Finding the Joy · Parashat Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach
You Will See Where I Have Been
You Will See Where I Have Been
This post was written and scheduled before Pesach began.
Wednesday night, somewhere between the third and fourth cups, I noticed the wine. Not the taste — the fact of it. Four cups is a lot. The seder’s four cups correspond to one of four promises God made to the Israelites before the Exodus, four verbs in a single passage: I will free you, I will deliver you, I will redeem you, I will take you as My people.
The Talmud says it plainly: ein simcha ela b’yayin — there is no joy without wine. That doesn’t mean joy requires intoxication. It means joy in Jewish life has a physical medium.
The wine we brought to our rabbi’s table for first night came from the Judean hills — a Jerusalem Vineyard Cabernet, from a vineyard in the ground we are trying to make home. It is a small thing, choosing a wine from a place you haven’t arrived at yet. Pouring it at a seder table in Atlanta while the aliyah file sits in a bureaucratic queue. Drinking the land before you live on it.
But that, too, is an old arrangement. Because there is a fifth promise. After the four verbs of liberation, God adds one more: v’heiveiti — “I will bring you into the land.”
Four promises got four cups. The fifth got a cup that sits on the table and is never drunk. We call it the cup of Eliyahu — poured for the prophet who hasn’t arrived, held open for a promise not yet fulfilled.
This Shabbat falls during Chol HaMoed Pesach, and the Torah reading isn’t the usual weekly parsha. We read from Shemot 33 and 34, set in the aftermath of the golden calf. And in the middle of all that wreckage, Moses makes the most audacious request in the Torah:
וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הַרְאֵ֥נִי נָ֖א אֶת־כְּבֹדֶֽךָ׃ He said, “Oh, let me behold Your Presence!”
Show me who You are. Not the commandments, not the cloud, not the fire — You. And God’s answer:
וַהֲסִרֹתִי֙ אֶת־כַּפִּ֔י וְרָאִ֖יתָ אֶת־אֲחֹרָ֑י וּפָנַ֖י לֹ֥א יֵרָאֽוּ׃ Then I will take My hand away and you will see My back; but My face must not be seen.“
You can see where I’ve been. You cannot see where I’m going. The plain sense is immediate: understanding follows the event. You don’t see God’s face in the moment. You see God’s trace afterward, once the moment has passed and you’re still standing.
The Israelites leaving Egypt didn’t know they were performing the foundational story of Jewish civilization. They were scared, carrying unleavened dough that didn’t have time to rise. The narrative we recited at the seder was written from the other side of the sea. That’s what achorai means.
The same week we were cleaning our kitchens, twenty-five olim from North America landed at Ben Gurion Airport, with another fifteen finalizing their citizenship the same day. Forty new Israelis in a single day, in the middle of a war with Iran.
One — a thirty-year-old lawyer from Minneapolis — told reporters the war strengthened his decision. Another, a woman from Baltimore, admitted she was nervous. She came anyway. Since Operation Roaring Lion began, more than 830 aliyah files have been opened by North American Jews. They can’t see God’s face. They’re walking in the direction of the knot.
The haftarah for this Shabbat is Ezekiel 37 — the valley of dry bones:
וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֵלַ֔י בֶּן־אָדָ֕ם הֲתִֽחְיֶ֖ינָה הָעֲצָמ֣וֹת הָאֵ֑לֶּה וָאֹמַ֕ר אֲדֹנָ֥י יֱהֹוִ֖ה אַתָּ֥ה יָדָֽעְתָּ׃ I was asked, “O mortal, can these bones live again?” I replied, “O my Sovereign GOD, only You know.”
Only You know. Ezekiel doesn’t say yes. He doesn’t say no. He says: I can’t see that far. And then:
וְהִנַּבֵּ֖אתִי כַּאֲשֶׁ֣ר צִוָּ֑נִי וַתָּבוֹא֩ בָהֶ֨ם הָר֜וּחַ וַיִּֽחְי֗וּ וַיַּֽעַמְדוּ֙ עַל־רַגְלֵיהֶ֔ם חַ֖יִל גָּד֥וֹל מְאֹד־מְאֹֽד׃ I prophesied as I was commanded. The breath entered them, and they came to life and stood up on their feet, a vast multitude.
The Exodus and the dry bones belong together — both are stories about a people who looked finished and weren’t. The bones didn’t know they were about to stand. The Israelites at the sea didn’t know the water would part.
Faith isn’t certainty. It’s movement before comprehension. You open a door into the dark and pour wine for someone who hasn’t come. You board a plane to a country under fire. You bring a Cabernet from the Judean hills to a seder table in Atlanta and drink the fifth promise before it’s fulfilled.
The seder table is cleared by now. The cup of Eliyahu was poured, the door was opened, the street was quiet. The wine in that cup came from hills I’ve walked. I know the land. I just don’t live there yet.
Shabbat shalom, and chag sameach.
— Uriel ben Avraham