Pesach/Passover—a Good, Sweet Revolution
Last week, Rabbi Nilton Bonder joined the Climate Cafe Multifaith for a conversation about Pesach/Passover. The conversation unfolded with a focus on Springtime, and an exploration that every Spring there is an opportunity for newness to arise. Generation after generation on this good planet has lived to see Spring after Spring. These past generations wove the stories to help us learn who we are today, even as they also laid down lines of history—the good and the troubling—that we inherit. In Passover and during Springtime these stories and this history comes together.
Spring is a personal, community, and planetary event. It is also a spiritual one that rings of the promise of a Spring one day to come where the hope long awaited comes to be, and God indeed can dwell among us. Our ancestors lived each Spring toward this hope. And we, as the inheritors of this new Spring this year, mark our lintels with the understanding that we face challenges equal to the many generations before us. We need a new Spring. As Rabbi Bonder puts it, “we are all in need” of a “so necessary Spring…because our world needs a new vision and that is not a simple thing.”
“Every Spring is a revolution, a good, sweet revolution—of renewing, of having new green, new possibilities. It’s life being reborn.”
—Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Photo by Edwardo Soares, Brazil.
Rabbi Bonder shared a few key ideas and teachings. These teachings tackled the challenge of human ambition and the human desire for conquest. A key question could be asked, ‘how to keep the human desire for mastery and achievement in balance with care of the planet, and service to and care for others?’ Rabbi Bonder also spoke to the crisis of authoritarianism. He sees possibilities for renewal ahead for both people and planet if we can build relationships of affection and reimagine community from the “utopia of Abraham.”
In this Conversation Clip video below, Ambition, Nature and Responsibility, Rabbi Bonder walks us through key stories in the Hebrew Bible—from Noah to Babel to Moses—that trace human ambition and the desire to conquer the challenges we face. The words ‘conquer’ and ‘conquest’ are loaded for the modern listener. These words can bring to mind the worst violences of our history. Yet the word ‘conquer’ includes more nuanced meanings. When we seek to achieve and succeed, then we are talking about conquering as overcoming personal, social or material obstacles, winning the race, gaining recognition, and achieving the prize.
Rabbi Bonder acknowledges drive and ambition as part of the human being. But he asks the question, “what is the limit?” We have bulldozers and monocrop agriculture, but, “Are we up to the challenge of having that kind of power?” Stories like the Tower of Babel teach us that “just ambition, without being somehow tempered by something else, is a problem…if I'm only for myself, I cannot define myself as a human being. So I have responsibility with the others.”
Rabbi Bonder lives in Brasil/Brazil where in addition to serving as Rabbi for the Conservative Congregation of Brazil and founding the Midrash Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, he is also an author and playwright (full bio below). His most current artistic project is a production of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, a work so controversial that over 100 years later there is still argument as to when, if, and why there were riots following its debut performance in 1913. According to critics of the time, Rite of Spring turned elegant classical harmonies and graceful ballet into the clanking, knock-kneed “work of a madman.” Yet today, Rite of Spring is recognized as a masterwork of innovation and influence.
Rabbi Bonder, then, greets this year’s Pesach with—literally—Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring ringing and clanking in his ears. Says Rabbi Bonder, “Stravinsky was very, very revolutionary with this piece. And Nijinsky was the choreographer that with this dance he became like, an icon to disruption.” This is the kind of disruption Rabbi Bonder sees reflected in Spring as well, ecologically, spiritually and culturally. It is “cultural disruption in a good way,” the way of nature. Spring is creation’s own mechanism for innovation—where seeds break open and shoots erupt, eggs break open, and new and necessary things rise up.
In this Conversation Clip video below, A New Spring, Rabbi Bonder speaks to the need for a new Spring that reaches widely through our shared cultural and spiritual lives. He speaks to the Russian war on Ukraine, and how dismaying it is to feel as if we are caught in historical regression. Yet each generation before us took what steps they could take, as our generation will as well.
Springtime innovations look different for different generations. For humanity this time around, we need disruptions that will lead to a tempering of unchecked conquest and ambition and a return to caring for one another. To do that we need to rethink some deeply instituted systems, even systems that show up in our Bibles. Bible stories were revolutionary in their time. They can be revolutionary again as we seek inspiration today.
For example, during Pesach, a favorite text of the Rabbis is from Deuteronomy 11:13-17:
Now, if you completely obey God’s commandments that I am giving you right now, by loving the Lord your God and by serving God with all your heart and all your being, then God will provide rain for your land at the right time—early rain and late rain—so you can stock up your grain, wine, and oil. God will also make your fields lush for your livestock, and you will eat and be satisfied. But watch yourselves! Otherwise, your heart might be led astray so you stray away, serving other gods and worshipping them. Then the Lord’s anger would burn against you. God will close the sky up tight. There won’t be any rain, and the ground won’t yield any of its crops. You will quickly disappear off the wonderful land the Lord is giving to you. (CEB—mostly)
This is certainly a good text! It very ably spells out the consequences to the land, wildlife, domestic animals, atmosphere and people that results from pollution, extraction and destruction. We are seeing this play out in real time. I am not sure what we expected would happen when we broke the commandment to care for the earth our home—and God’s own creation. I, like the Rabbis, approve the sternness of this admonition!
Yet Rabbi Bonder would call us to look deeper. He challenges us to discover the affection in the word ‘love’—love the Lord with all your heart!
God will provide rain for your land at the right time.
—Deuteronomy 11:14
Droplets of rain in Spring by Erika Löwe, cropped.
