Erev Chol Hamoed Pesach 5770 Sacred and Profane Rabbi Hillel Athias-Robles 2 April 2010

We are now in Chol Hamoed Pesach, the intermediate days between the two yom tovs, or holidays, at the beginning and end of Passover. There is also a Chol Hamoed during Sukkot. Chol Hamoed literally means the “profane” or “secular” of the festival. I think that we as Liberal Jews can extract an important message from the “profane” days we now find ourselves in.

Jewish holidays and Shabbat have been termed by the likes of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel as our cathedrals. They symbolise our inherent ability to consecrate and sanctify time, to set it apart from the daily calendar of occurrences. They therefore have been referred to as “islands in time”, isolated and divorced from the time and world which exist outside them. This is epitomised in the Havdalah “separation” service at the end of Yom Tov and Shabbat, during which we praise God for its ability to separate between the sacred and the profane, between sanctified time and the rest of the week.

Chol Hamoed, as its name implies, is therefore posited within the secular or profane axis of the secular/sacred time binary. Whereas traditionally in the holyday proper we are commended to refrain from taking an active participation in the world, from exercising our creative abilities to influence or alter it, during Chol Hamoed we return to our daily involvements and become agents of change in our surroundings. We go to work, we fulfil our commitments, and we become forces of innovation.
In spite of that, Chol Hamoed is by nature different from regular days. Being placed in the middle of the week-long festival, it is therefore imbued with its ethical meaning. In Pesach we affirm our conviction to freedom for all humanity. In Sukkot, during which we inhabit temporary shelters, we become aware of the frailty of life; we learn about trust, confidence, and security; and we reinforce our commitment to the plight of the dispossessed.  Chol Hamoed therefore symbolises transferring these important messages to our secular lives. We live in the world, yet we try to make our lives in the world meaningful through the inspiration that flows from morality.

We Liberal Jews try to find the delicate balance between secularism and tradition. We are secular in our integration to society, in our drive towards critical thinking, towards science. We demand truth, even when that truth tumbles down religious dogmas. Our behaviour is not constrained by the blind following of theological dicta, but ideally by generation-appropriate values that can enhance the development of the world around us. We are of this world. Yet at the same time, we stem from a religious tradition which has much to contribute to social discourse, to the formation of ideas about how our world and our human relationships should be managed. However, instead of using religion to isolate ourselves from that which is beyond us, to cloister ourselves with the pious, we seek to take the relevant aspects of tradition and apply them to the world we form a part of. We don’t live in an eternal Sabbath, in an island of time. Our days on this world should be like an eternal Chol Hamoed – active contributors in this world inspired by ancient ethical messages.

We can similarly learn about the balance between secularism and tradition from Shir Hashirim, the Song of Songs, customarily read during this Shabbat – the Shabbat of the Passover Chol Hamoed.  Attributed by the Rabbis to King Solomon, the Song of Songs is a romantic and erotic poem - teemed with love, sexuality, and sensuality - a celebration of the senses. It speaks of bodies firm like ivory, of breasts that are like fawns, of lips that are honey, and tongues drenched in milk and honey. I wonder for which of his 700 wives and 300 concubines King Solomon wrote it for. Maybe, in his great “wisdom”, he managed to convince each one of them that he wrote it exclusively for her – and got away with it! It seems quite obviously to be a secular text – there is no mention whatsoever of God or religious practice within its lines. Naturally, the prudish Rabbis became quite weary of such a lascivious poem. They went so far as to forbid people from singing it in the pub (Tosefta Sanhedrin 12:5)! The dominant view therefore become the one expressed by Rashi – the Song of Songs should be seen exclusively as an allegory of the love between God and the Children of Israel, and about their mutual longing for each other when the latter are in exile – an appropriate theme to match the Exodus narrative during Passover. Thus, we find Rabbi Akiva saying:

God forbid [that anyone might consider Shir haShirim not holy]. No person in Israel has ever disputed [the status of] Shir haShirim, for the entire world is not as valuable as the day on which Shir haShirim was given to Israel, for all of scripture is holy, and Shir haShirim is the holiest of the holy” (Mishnah Yadayim 3:5).

This view has therefore become the most advocated in traditional circles. Many Orthodox translators, including the popular Artscroll edition of the book, translate the Song of Songs using only its supposed allegorical meaning. Thus, "oh, that he might kiss me with the kisses of his mouth, for your caresses are more pleasant than wine," becomes "communicate Your innermost wisdom to me again in loving closeness, for Your friendship is dearer than all earthly delights" - referring to the relationship between God and humans. They’ve taken all the fun out of it! Nonetheless, purist rabbis like the Ibn Ezra and the Rashbam felt that one could not ignore the literal meaning of the poem and thus perceived both its secular and religious meanings as parallel and co-existing truisms.

Shir Hashirim thus sits on a double register: it is both carnal and spiritual. It entreats us to enjoy or embodied existence: to feel the flaming passion of love, to enjoy all the sensory delights of this world. But Shir Hashirim is also about covenant, about responsibility, about reciprocal relationships, and spiritual fervour. Shir Hashirim tells us to be of this world, to enjoy secular existence, but at the same time to enrich it with a spiritual dimension.

From Chol Hamoed and Shir Hashirim, may we learn to be of this world, yet to sprinkle our lives with a bit of otherworldliness.