Dear Friends,
 
As always, I will try to make this as concise as possible. The top of this email will be updates, data, corrections. At the bottom, a little Pesa h  message from me. You can choose which part you want to read, and which you want to ignore!  But I do encourage you to read through all the bullet points, as they contain corrected info re: Pesa h , and  critical and new  info regarding how to access TBA events with Zoom,  as we have put in new security protocols  to protect against the kind of distressing and ugly Zoombombing that happened to us twice last week.
 
  • TBA E-Seder
  • Some of you who tried to sign up for the e-Seder for Thursday night may have gotten the message that it begins at 6 PM. That was a technical error. It begins at 6:30 PM.
  • Also, those of you who tried to add your name to the google sheet to have you/your family lead part of the e-Seder by clicking on the link from the email from me last week have been able to do so.  But…if you tried to do so using the link on the Zoom registration page, that link was broken. It is now fixed, and you can go in and add your name. To make it even easier, here is that link.
  • A reminder that you will need to register for the e-Seder, and we may close registration once yontef begins on Wednesday night (meaning, 24 hours before the e-Seder is to begin). If you plan to join, even for a little bit, pls register now. Once you register, you will get a link via email.  That is the link you will use to actually launch you into the Zoom event on Thursday night. There is a password already embedded in the link so you will not need to actually type in a password to join the e-Seder.
  • On the e-Seder itself, you will all be muted except when I unmute you for the part you will be leading.
  • We will take a break for שולחן עורך/Shulhan Orekh (the meal), and then regather about an hour after that for those who want to stay until the very end!
  • And, as we noted, we may try to front load some of the songs/tunes that young kids most enjoy so that they can be there when we sing them.
  • Several of you asked which Haggadah to use. The truth is, most Haggadot have the full Heb/Eng text somewhere on the page, plus various other commentaries. Around the Kligfeld family seder table, we generally use these two Haggadot, which we give to you as a PDF (thanks to the generosity of the publisher) for you to use that night if you like:
  • “A Different Night”
  • “A Night to Remember”
  • The Rabbinical Assembly is also making available its beloved Haggadah, Feast of Freedom.

FOR MORE HAGGADOT, RECIPES, SONGS, VIDEOS AND RESOURCES CLICK HERE
(Questions? Email   Rabbi Schatz )
ZOOM Updates :  As many of you know, ZOOMBombing is a real, and distressing, phenomenon. It happened twice to TBA Zoom events last week. In order to protect our Zoom experiences from a future infiltration, we have put into place the following protocols. Pls share them with all in your family who may not get this individual email, so that they will know how to access a TBA Zoom event in the future:

Change your name  of your account to your FULL NAME - First and Last - if you do not have your name listed in a way we recognize, you will be removed from that TBA program or meeting.

Any TBA programming will have the same password:  Zoom2TBA. 
Keep password but do not share
We are still learning about this as Zoom, as a company, puts in more of their own protocols. It seems that some Zoom events created a while ago (like our ongoing Daily Minyan) will not require a password to enter. But all new events will. Therefore, pls keep this password handy (and do not share it on digital media. You can share it with individual friends/family members who may want to join a TBA event or service.)

Zoom meetings may sometimes be shared to Facebook live by the host, but NO LINKS or PASSWORDS will be shared on Facebook. All information will be on the website or sent via emails (Please do not invite friends or family to anything Beth Am is offering by sending links via social media)

All meetings will have  waiting rooms  - please try to be on time, as best you can, as the hosts of meetings/programs/minyan might not be as focused on letting you in during an event 

You can “raise your hand” in “participants” if you would like to share something as everyone will be muted and  only unmuted by the host 

