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Showing posts from March, 2013

Shabbat Pesach: So Close and Yet, So Far

Shabbat Pesach: So Close and Yet, So far March 29, 2013~19 Nissan 5773 Rabbi Jen Gubitz Arami oved avi. My father was a wandering Aramean. He went down to Egypt and sojourned there. He became a great nation, mighty and many.   Arami oved avi. My father was a wandering Aramean. Actually. Not true. My father was not a wandering Aramean. You see, at most, my father is a wandering hoosier. He grew up in Hammond, Indiana, then went to college in Bloomington, lived for a time in Tennessee, and then for a long time back to Indiana.  And, while you get the point, he didn’t wander either. He drove. No, my father is not a wandering Aramean. And I suspect that in this room tonight, I am not the only one whose father or mother was not a wandering Aramean. All the more so, our classic commentators wandered through centuries of scholarship looking for an answer of who was this wandering Aramean for surely it was not their own fathers either. Midrash suggests, and Rashi agrees,