Parashat HaShavua - Metzora/Shabbat HaGadol

עֲבָדִים הָיִינוּ לְפַרְעֹה בְּמִצְרָיִם

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt (Passover Haggadah)

In his classic book, Stages of Faith, James Fowler posits that faith is born in the context of family.  He proposes a triadic shape to this relationship: self, others (parents or those in a parental relationship to us) and what he calls SCVP, Shared Centers of Value and Power.  Shared Centers of Value and Power include, “the family’s ‘story,’ its recognized and unrecognized collection of formative myths, into which both self and others invest trust and loyalty.”

The Passover seder embodies this triadic shape.  The invitation list includes ourselves, the others who make up our inherited and chosen family, and the formative story of the Jewish people, as mediated to us through the haggadah.  

As we sit down with our families to our seders this year, we will once again read – and attempt to relive –  the story in which we are urged by our tradition to invest our trust and loyalty.  As we do so, it is with the hope that by looking backwards and more fully incorporating our past into our self-understanding, we will gain the great wisdom and clarity to work, with empathy, for justice in our present and future.  Hag sameah.

Rabbi Anne Ebersman
Director of Jewish Programming N-5 and Director of Hesed (Community Engagement) and Tzedek (Social Responsibility)