When the meeting begins your video will be off. If you’re comfortable doing so, we would love to see you so  please turn on your video
  • Sale of Hametz—A reminder that we are not organizing a sale of hametz specifically for TBA, as we do all other years (ma nishtana!). Instead, we are encouraging you to sell the hametz that remains in your home through Pesah (more on that below) using this form for the Rabbinical Assembly: https://www.rabbinicalassembly.org/sale-hametz-0. Please do this today or Tuesday to ensure that your hametz will be properly sold for the duration of Pesah.
  • A quick reminder on why this is important. It is not only the case that hametz cannot be consumed by a Jew on Pesah. It can also neither be owned nor even seen. So since it is impossible to remove every possible ounce of hametz from our homes, no matter how much we clean, we sell whatever remains in our house to a non-Jew who really does own it for the whole holiday (just think of how much whiskey…and boxes of pasta…one non-Jew in New Jersey is about to own for 8 days!). Observant Jews do not eat any hametz that was owned by a Jew during Pesah…even once the holiday is over. That is why we sell the stuff we could not get rid of, so that it becomes permissible to us once the holiday is over.
  • Some of you have asked about time-zone issues, since this Rabbinical Assembly sale is based on the East Coast. I have conferred with my mentors, and they assure me that Jews on the West Coast will (who have three more real hours of time before hametz becomes forbidden to them) will not be stealing from the non-Jew in New Jersey from 7-10 AM on Wednesday morning, as the sale is set up to not take effect until the proper time in the seller’s time-zone. And there is no concern on the other side as well. Even though East Coast hametz will revert back to their owners when we still have 3 hours of Pesah left, it is both the case that the contract is written, again, so that the reversion only happens when it is the proper time in the Jewish person’s time zone AND the prohibition of owning hametz on the 8th day of Pesah (which does not even take place in Israel) is only minhag/custom, not formal law. So there would be no formal transgression if you ended up owning hametz, inadvertently, as the holiday waned in the late afternoon next Thursday!
  • Another Pesah Leniency in the age of COVID: There is a concept in Jewish Law/halakha called הפסד מרובה, or hefsed m’rubah, translated to great (financial) loss. When such loss is at stake, restrictions are loosened. So while it is the case that in normal years as Jews actually seek to rid their homes of hametz before Pesah, rationing down their pasta, bread, etc…and donating what they cannot finish, we are not required to do so with much more expensive items, such as whiskey (no joke!). Because think of the financial loss if people had to actually dispose of many bottle of expensive alcohol. Those Glenlivets and Glenfiddichs get sold in the sale of hametz. 
  • This year, when going to the market to restock simple food items is both medically perilous, and potentially more financially onerous, I permit you (and myself) to keep cupboards stocked with food items that, in other years, you might finish/dispose of/donate. Such as cereals, crackers, bread, pasta, cookies, cakes etc…Should you be moved to donate them, that is always lovely. But you can keep them in your home, but away from sight. Tape those cupboards shut and/or cover those shelves in freezers or refrigerators, so that you are not violating the prohibition of even gazing at hametz for the duration of the holiday. But you do not need to rid them from your home, for this year only.

  • Siyyum B’khorot—Feast of the Firstborn—A reminder that we will be celebrating a siyyum, completing a tractate of rabbinic material, on Wednesday morning, right after Daily Minyan. (And using the same Zoom link as Daily Minyan, which is here: https://zoom.us/j/908168811). All first-borns, who otherwise would have needed to fast that day, may eat if they are (virtually) present for this event. Minyan is at 7:30. The siyyum will begin around 8:05

  • SGN (Some Good News)—Some of you may have seen that actor John Krasinski (The Office…and other stuff!) has started a new Youtube series called SGN. It is light, funny and wonderful. (For a particularly sweet one, click here, and start watching at about 8:30 in to the video). Well, I thought we should share some good news here and there as we communicate with you. So here goes! (And with kudos to Jeff Zack for initiating this effort within the TBA community!)

