Rabbi's Remarks: Passover is the Season for Questions
By Rabbi Mark J. Bisman, Spiritual Leader

Passover is a season for questions. Some questions have answers and some answers are never as good as the question. Abraham Joshuah Heschel once asked a sophomore Jewish philosophy class, “What is the difference between a question and an issue.” He explained: “A question has an answer. ‘What time is it’ is a question. You can look at a clock and find the answer. But ‘what is time’; that is a philosophical issue.” No answer will be as good as the question.

Rarely does a Jewish philosophical question emerge at a board of director’s meeting. Usually, board decisions are practical. Even when a decision sets a new policy for the congregation or for the day-to-day operations carried out by the staff, seldom is a question raised that cuts to the core of where the congregation stands on a Jewish philosophical issue. The question was phrased as a matter of Jewish law; but the question is a deeper one that deserves more than a “yes or no” answer. The ritual committee thought it had found a practical way to encourage our B’nai-Mitzvah to wear Tefillin.

Tefillin are leather boxes attached to the arm and to the forehead between the eyes that are worn during daily morning prayers. Inside the boxes are 4 biblical passages two of which [Exodus 13:1-10 & 13:11-16] explicitly state their goal is to explain a ritual behavior [giving the first born animal to God] on the basis of our freedom that resulted when God took us out of Egypt with a strong hand. “And you shall explain to your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I went free from Egypt.’ This shall serve as a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead…that with a mighty hand the Lord freed you [took you out] from Egypt [13:8-9].”

To ensure that a Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah would own their own pair of Tefillin both for instructional purposes and for future use, the ritual committee requested that the board authorize a raise in the B’nai Mitzvah fee sufficient to cover the cost of purchasing a pair Tefillin so that each child would be presented with his or her own Tefillin. While there could be numerous practical problems in implementing this policy, a deeper question was raised that night.

A practical problem: “What will our educators do when a parent does not want their daughter to be taught and told she must wear Tefillin during the Sunday morning prayer service — a part of our religious school curriculum?” Historically, in Conservative synagogues, before 1973, a woman was not counted in a minyan [a quorum of 10 adults] nor was a Bat Mitzvah normally asked to wear a Talit at her Simcha. Wearing Tefillin, like wearing a Talit, had been an exclusive obligation of the Jewish adult male.

Since classical Jewish tradition has exempted women from “time-bound” mitzvot, will we explain to those young women we instruct to put on Tefillin that by wearing Tefillin on a regular basis at religious school, they will be assuming an obligation to wear Tefillin daily? Don’t they deserve to know the consequences of their actions? Will they also be taught that they will be assuming an obligation from which tradition exempts them, an obligation, which is not a choice for a Jewish man.

Since so many Jewish men do not wear Tefillin regularly, we might think this is only a theoretical question.

The philosophical issues include “when does our doing something we are not required to do become an obligation that we must continue for the rest of our lives?” In some parts of our Jewish community, the principle is “if you are not required to do something, you are forbidden to do it.” For example, a daughter is not required by classical Jewish tradition to say Kaddish for a parent; likewise, a convert, male or female, is not obligated to “sit Shiva” or “say Kaddish” for the non-Jewish parent. Others feel that one may do what one is not required to do; still others feel that we should teach that a daughter and a convert have an obligation to “say Kaddish” for a parent.

When our children or others ask us “why does it take us so long to get to dinner at a Seder,” they are asking the same philosophical question: What makes the Seder night a time when we have to tell each other why we have any Jewish obligations at all? What are our personal Jewish stories and journeys that give meaning to our being part of the Jewish people? In the modern world where almost everything we do and every association of which we are part is a matter of our personal choice, why do we feel we need to be together with other Jews to tell the “Jewish” story?

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