed Opportunities Leora Eilon
On the evening of the 14th [of Nisan] they search the house for hametz by candlelight. Every place into which hametz is not brought does not require searching. (Mishnah Pesahim 1:1)
…If there is a hole between one and his friend – this one searches as far as his hand can reach, and that one searches as far as his hand can reach, and as for the rest, he nullifies it in his heart. (Talmud Bavli, Pesahim, 8a)
And how does one nullify it in the heart? And isn’t it written from a lying word, keep your distance! (Ex. 23:7)? And is it possible to nullify something that exists? They said, nullification was said only for the leaven that is in the heart. And what is the leaven that is in the heart?
Once there were two brothers who hated each other, as their views differed about the land inheritance of their ancestors. And they each held fast to their views and nullified each other’s views until there was leaven dwelling between them. And they would not meet each other’s hands, and would not remove that leaven that was between them, because each one feared the other would overpower him. And they did not light the candle to search for the leaven, lest they discover that the brother’s side is clean, and their own is the dirty one…
One day, they happened on each other on the road. One protested to his brother and said, “This land is ours alone, given to us alone by the Creator.” His brother stood before him and shouted, “This land for which our brothers and sisters have given their lives, is the land of all, and we cannot but share it with all.” The silence thundered between them and shook their souls. Their hatred for each other grew, and they fought with one another and none could resolve it.
At that time there stood by the side of the road an old woman whose son had died. And she was weeping and lamenting for him, “Woe is me, bitter I am, my son died at his brother’s hand, for nothing, like Abel at Cain’s hand.” When she heard the feuding brothers, she said to them, “My sons, isn’t it written, ‘as far as his hand can reach, and as for the rest, he nullifies it in his heart.’ You, who are wise, struggle with each other, fight with each other, differ in your views, as you would, but stay close in your hearts. For when you listen to each other with an open heart, you share each other’s pain, and once you share each other’s pain, the compassion in your heart will wake up, and bring healing to your souls, and you won’t, God forbid, come to bloodshed.”
The brothers returned to their homes, thinking on what that old woman had told them. One of them decided to hear what his brother had to say, even if it scarred his heart. And once he heard his brother out, he heard his own heart, for there is no pain that has no brother. And his brother went on pouring his heart out and spilling his pains and wondering, “How does my brother stay silent and not nullify me?” He was relieved. And he, too, said in his heart, “From now on, I too will hold my tongue, and hear my brother’s crying.” His brother began to pour out his heart, their hands reached through the hole that was between them, as far as each could reach, and the leaven between them became less and less.
They decided to go on meeting at the hole in the middle of the house, each one as far as his hand could reach, and the rest to nullify in their hearts, for the things they heard from one another were scarring and hurting their ears and hearts, but they swore that each would say what was in his heart and lend an ear to the other’s pain. And as they were conversing and arguing, their views poured into one another and new language began to sprout between them. At that moment a heavenly voice called out Let there be no quarrel between me and you… for brothers we are (Gen. 13:8).
In this midrash, Eilon uses the hametz, inaccessible and needing to be annulled as a metaphor for hatred found in the hearts. Through a story, she teaches how it is possible to clean it. In her story, two brothers, locked in hatred and violence, meet an elderly bereaved mother, who had lost her son to violence. On witnessing their suffering, she teaches them how to heal by listening. It is not easy or immediate. Her instruction does not provide a miracle cure, but rather directs the two brothers towards hard and demanding work. The midrash tries to plant hope between the different parts of the nation who cannot communicate. It does not through bumper sticker cliches, rather, from the awareness of the huge challenge involved in making space for the voice and suffering of others, and for one’s own. This is a midrash that restores faith in people, and in the ability to improve our situation among ourselves, and perhaps even with those around us.
This next midrash, written in the form of a piyyut (liturgical poem), was written by a survivor of the massacre on October 7th in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, Nurit Hirschfeld Skupinsky. While this piyyut is intended for recitation at the seder it is imbued with the atmosphere of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and Yom Hazikaron, Memorial Day, which in Israel come in the weeks following Passover. Hirschfeld Skupinsky wrote her own variation on Dayeynu (“It Would Have Been Enough for Us”), the beloved piyyut from the Haggadah. In the traditional version, the author of which is unknown, the Jewish people turn to God and recount one by one all the good things He did for them in the course of the Exodus from Egypt, all the way until they entered the Land of Israel and built the Temple in Jerusalem. Every good thing recounted is taken as yet another gesture too good to be true, making the piyyut a song of gratitude on the bounty of miracles bestowed on Israel above and beyond any expectation.
In her piyyut, entitled, “Enough! Enough! Too Much for Us” Hirschfeld Spukinsky inverts the meaning of the call “Dayeynu” (It Would Have Been More Than Enough for Us) from gratitude for the good we have received that was too much into a broken wail on the evils that ravaged us on October 7th and afterwards, as more than we can bear.
Enough! Enough! Too Much for Us Nurit Hirschfeld Skupinsky
Had they taken us from our houses And hadn’t stolen our possessions It would have been bitter, and too much for us.
Had they stolen our possessions And wouldn’t have ravaged our homes It would have been bitter, and too much for us.
Had they ravaged our homes And hadn’t killed our firstborns, our elderly and our infants It would have been bitter and too much for us.
Had they killed our firstborns, our elderly and our infants And hadn’t snatched and torn parents from their children, women from their husbands It would have been bitter and too, too much for us.
Had they snatched and torn parents from their children, women from their husbands And hadn’t dragged them through the fields and lowered them into tunnels It would have been bitter and too, too much for us.
Had they dragged them through the fields and lowered them into tunnels And hadn’t slaughtered them there, our tormenters, It would have been bitter and too, Too much for us.
Had they slaughtered them there, our tormenters, And hadn’t tortured their bodies and defiled their souls, It would have been bitter and too, Too much for us.
Had they tortured their bodies and defiled their souls And hadn’t kept them there for hundreds of days, It would have been bitter and too, Too much for us.
All the more and more so That they took us from our houses And stole our possessions And ravaged our homes And killed our firstborns, our elderly and our infants And snatched and tore parents from their children, women from their husbands And dragged them through the fields and lowered them into tunnels And slaughtered them there And tortured their bodies And defiled their souls And kept them there for hundreds of days Bitter and too much, and much too much for us.
Enough! Enough! It’s too much for us!
Using expressions and language from the traditional piyyut, Hirschfeld Skupinsky lays out and recounts, one by one, the horrors and cruelties as they pile one on top of the other. Just when the suffering seems to have climaxed, some new horror appears. The rhythm and overwhelmingness of her images create a sense of unbearableness in the readers, forcing us to ask ourselves, how is anyone who has lived through this to deal with this shattering? And what is demanded of us?