Got to Get Ourselves Back to the Garden
Sermon, Shabbat Final Day Passover 5782
As you may know by now, there are four different names for the holiday of Passover. The first name is Pesach, of course, the festival of the paschal lamb that recognizes the blood on the doorpost that signaled to the angel of death to leap over our Israelite homes; the Pesach offering was the sacrificial roast we ate on the first night of Passover in days of the Tabernacle and Temple. The second name is Chag HaMatzot, the festival of the unleavened flavor-free bread, Matzah, baked in haste and flat and easily packed and digested with difficulty. The third name for this holiday is Zman Cheiruteinu, the season of our freedom, central theme of this great and universal freedom festival.
But fourth there is that oldest name of all, Chag haAviv, the springtime holiday, commemorating this loveliest time of year, when the earth bursts forth with life and blossom and all the world can seem like a glorious garden. By tradition, spring is the season of hope, the rebirth of belief in the goodness of God and of God’s green world. It’s not that hope can’t blossom at any time and in any weather, but the green grass, warm, pollen-filled days, and the rich embracing feel of the air of spring are somehow all hopeful in their own ways. Spring is, of course, the time when life seems new, fresh, dreamlike; in short, washed in the lovely shades of bright spring flowers and bursting green growth. As poet Christina Rosetti put it, “There is no time like Spring, when life’s alive in everything.”
For the first time in my life, we held our home Seder this year outdoors, on the green lawn of our backyard, surrounded by flowers and trees and enjoying a perfect spring evening. It was a great way to enjoy Pesach during this hospitable time of year in Tucson, and it gave a very different meaning to the springtime festival. No longer was it a matter of extrapolating the season from a few sprigs of green parsley on a plate or in saltwater—instead we were surrounded by the beauty of nature, and thank God the weather generously cooperated with a truly glorious spring night under the full moon and stars. It was a magical night, Seder al fresco. Instead of the front door, we opened the garden gate for Elijah the Prophet. Barring weather complications, I think we will always hold home seders outdoors in the future, even it makes hiding the afikomen a little more complicated.
To further the springtime theme, Sophie and I went to the Tucson Botanical Gardens today to celebrate the Chag HaAviv and see their wonderful little butterfly exhibit. It is possible that there is nothing more lovely in the natural world than fluttering butterflies and flittering moths, and there are something like 100 of them in the enclosed greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens. They range in size all the way up to the huge and beautiful Atlas Moth, with a 12-inch wingspan of intricate design, and there are butterflies of all shapes and sizes, one with amazingly deep-colored blue wings that are a quiet brown on the underside. These moths and butterflies live for only a few weeks, sometimes less, but they are quite wonderful to behold indeed.
And there is one further garden motif to enjoy on this holiday. Tomorrow, on the Final Day of Passover Shabbat, we also read a special selection in addition to our Torah and Haftarah readings. It’s in the last section of the Hebrew Bible, the Ketuvim, and it’s called the Song of Songs, Shir haShirim.
The Song of Songs is the ultimate love poem of the Bible, a beautiful and complex hymn to human, physical love unequaled in Western religious literature. Shir haShirim asher liShlomo… “The Song of Songs which is Solomon’s—kiss me with the kisses of your mouth” it begins, and then it gets really hot. It is a nearly post-modern text in which the voice changes with every chapter and within every chapter. You aren’t always sure who is speaking—one man? A woman? Two women? A group? And you aren’t always sure to whom the gorgeous love poetry is addressed. It’s a rich, swirling tapestry of love and desire.
A perfect text for the springtime of the year, when we are told that young people’s, and not so young people’s, hearts turn to thoughts of love and life renewed and begun. Shir HaShirim includes many images and metaphors of springtime growth and blossoming. There are lush descriptions of lillies and apple trees, of cedars and roses, of figs hanging from trees and heavy clusters of grapes drooping on vines. Buds appear, pomegranates bloom, doves coo, flowers waft sweet fragrances everywhere. The Song of Songs is literally a garden of love, and the garden motif is used repeatedly throughout; a young woman is a garden; the king has a garden filled with delights; a young lover has a garden filled with flowers that he plucks.
Biblical scholar Phyllis Trible has written movingly about Song of Songs. She says that if the Garden of Eden is paradise lost, then Song of Songs is paradise found: “… it portrays Paradise in this world, rediscovered through love.”
But the Song of Songs is more even than that. It is a celebration of the gift that God has given us to love freely and with our bodies as well as our souls. In married human love Judaism sees an opportunity for joy and holiness, for sanctifying life through physical and emotional fulfillment.
What a great, and sexy, gift in this verdant time of year…
But let us return, if you will, back to that idea of the garden, of the rich growth and absolute vitality of the natural world in this glorious season. For spring is a reminder to all of us that we have a moral obligation to this good earth. Adam was given the task of tending and nurturing the garden first, lovdah ul’shomrah, to serve it and to guard it, in Genesis. He failed in his initial task, perhaps, but that obligation, to be stewards of this earth, remains for us, his descendants, to protect it for our own children, our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
You know, in the renewed hustle and bustle of this slightly post-pandemic world, when our concerns range from war in Ukraine to inflation at home to a fractured politics to acts of terror and Anti-Semitism, it is easy to lose sight of our responsibility to this earth we share. But the reality is that our first task as human beings is to take care of our home planet, to prevent its destruction and pollution and ravaging by our own acts of selfishness and error.
Global warming didn’t stop when we spent the last few years focused on Coronavirus—although the sharp drop in human activity actually slowed it for a year or so—and it certainly isn’t stopping for high gas prices or Putin’s brutal war of aggression. We need to remind ourselves now, and always, that this garden we enjoy can be destroyed not just with a bang but through a plethora of simple human mistakes, of people, us, refusing to change simple habits and bullheadedly insisting that our own minor comforts take precedence over long-term disaster.
I was thinking about an old song today, written in the 1960s by Joni Mitchell, over 50 years ago. Its words seem right on track for today, again—or rather, still:
Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, Tell me, where are you going
This he told me
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
Well, then can I roam beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel myself a cog in somethin' turning
And maybe it's the time of year
Yes and maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am
But life is for learning
We are stardust, we are golden
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust, we are golden
We are caught in the devil’s bargain
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden
If there is one more lesson to take from the Passover holiday this year, it is this: the Chag HaAviv reminds us that springtime is a gift, that this gorgeous, precious earth is a gift, and now is our time to save ourselves, and our own descendants, from the destruction of this sacred planet which we have been given. We have been given a beautiful, holy place. As Shir HaShirim enjoins us, B’rach Dodi—hurry, beloved. For now is the time to act to protect and preserve this, God’s garden, our garden.