The Fire That Stays

It's Thursday morning, and I'm sitting in my office as I write this (and schedule it to post tomorrow morning). And I have just signed a power of attorney authorizing my rabbi to sell my bread.

This is one of the stranger things you do as a Jew in the week before Pesach. You sign a document — a legal instrument — granting your rabbi the authority to sell all the chametz in your home to a non-Jew for the duration of the holiday. Rabbi Zimmerman at Beth Shalom handles it for me. I filled out the form, signed it, and made a donation. In a few minutes I'll log on to his parsha class (the wonders of Zoom, no Atlanta traffic required).

Across the room there's a case of kosher wine that arrived this week — a 2018 reserve cabernet sauvignon from the Judean Hills, non-mevushal, kosher for Pesach. Some of it is for Shabbat. Most of it is for the seders, including first night at Rabbi Zimmerman's table.

I haven't yet started the deep cleaning yet. That's coming up. Very, very soon. The pantry is still full. But the wheels are turning — chametz sold, wine procured, getting ready for all the Pesach season events. This is the infrastructure of Jewish life. Not just the seder itself but the thousand small acts of preparation that make the seder possible.

Parashat Tzav, which we read this Shabbat, is also about infrastructure.

Last week, Vayikra was the invitation — God called to Moses, and the system of offerings was laid out. Tzav is the operations manual. The word itself means "command," and Rashi notes that it implies urgency — ziruz — a diligence that comes into force immediately and is binding on future generations. Not a suggestion. Not a one-time instruction. A standing order.

And the very first task the priest performs each morning, before anything else, is this:

וְלָבַ֨שׁ הַכֹּהֵ֜ן מִדּ֣וֹ בַ֗ד וּמִֽכְנְסֵי־בַד֮ יִלְבַּ֣שׁ עַל־בְּשָׂרוֹ֒ וְהֵרִ֣ים אֶת־הַדֶּ֗שֶׁן אֲשֶׁ֨ר תֹּאכַ֥ל הָאֵ֛שׁ אֶת־הָעֹלָ֖ה עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֑חַ וְשָׂמ֕וֹ אֵ֖צֶל הַמִּזְבֵּֽחַ׃

The priest shall dress in linen raiment, with linen breeches next to his body; and he shall take up the ashes to which the fire has reduced the burnt offering on the altar and place them beside the altar.

— Vayikra 6:3

He removes the ashes. That is the job. Before the morning offering, before the incense, before anything dramatic happens — the priest puts on his linen, walks to the altar, and clears away what yesterday's fire left behind. The Hebrew term is terumat hadeshen, the lifting of the ashes, and it is the least glamorous act in the entire sacrificial system. Nobody writes songs about it. But without it, the altar chokes and the fire dies.

Then comes the verse that carries the whole parsha:

אֵ֗שׁ תָּמִ֛יד תּוּקַ֥ד עַל־הַמִּזְבֵּ֖חַ לֹ֥א תִכְבֶּֽה׃ {ס}        

A perpetual fire shall be kept burning on the altar, not to go out.

— Vayikra 6:6

Eish tamid. A perpetual fire. Lo tikhbeh — it shall not go out.

Read that again.

The fire is perpetual, but it is not self-sustaining.

One verse earlier, the text specifies: every morning the priest feeds wood to it — morning after morning. The perpetual fire requires a person to show up, every single day, and do the work. Clear the ashes. Lay the wood. Keep it going. The fire did not survive because it was miraculous. It survived because someone tended it.

Missiles struck Dimona and Arad this past Saturday night — nearly two hundred people injured. Cluster munitions hit Bnei Brak. On Monday, a Hezbollah rocket killed Nuriel Dubin, z"l, a twenty-seven-year-old from Margaliot in the Upper Galilee. She was engaged, planning a September wedding. She worked as a youth counselor and served as a combat soldier in the reserves.

Soroka Medical Center in Be'er Sheva moved patients underground and treated the wounded through the night. A doctor on staff there — Asra Abu Rafa — came home from his shift and was hit by shrapnel along with his wife and infant daughter when missile fragments struck their village.

Eish tamid. The fire does not go out. But it doesn't tend itself. The doctors who went back to work. The paramedics who drove through the still falling shrapnel. The parents who held their children in sealed rooms and then, the next morning, made breakfast. These are the people clearing the ashes and laying the wood, so the fire stays lit.

And then there is the other kind of fire-tending — the kind that happens with ink instead of wood.

Rashi said tzav implies a command binding on future generations. He was talking about the altar service, but the principle is wider than the Temple. Every Jewish practice that survived the destruction of the Temple survived because someone found a way to carry it forward without the original infrastructure. The fire moved from the altar to the page.

This week, JNS reported on the five hundredth anniversary of the Prague Haggadah — the first complete illustrated Haggadah ever printed by Jews, created by Gershom Cohen in 1526. One copy traveled from Europe to Charleston, South Carolina, carried by an immigrant named Edward Lewith in the late nineteenth century. His family recorded births and deaths in its margins for three generations, in English and Yiddish, before donating it to Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim, one of the oldest synagogues in America. Five hundred years. Same text. Same instructions for the same night — the bread that didn't rise, the questions the youngest child asks, the door opened for Elijah. New names written in the margins each generation.

That is what eish tamid looks like on paper. Someone prints it. Someone carries it across an ocean. Someone writes a child's name in the margin. Someone passes it forward.

Pesach begins Wednesday night. In six days, Jews will sit at tables in Atlanta and Jerusalem and Prague and Buenos Aires and read the same story we have read for longer than any Haggadah has been in print.

We will do this while a war is burning in the land where the story began.

We have done this before — under Roman siege, in Spanish cellars, in displaced persons camps, in bomb shelters in Be'er Sheva.

The Haggadah has survived five hundred years in print and three thousand in memory because someone tended it. Someone cleared the table and set it again. Someone told the story one more time.

Sunday night, the Atlanta Israel Coalition is putting on an event called Bridges of Hope — a Persian Jewish vocalist, a Black soul musician from the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel, a Moroccan interfaith activist, an Iranian-American comedian, a Haitian hip-hop artist who became Orthodox, a Holocaust survivor, a Kashmiri Hindu human rights advocate. None of them had to be there. Every one of them chose it.

I am supposed to say a few words. I think I'll talk about fire. The chametz sale is signed. The wine is from the Judean Hills. The parsha class starts in a few minutes and I should go. There is a document in my email authorizing a rabbi to sell my bread, and a case of cabernet from the hills where David tended sheep, and a week of war on the news, and a seder to prepare for, and a five-hundred-year-old Haggadah that someone carried across an ocean with their children's names in the margins. All of it, every piece of it, is someone tending the fire.

Lo tikhbeh. It shall not go out.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham