We Are Marked
Parashat Bo
Rabbi Noa Kushner
November 7, 2022
We Are Marked
1.
There is a Nachman of Bretzlov story I have been thinking about for years
I kept feeling like it was an important story but, although it is a simple story, I did not feel I understood it and so I never taught it
But some stories will not leave you alone
Some stories catch up with us
Sometimes the world changes enough and we change enough so that certain stories can reveal themselves
And so I feel this is the time for this famous Nachman of Bretzlov story
Where there is a King who has a star gazer
And the star gazer saw in the stars that, in the upcoming year, the crops would all be tainted }
And anyone who ate from them would become deluded, insane.
"What can we do?” they asked each other, “If we destroy the crop, everyone will starve.”
“Perhaps,” said the star gazer, “we should set aside enough grain for ourselves. At least then we can maintain our sanity.”
But the King said, “I cannot accept your proposal. How can we separate ourselves from our people? To remain the only sane people among a nation of madmen – they will think we are the ones who are mad. Instead, you and I shall eat the tainted grain, and shall enter into madness with the people.” [1]
“However,” said the king
“In order to remind ourselves that we are not as we should be, we will mark our foreheads. Whenever we look at each other and see the mark, we will remember that we are insane.”
That’s the end.
You can see why I maybe held off on telling this story.
Now, in fact, there is an alternate ending — in which the King and the star gazer do not eat the tainted grain but save the good grain and, like prophets, go around and remind everyone else they are still mad.
And while I am sure there is probably a time in history for that ending
Not only does it sound a lot like twitter, I just don’t think that is the ending we need more of right now
No, I think it is more correct to say in 2022 we have had to eat the tainted grain in order to live these past few years
In fact we we have lived recently through a great many tainted things
And while I could talk about a great many of them —
Tonight I just want to talk about the virus, the pandemic, the plague that we’re living through
I am not talking about living through the solutions to the plague —
Baruch HaShem for vaccines!
I am just talking about how living through the pandemic and taking the undoubtedly necessary precautions, indisputably necessary
Has still estranged us from each other and from ourselves
And so you could say living through a pandemic is like eating tainted grain
We had to do it to live
We are still here but we are not ourselves, we are tainted, too, we are not quite sane.
I believe the question the story raises is, now, almost two years in —
Can we look at each other and try to actively remember that we — individually, collectively — are not ourselves? Can we still remember that things are not as they should be or will be?
“But,” you say, “Things are hard enough”
“Maybe looking for this “mark” and remembering all the ways we don’t feel ourselves is pointless and unnecessarily painful”
“Maybe it is best to just not look anymore, not look for the mark on ourselves or each other, and give in
Maybe we just ride this one out the best we can.”
2.
You know we are having big discussions in the Kitchen office
It seems like every few weeks we have to ask,
Should we cancel?
Now, don’t get me wrong, we have an incredible team of doctors who advise our every move
If it is unsafe, if someone could get hurt, believe me, we don’t blink, we cancel
But what if hosting something holy is just very, very, very difficult?
What if we have to, I don’t know, change locations at the last minute?
What if we have to sing with medical grade masks on?
What if, even if it is safe, it is hard to get people to come because we are all so tired and worn out and last week there was a construction site next to where we are praying that we didn’t anticipate and the jack hammers were going at it and it is hard to see because our glasses are fogged up and we’re anxious and it is cold out and possibly raining?
How far do we go to remember what it is that we’re trying to remember about ourselves and the world and God?
How far do we go to see the proverbial marks on our foreheads?
Especially when we maybe forgot what things used to look like and everything feels less important with each passing day
How far do we go to remember? Maybe we have had to eat the tainted grain for so long the effort now doesn’t seem worth the price. It is not always so clear
And so I started thinking about our story
And I started wondering, what did those marks look like?
You know, the ones on their foreheads, between their eyes, what did they look like?
And because I do jewish I want to turn everything into a law, a ritual, something material I also wanted to know
How often did they have to look at each other? How often was enough?
3.
Maybe there are a clues about what that mark looked like in our Torah this week
Parashat Bo
You see we are leaving Egypt, finally leaving slavery and because it is the Torah God stops the story and takes some time in the middle to tell us that this is a night we’re going to want to remember for generations
And God even tells us the specific ways we will want to remember this great night and the story
And one of the those ways is Passover seder, and asking questions
And another of those ways, right in our parasha, is by having a reminder on your forehead
A symbol on your forehead, between your eyes
טוֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֣ין עֵינֶ֑יךָ
[2]
Maybe is sounds familiar from the shema, from the v’ahavta
So now we have this idea that maybe the mark from the Bretzlov story
The mark on the forehead
Is connected to this mark in our Torah, reminding us about this story of leaving Egypt
In other words what the Torah is saying is
No matter how long we’ve had to eat the tainted grain
We must do everything in our power to remember
That Egypt is not forever
That the Egypt we live in now, no matter how strong its pull
No matter how forcefully it asserts itself on every aspect of our being
No matter how heavily it weighs on us
No matter how inevitable it presents itself
It is not forever
The mark, the reminder in the Torah is that we left Egypt once and so we will leave it again
That even this plague will end
That even this plague will end
That even this plague will end
Because in our tradition, it is that mark, that act of remembering of our story,
that insistence that the world in front of us is not the only one —
The very mark that reminds us we are not quite sane now —
Paradoxically it is the key to our sanity
4.
And so we can imagine it is not enough for us to just, you know, look at the mark on each other’s forehead in general
Our tradition wants to know what that sign looks like, like exactly
These
טוֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֣ין עֵינֶ֑יךָ
What are they?
And it is not so simple to define because the word טוֹטָפֹ֖ת is rare in the Tanakh
But the rabbis, Ibn Ezra, others, of course, says these must refer to t’fillin!
These verses are referring to the little leather boxes we wear on our foreheads in daily prayer, the ones with the words of the shema inside. The mark is t’fillin!
But other rabbis, like Rashbam, think that this verse in our portion is not the basis for t’fillin
(Don’t get me wrong, Rashbam loves his t’fillin, he just thinks the basis for them comes from a verse in Devarim)
No Rashbam thinks that טוֹטָפֹ֖ת
Are something more like “an ornament and golden tiara that is worn round the head as an adornment” (!)
The mark, in other words, the sign to remember is
In the words of Shadal
like the sacred jeweled headband the High Priest wore” [3]
Or, as it says in the gemarrah: Rav Yehuda said in the name of Abaye …like a string of obsidian or gold beads), an ornament worn on the forehead. Rabbi Abbahu said: Totefet is that which goes around her forehead from ear to ear.
Now, like Rashbam, I am pro t’fillin, but this kind of jewel encrusted tiara headpiece is the kind of thing I can totally get behind
Mark as a reminder that not only are things not as they could be,
Not only will we leave Egypt
No matter how we feel now
We are royalty, we are kings and queens and in-between
But there is one more interpretation of what the mark looks like [4]
This one related to t’fillin —
I learned from Professor Alan Brill that there is a place in the gemarrah
Where there’s a prayer about what life will be like in the world to come
In the world to come, it says, the righteous will sit with their crowns upon their heads,
וְעַטְרוֹתֵיהֶם בְּרָאשֵׁיהֶם
But the Likutei Moharan reads the בְּרָאשֵׁיהֶם
Not typically, as, “the crowns will be on their heads” but “the t’fillin will be in their heads”
In other words,
We should still wrap t’fillin, let’s do it, Marilyn can lead us
Or for those interested in the tiara version, I’m in, let’s definitely bring those back
But let’s also remember these headpieces, the marks, these reminders are very much also in our heads
We are wearing internal t’fillin right now
We are already marked
It’s as clear as day
So if we really dare to look at each other
We will remember that this is not a normal time and we are not really sane
But God brought us out of Egypt once and we will come out of Egypt once again
We cannot choose for the grain to not be tainted, the pandemic is almost two years old
And we cannot choose to not live this life, we have to keep eating the grain, we must eat, we must live
And we cannot choose to not have the mark, it is already in us, no matter how or where we wear it
The only thing we can choose is whether or not to see the mark on ourselves and each other
Whether or not we remember what it means
5.
So how often do we need to remember? How often did they have to look at each other to see the mark? How often is enough?
It tells us right in the t’fillin and we said it ourselves in the words of the shema tonight:
How often? Every day, all the time
“When you sit in your house and when you are on the way
In the evening and in the morning,
When you lie down and when you rise up”
In other words, just because you are here tonight doesn’t mean you should skip the morning
Every day, all the time
We have to remember all the time because it is so easy to forget
You see God doesn’t tell us to remember for God
God demands we remember for us
Because if we can remember even when times are as compressed and repressed and oppressed as they are for us now
If we remember, then we will not start to think this tainted way of seeing things is normal
And so become too resigned to leave Egypt when the time finally comes to leave
Because the time is coming, I can tell you because I make myself remember
The time is coming
God brought us out of Egypt once long ago and — I promise! — we will come out of Egypt once again
https://arielburger.com/wp-content/uploads/Two-Versions-Tale-Rebbe-Nachman-Breslov.pdf
Ex. 13:16
Leibowitz, p. 218-9
Berakhot 17a:12; Likutei Moharan 21:4:5, see
