The Korban Pesach and mourning the loss of ritual

Last week a bit of an unusual story surfaced in some Jewish media outlets. A group of Temple Mount
activists in Jerusalem had convened hundreds of Jews to attend a rehearsal for the korban Pesach, or
paschal sacrifice, in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem. This group had procured a young lamb
and studied the laws of how to perform the korban Pesach, and then did so. The actual slaughter took
place behind the stage, but the roasting and eating of the animal was public, and everyone in
attendance took part.

My first reaction to this was - thank God Ohev is keeping its involvement with biblical animal rituals
limited to redeeming the first born son of a donkey. My second reaction was wow - thats... weird. And
more than weird - gross? I felt a general sense of aversion to this practice. And while one could attribute
this to my being a vegetarian, I do not think that that is the primary reason that I felt this way. I would
imagine that many of us would have a similar reaction to the idea that a group of Jews in 2015 publicly
slaughtered and ate a goat as a practice Paschal sacrifice. It seems foreign. Uncomfortable. Strange.

Now, of course, the reaction that I, and I imagine, some if not many of us, had to this is significant. On
the one hand it makes perfect sense to find this strange and unappealing - we do not live in a part of the
world in which it is considered socially acceptable to gather and watch the public slaughter of an animal,
as evidenced by the fact that this rehearsal sacrifice was attended by dozens of animal rights activists.
Its just not what we do today.

But on the other hand, one could argue that the fact that I found this strange is, in itself, strange.
Because the korban Pesach was originally the most significant part of our Pesach observance. Every Jew
did it! Exodus Chapter 12 gives us the precise instructions of how to observe Pesach - on the 14th of
Nissan, every family must slaughter a lamb, or a kid, roast it, and eat it in a very specific way. Then we
observe 7 days of eating matza. Thats the crux of the original Passover observance! Thats what it
meant to celebrate the holiday! No seder, no charoset - just a slaughtered lamb, and then matza.

And so we find ourselves in a bit of a paradox: Nowadays, of course, we do not celebrate Pesach by
sacrificing a lamb or a kid. Even the group that slaughtered one last week acknowledged that it was clear
that it was a rehearsal, and not intended as the actual Paschal sacrifice. But yet, of course, we still
celebrate Pesach, and it is still one of the most important holidays for contemporary Jewish life, just as it
is one of the most important holidays in the Torah. So how did this happen? How were we able to
maintain the centrality, and sanctity of the holiday while removing one of its most important rituals?

The answer is: not very easily. It was a transition, and it took time.

At the very beginning, the korban Pesach was a sacrifice that each family, or group of families, offered
on their own - unlike the other sacrifices, it wasnt originally temple-specific. You could do it at home!
But then, once the Temple was built in Jerusalem, every family would bring their lamb or kid to the
Temple, and it would be slaughtered and eaten there.

Now because the korban Pesach happened in the Temple, the most obvious conclusion to draw would
be that we performed it until the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE, and then once it was
destroyed, we stopped because the space wasnt available anymore, and we are not allowed to perform
sacrifices outside of the Temple area. No Temple means no sacrifices. And that was the position taken
by many of the rabbis - the Temple is gone, so now we must stop the korban Pesach and move on to
something else. Not all rabbis agreed, but this was the majority position set forward. Just like were not
doing any of the other sacrifices anymore, it is now time to move on from the korban Pesach and do
something else instead.

Now whats great about the attempts of the majority of the rabbis to stop the korban Pesach is that they
didnt really work. And they didnt work because the people were not ready to accept that they had to
stop doing this sacrifice. They werent ready to let this practice go. And so they kept doing it.

As we said, once the Temple was destroyed, the Jews had to stop performing the official korban Pesach.
However, we have documentation in early rabbinic texts that the practice continued in various forms.
Shortly after the destruction of the Temple, many Jews began offering the sacrifice of the gedi mekulas,
or the helmeted goat, in which a goat would be sacrificed and roasted in a manner very similar to the
korban Pesach. It wasnt exactly like the korban Pesach because they would make a slight change in the
way they ate the animal - either by removing a piece, or boiling some of it - which would render it unfit
for a proper sacrifice. By making this slight change they found a way of engaging in the ritual of the
korban Pesach, while not actually performing the korban Pesach. It wasnt considered the sacrifice, but
it was nearly identical to the actual sacrifice.

And like I said, this practice came from the people. The rabbis werent so into it. In the Tosefta, the
rabbis allowed the gedi mekulas, but only on the last night of Pesach, or on Succos. They didnt allow it
at the beginning of Pesach, because they didnt want anyone to think that they were actually offering a
korban Pesach. And yet, despite their efforts, we see evidence that the gedi mekulas was offered on the
14th. Rabban Gamliel, for instance, disagreed with his rabbinic colleagues, and said that the people
should be allowed to offer it at its proper time. Theodosius of Rome, the spiritual leader of the Jewish
community in Rome in the late first century CE, actually instituted that his Jewish community should eat
the gedi mekulas at the proper time on Pesach. He didnt just tolerate them doing it, he WANTED them
to do it! As is recorded in the Talmud, the rabbis became quite angry with him, and basically told him
that if he wasnt such an important guy, they would excommunicate him from the community - but

luckily for him, he was wealthy, and he paid their salaries, so this remained just a threat, and not a
reality.

