Pesah Sheni: Second Chances

It may come to you as a surprise to hear that this past week you missed a Jewish holiday. Not just any festival, not some newfangled new age observance begun in the past few years or even centuries, but as Judaism goes, as ancient as ancient gets – all the way back to the time of Moses and the Torah. Last Wednesday, April 28th, corresponding to the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar, the Jewish people (or at least one or two of them) observed something called Pesah sheni, the second Passover. If you missed it, don’t beat yourself up too much, it’s as minor a festival as they come, but I think you will find that its message extends well beyond its limited and modest beginnings.

About one month ago, we gathered around our seder tables to celebrate Passover. The biblical text is very clear: on the 14th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan, the Passover Sacrifice was to be performed, an act that we continue to commemorate on this date every year. Among the wandering Israelites, however, there were those who, for unavoidable reasons, were in a state of ritual impurity on that day and were thus unable to offer the Passover sacrifice. They became distraught at having missed this sacred observance. In response, Moses legislated a law stating that should any Israelite be unable to celebrate Passover, due to ritual impurity, because of having been detained on a long journey, or because of volcanic ash (well, it didn’t say that), then they were to be given a second opportunity, a second Passover, exactly one month later. On that day, the 14th day of Iyar, which fell last Wednesday, they could celebrate a “make-up festival.” (Numbers 9:1-14)

It is an extraordinary concept – a holiday that seems to be all about mulligans and “do overs.” These days, there is really nothing to do on Pesah sheni other than finish off any matzah remaining in our cupboards, but the very concept is enough to give us pause, to think about second chances, a unique message in the history
of religions.

It is difficult, without a doubt, to give someone a second chance – maybe that’s why we need a holiday about it. If you’ve been let down by someone, have been wronged, directly or indirectly, with malice or by accident, to give that person another chance, you have to dig deep. This is not a sermon about forgiveness; that is a sermon for another day. We Jews talk about repentance and forgiveness an awful lot, especially around the High Holy Days. Today I want to talk to you about a different muscle group, related but slightly more subtle and perhaps harder to access: the ability to, when wronged, simply move on, get over it, and press forward with a relationship.

To see past someone’s flaws, what the Talmud calls ma’avir al middotav, is hardly a natural instinct. If a person meant to wrong us, then goodbye and good riddance, at least until that person decides to eat crow and beg for forgiveness. If they didn’t mean it, well they should have known better. I have had occasion to share my favorite story about Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi-hunter who passed away a few years ago. He tells of the days following the war, when a neighbor approached him and asked “Could you lend me ten dollars until Monday? I’ve got a package coming tomorrow. I’ll sell it on the black market; Monday, you’ll have your money back. I swear it.” Wiesenthal figured, “Why not help out a neighbor? I’ll lend him the money.” Monday arrived, the man came up to him and said, “I don’t know what happened. The package didn’t arrive. You know how messed up the mail is these days. But don’t worry; it’ll be here any day.” This went on for weeks. Twice a week, for six weeks, the man came up with one excuse or another. Finally after six weeks, the man came to Wiesenthal and said, “It came. I sold it. Here’s the ten dollars you lent me.” And Wiesenthal answered, “No, keep it. For ten dollars, it’s not worth changing my opinion of you.”

It’s a great story, but it makes us laugh because we know deep down that Wiesenthal was wrong. Wiesenthal owed his neighbor, he owed himself, the opportunity to rise above the particulars of that disappointment. Not for ten dollars, not for any price, is it worth allowing a single moment of disenchantment to overshadow the breadth of an entire relationship. We owe others, we owe ourselves second chances.

There are times, of course, when people should not be given a second chance. Not everything should be forgiven and not every moment is a teachable moment. There are wrongs that can’t be made right, offenses that cannot be mitigated. No two people are the same, every relationship is unique. What one relationship can overcome can be debilitating to another. I am sure there are times when the magnitude of the wrong or its persistent nature is of such a degree that it is not in anyone’s interest to move forward. Whether it’s between colleagues, spouses, family members or countries, there are times when a misdeed can eclipse the totality of a relationship.

