Leviticus 1:1-5:26
Almost Great
The Shabbat preceding Passover used to have a special role in many Jewish communities. It was a time when the rabbi would stand before the congregation and review the various rules and customs surrounding the coming festival. The details could take quite a while to recite, so that Shabbat came to be known as Shabbat ha-Gadol, the Great Shabbat.
But this year, the Shabbat before Passover falls just before Passover, with no time in-between the two; by then, virtually all the preparations for the holiday will have been made. So, if we were to have an oral recitation of the rules of Passover in synagogue, that recitation should logically take place not on next week’s Shabbat but on this week’s, that is, the Shabbat of March 19-20, which we might therefore refer to as the “Almost Great Shabbat.”
Many rabbis will no doubt use this Shabbat’s time to go over some of the rules of Passover, although they, and we, know perfectly well that we can also refer to various books and articles, from the 16th century Shulḥan Arukh to the latest bulletin on the internet.
This circumstance highlights a broader phenomenon in Judaism, the gradual shift from what modern scholars have termed “mimetic” religion, whereby the family and the local authorities provided much or all of what one needed to know, to an increasingly book-centered and yeshivah-transmitted learning. It hardly bears saying that these two centers of authority are sometimes in conflict, both as to the little details of how to be an observant Jew in today’s world—hence, who to listen to and who to ignore—as well as to the larger questioning of why things should be as they are.
The very fact that we tend not to ask ourselves these questions already embodies our own answer—until, perhaps, it doesn’t. The preceding few paragraphs are not intended to add much to the discussion, other than to suggest that the coming week’s detailed Passover preparations may actually serve, at least for a passing moment or two, as the focal point for these larger issues. Whose rules should I follow, and why?
My own feeling, for what it’s worth, is that our answer to these basic questions must lead back to the particular Jewish communities to which we belong. Simply put, you can’t be a Jew alone. You need to belong to some community, and what sort of community you choose to belong to must eventually embody your community’s own agreement (explicit or unspoken) on these essentials.