As we move through the decades after the destruction, we have other recordings of Jews continuing to
offer a sacrifice on the eve of Pesach. Some even engaged in elements of the Temple purity involved
despite the fact that this was no longer a relevant issue. Most of the rabbis were trying to get the people
to stop doing this, and move on, and they just refused! They just werent ready.

Eventually, these practices did fade as Jews progressed through the first millenium, though we have
evidence that some Jews living in the land of Israel offered the sacrifice until the 9th or 10th centuries
CE. Thats when it appears that the practice fully stopped, and went from being a reality, to a symbol of
our ancient past, which we have in the form of the zeroa, or shankbone, on our seder plate. Jews finally
stopped offering the korban Pesach, and we moved from a goat on a spit being our image of Pesach
observance, to thinking of Pesach as being defined by the seder, and the four cups of wine.

The way that the Jewish community has handled the transition away from the korban and into other
observances speaks powerfully to how we manage the trauma of loss, and the preservation of memory.
On the same day that Haaretz published its coverage of the rehearsal korban Pesach, Tablet Magazine
published a piece by a woman named Rachel Mesch entitled A Seder of My Own. In this piece Mesch
talks about her experience of making seders after her mothers death in March of 2008. For every year
of her life, Mesch had gone to her parents for seders. Every year they ate her mothers food, celebrated
in her mothers house, and followed her mothers traditions. And then suddenly, in 2008, a few weeks
before Pesach, Meschs mother died, leaving her feeling helpless. The only Pesach she had ever known
was her mothers, and now that her mother was gone, she didnt know what to do.

And in this piece Mesch talks about how, for the first few years after her mothers death, Mesch
essentially recreated her mothers seders. She used the same recipes, written in her mothers
handwriting on yellowing recipe cards. She invited the same guests that they had always invited growing
up. At the seder they told memories of her mother, to keep her presence alive.

But now, as she entered her 7th Pesach without her mother, Mesch wonders aloud in this piece if its
time to change this a little bit. If she can start introducing new customs, changing some of the recipes. If
she can begin to make Pesach a bit more of her own, and a bit less of an exact reproduction of her
mothers traditions. And I thought that this was such a beautiful lens through which to read how we
mourn the loss of traditions and ritual. For the first few Pesachs after her mothers death, this woman
couldnt bring herself to fully confront the loss she had experienced. Even though her mother was gone,
she wasnt ready to have Pesach without her, and she needed to recreate her memories, instead of
forget, or amend them. But now that shes had 6 Pesachs of this recreation, she has reached a point of
healing, and wonders if she can begin to make Pesach her own, and not just a reproduction of the past.

The Jews after the destruction of the temple were dealing with this exact same question. Technically,
the defining practice of their Pesach celebration was gone - the Temple was destroyed, and it was now
prohibited to offer the Pesach sacrifice without it. But rather than follow many of the rabbis who said
no, its time to move on, they maintained the practice with the gedi mekulas, altering the sacrifice
slightly so that it didnt technically qualify as the korban Pesach, but essentially resembled it. It took
them decades, if not centuries, to move away from this practice, just like it took this woman 6 Pesachs
to begin to move away from recreating her mothers seders. But they did, and eventually, over time, the
korban Pesach went from being the most central part of Pesach observance to a shankbone on a seder
plate, next to todays central symbols of Pesach - the seder plate, and the charoset, and the four cups of
wine - and, of course, the Open Orthodox haggadah.

But just because this is the reality doesnt mean that it is tragic. This is part of the natural human
process of mourning. When first faced with loss we attempt to recreate the past, to take us back to a
time that no longer exists. But we cant remain stuck in the past forever. Eventually we move on to
create new memories, and new rituals, sometimes to the point where the original seems completely
foreign, just as this rehearsal sacrifice in Jerusalem last week felt to me.

But, most importantly, though we change, it doesnt mean that we forget the past. Part of the beauty of
the korban Pesach is that even though we havent practiced it for over a millenium, our holiday is still
named for it. In the Torah, Pesach refers to the 14th of Nissan on which the korban Pesach was
offered, and Chag HaMatzot refers to the 7 day holiday that followed, what we think of today as
Pesach. When the practice of the korban fell away, and we were left just with the 7 day Chag
HaMatzot, we didnt get rid of the name. Our practices may have changed, but we never forgot the
origin of the holiday. That is what it means to mourn, and heal from a loss. We cant always be stuck in
the past, but that doesnt mean that we forget it, either. Instead, as we forge ahead through time and
create new customs, and new traditions, we always take the most important parts of the past with us.
Shabbat shalom, good yontiv, and I wish you a meaningful yizkor.