But here’s the thing. As I see it, there are two givens in this world. First and foremost, human imperfection. None of us is without fault. As sure as I am that everyone in this room has been wronged by someone, I am doubly sure that everyone in this room, myself included, knows of a time when he or she has, knowingly or unknowingly, hurt someone. The second given is that human beings must exist in relationship with other human beings. These relationships – casual or profound, biological, collegial, or otherwise – are the foundations of our identity. As human beings we need sustained contact with others.

The math is actually straightforward. If we are all imperfect and we all exist in relation to others, then it is simply impossible to go very far in this world without encountering another person’s faults and shortcomings. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is altogether unhealthy to think that any human being – our parents, our mentors, and certainly we ourselves – is perfect. Because if you do, when that person does let you down, which they will because they are, after all, human, your excessive estimation will crash like a house of cards.

This is why second chances are so important. Somewhere between a do nothing, “let bygones be bygones” and a full act of forgiveness and reconciliation exists a very important and courageous middle ground: the ability to see and acknowledge hurt, absorb it and move past it. It is not about amnesia, not about excusing, condoning, mitigating, or contextualizing, rather, it is a form of amnesty. Think of post-Apartheid South Africa. I believe there is healing that comes by way of making the conscious decision not to live a life of regret or resentment. To let the future reign over the past. We examine the past, accept it for what it was, and move forward in earnest caution towards a greater good.

Just this past week a congregant came to me in anger. She had been let down by the synagogue, felt mistreated, a feeling made all the worse by this person’s deep love of the community. I listened to her describe how a bad situation was mishandled, how words were not carefully chosen, how messages were muddled. It was interesting, because once she had said her piece and spoken her mind, it was clear this person was not looking for an apology. The deed was done, it would never, by definition, happen again. When I had heard her out and validated that feeling, we arrived at an awkward pause. I didn’t know what to say, so I asked, “So where do we go from here?” To which she replied, “Now we move forward.” In the grand scheme of things the incident was minor, but the lesson this person taught me – to vent, take a breath and extend a second chance, in this case, to the synagogue – is one that we all need to learn and a capacity that we all need to cultivate. As Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote, “Sin… can be transformed…. into the guiding hand of the future, into a source of merit and good deeds.” (Halakhic Man, pp. 116-117).

Once upon a time there was a king who ruled a small kingdom. It wasn’t all that great a kingdom, nor was it well-known for any of its resources or its people. But the king owned a diamond, a great and perfect diamond that had been in his family for generations. He kept it on display for all to see and appreciate. People came from all over the world to admire it and gaze upon it. One day a guard came to the king with the news that, although no one had touched the precious stone, for it was always guarded, the diamond was cracked. The king ran to see, and sure enough, there was a crack right through the middle of the diamond. Immediately the king summoned all the jewelers of the land and had them look at the jewel. One after another they examined it and gave the king the same bad news: the diamond was irrevocably flawed. The king was crushed and so were his subjects. They felt that they had lost everything.

Then, out of nowhere, came an old man who claimed be a jeweler. He asked to see the diamond. After examining it, he looked up and confidently told the king. “I can fix it. In fact, I can make it better than before.” Although the king was a bit leery, he allowed the old man to work on the jewel. He placed the old man in a room with tools and gave him food and drink for a week. At the end of the week the man appeared with the stone in his hand and gave it to the king. The king couldn’t believe his eyes. It was magnificent! The old man had fixed it, and he had made it even better than it had been before! He had used the crack that ran through the middle of the stone as a stem and had carved an intricate full-blown rose, leaves and thorns into the diamond. It was exquisite. The king was overjoyed and offered the man half of his kingdom. The old man refused and said “All I did was to take something flawed and cracked at its heart and turn it into something beautiful.”

There is no life, there is no relationship that is without flaw. We all have shortcomings, disappointment, pain, and loss. Sometimes you can make a rose from the flaw, sometimes you just have to let go of the diamond, and sometimes, just sometimes, you discover that it is that very flaw that makes you who you are and to efface it is to lose the very thing that makes you, ‘you.’ Only the person who acknowledges the imperfections and scars and cracks within is able to become complete. It is not enough simply to identify faults. As we have fallen short in the past, we can now aspire to greater heights, to be better people, to reinvent ourselves and our relationships in ways we never imagined possible; in other words, to give second chances. Life is simply too short to do otherwise.