This morning, Temple Beth Am & Pressman Academy expressed their deep gratitude for our frontline health care workers by sending breakfast catered by Bibi’s Bakery & Cafe for 80 Cedars Sinai Emergency Room and Labor & Delivery personnel. This was only possible thanks to your generous donations! Further meals will be provided to additional hospitals after Passover, so please continue to donate!  www.tbala.org/feedthefrontline
And now for a more personal message from me. Let me say, again, the obvious: this is really hard. Like a reverse Dayenu. Even for those of us with roofs over our head, it is hard. (And, of course, how much more so for those who lack even that). Even for those of us with food in the pantry, it is hard. Even if we are not sick ourselves, or have a loved one who is, it is hard. Even if we still have all or some of our income, it is hard. Even if our children are essentially getting by with their school work, it is hard. Even if, even if, even if…
 
This is an era whose magnitude and terror has not yet reached its apex, and it already is one that will be considered epic. There will be movies made about this moment in history. Books and scholarship written. Who knows? Depending on the total morbidity, perhaps even memorials in DC to the American victims of COVID, seeing as how the number of deaths may eclipse the total number of US soldiers killed in Korea and Vietnam. Whereas much of the western world measures modern time as AD, suggesting that time and reality itself had a before-Jesus and after-Jesus meaning, there will be aspects of our lives, and of this society, that will have an AC (after-COVID) “date” to it, even if it is not referenced that way in our calendar. Much may be different when the crisis is over. 
 
In the meantime, we are suffering. Again, you don’t need to be struggling to get air into your lungs or be on the verge of destitution to be suffering. If you are anything like me, you sometimes wake up with an anvil on your chest, as this reality is so heavy, so grievous. Sometimes the worry and the anxiety is palpable. Like it has mass. Like you can touch it. This notion makes me think of the midrashic take on the wording of the 9 th  plague. After the Torah explains that there was darkness over Egypt, we have the words: וימש חושך.   Vayamesh hoshekh . There is no unanimity on how to translate the first word, which is the verb. The second word means darkness itself. Midrash Rabbah links the verb  vaymesh  to the word  l’mashesh , used several times in the Torah. That verb means “to grope” or “to feel.” And so the midrash concludes that what made this darkness in Egypt different than all other darknesses ( ma nishtana !), and therefore not just the absence of light, was that this was a palpable darkness. A bleakness you could feel. A gloom that was tangible. You’ve heard of tension so thick you could cut it with a knife? In Egypt, there was darkness so real that even light couldn’t defeat it.
 
Does that seem familiar? Even more, the next verse explains that the impact of the darkness was that no one could see one another for three days. The Egyptians didn’t have zoom. And to not see the people in your lives? Well, that’s a plague.
 
Commentaries wonder about the Israelites’ experience through this palpable darkness. The Torah says וּֽלְכָל־בְּנֵ֧י יִשְׂרָאֵ֛ל הָ֥יָה א֖וֹר בְּמוֹשְׁבֹתָֽם. All of the children of Israel had light in their dwellings. The language is interesting, because it does not say that they were spared the plague only  in Goshen , which is the part of Egypt they inhabited, and which the Torah specifically mentions regarding the absence of many of the other plagues.  But, literally, “wherever they sat” they were free from the impact of the darkness. Two medieval French commentators, Chizkuni and B’khor Shor, say that what protected the Israelites in this plague was not raw geography. Nor was it God’s supernatural interaction, as is the case with the 10 th  plague. No, here, when it came to physical, overwhelming, crushing darkness…there was something light in the Israelite spirit that kept the gloom at bay. Even when they visited Egyptian homes in neighborhoods suffused with ponderous darkness, the Israelites could see. One another. And even the Egyptians in their suffering.
 
I take two things from these interpretations. One is that we must find a way to see people in their suffering. Even when darkness utterly occludes their sense of light, we must open our eyes and be witness to their bleakness. For however terrible it is to suffer, it is more so to suffer alone. Two is that we must find within ourselves the same inner light that illuminated the Israelites’ world when everything was shrouded in darkness. That was not magic. Nor, I would posit, was it easy. But it was essential. For their ability to muster light when it seemed otherwise completely illusory kept them safe. It kept them together. It girded them for the travail and journey that was aborning. And it made ultimate liberation possible.
 
We remain in our Egypt, our מצרים/מיצרים  mitzrayim/metzarim , in these dark, narrow straits. There is an end to this darkness that seems not to abate. We must not only imagine the light that will be waiting for us when it is over, but also find a way to shine our light through it.
 
Wishing you a joyful, sweet, kosher, family-centered, delicious, restful and memorable Pesa h . 
 
Rabbi Adam Kligfeld