Long ago the people who brought the books of the Bible together needed a commanding, authoritarian voice to ensure order among petty kings and warlords. That was their innovation, and an important Spring for them. It is time, however, we changed it up. Today, the best hope we have for a renewed ‘love’ for God, for each other, and for the planet, is not more authoritarian command, but to renew our relationships.
Rabbi Bonder explains, “the big problem there is we're using an old Spring—that was very important, and it still plays some important role in our world. But we have to change it quickly because it speaks the language of authority….Don't go that way. Don't do this. Don't do that. It's a very paternal/maternal way of caring, but this is still in the realm of control.”
Rabbi Bonder offers a parent/child example to explain the importance of building affectionate relationships. For example on the playground, a parent might have to navigate a conflict when another child wants to play with the toy their own child is occupied with. Affection here assists children to grow emotionally, whereas an authoritarian command suppresses that growth. A parent also might try to convince a child to share a toy using reason. A reasonable or logical argument might be that by sharing the toy with a friend today, you will get to share your friend’s toy another day. But this, too, Rabbi Bonder explains, is flawed. It requires the child to suppress their emotions—as they still don’t emotionally want to share. It also teaches transactional thinking and self interest instead of relationship and affection.
In a familiar, Rabbinic style, Rabbi Bonders says, “It will be good for you. But it is not simple.”
“It will be good for you.
But it is not simple.”
—Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Photo from Ashwini Chaudhary.
“It's not simple for you to have in a routine moment of your life where you're there in the park reading your book while your child is playing. And suddenly you're brought into this sort of cosmic human situation and you have the ability to react accordingly. But what you should do is use that moment to use affection. This is what a mother or father could do. The child will not understand your authority to ‘say give it to him.’ It will understand if first of all, you show yourself as somebody that is helping him to understand the world. If you show yourself as somebody that is trustworthy.”
This idea of affection, trust, and relationship—as Rabbi Bonder puts it “is the language of the heart, which is the language of affection”—echoes a wider movement globally to find a way through consumerism, extractivism, and transactionalism. Rabbi Bonder invites a mix of both renewal and innovation as he draws his vision for social responsibility and care for each other right back to the story of Abraham.
“How do we build houses that are open from all sides?”
—Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Photo by Li Yang.
For Rabbi Bonder the story of Abraham takes on a dimension of what it means to have a home-place. “[Abraham] has a tent, and his tent is open in all directions… He built that tent on a certain ground.” What is now his by his ambition, by his desire to have something for himself and conquer obstacles to get there, must now find balance.
I returned to Genesis 15:5-20 to reflect on Rabbi Bonder’s teaching:
God said to Abram, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land as your possession.” (6)
But Abram said, “Lord God, how do I know that I will actually possess it?” (7)
God’s answer to Abraham’s question is instructive. Abraham will know he really possesses it by the stars that shine above him in the sky. By the children who will be born and grow up on the land. By the history that will unfold and has unfolded on the land itself. By neighbors, languages and relationships. Whether they are there as slaves, or awash in wealth, the land, its animals, stars, and its history is indelibly part of the covenant itself.
Says Rabbi Bonder, “…there is possession. But there was possession that is tempered with the open tent from all sides, meaning social responsibility, understanding that he is not an island disconnected from the environment—the human environment, and even more than the human environment—around him. This is the utopia of Abraham. His family will be not only his family, but he will be tied to a family from generations to come. He will be responsible for what happens to humankind, and whatever happens to humankind will be directly connected to his own heritage. This is a new kind of linkage of human connection.”
Rabbi Bonder quotes Hillel the Elder directly, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Photo by Ari Bronstein, hiking on Pesach. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
“Spirituality is exactly this, it is you caring for yourself in a healthy way, creating identities, developing potentials, and taking care of your own health and life. And, at the same time, caring for the others—we cannot be a human being without doing that.”
—Rabbi Nilton Bonder
Our conversation wrapped up with practical wisdom about human beings, over-work, and over consumption. In a time of environmental depletion and ambitious overachievement, a new Spring reminds us of the vital importance and satisfaction there is in serving others. Says Rabbi Bonder, “to serve is so much more enjoyable than to be sitting at the table and eating and feeding yourself. For sure we all have to be fed…but we should not always be feeding ourselves.” As we seek to rebalance our lives, we need to understand service as a necessary expression of our humanity. It is what makes us human.
“It is so incredible to serve, and it gives you so much out of life.”
Rabbi Bonder has ordinations from JTSA and from Reb Zalman Schachter, as South American representative for the Jewish Renewal Movement. For 36 years he is rabbi at CJB, Conservative Congregation of Brazil. He is co-founder of ISER (Institute for Superior Studies in Religion) one of the most important civil rights NGOs in Brazil, and founder of Midrash Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro.
He is the author of 26 books published in Brazil, and translated in 19 languages, he is also twice winner of Jabuti Prize, the most prestigious Literary prize in Brazil and a member of the Brazilian Literary Academy. One of his books was adapted to a play and movie, having received the prize of best play of the year and has been on stage for over 15 years uninterrupted. He is the dramaturg of Eros and choreography Cure now being staged in Brazil.
Cover image crop collage: snowdrop by Aaron Burden; Violin by Johanna Vogt
Rev. Richenda Fairhurst is here for the friendship and conversations about climate, community, and connection. She organizes the Climate Cafe Multifaith as a co-leader of Faiths4Future. Find her in real life in Southern Oregon, working as Steward of Climate with the nonprofit Circle Faith Future.