On the Shabbat of Passover, many Jewish communities have the practice of reading the Song of Songs (Shir HaShirim; שיר השירים) during services. Unlike the Book of Esther for Purim or the Book of Lamentations for Tisha B'Av, this pairing with Passover is not self-explanatory. Passover is a national story about the Jewish people going from slavery to freedom. Song of Songs is a poetic love story celebrating love and intimacy.
A couple of weeks ago, I attended a class in which we analyzed verses from Song of Songs and compared them to midrashic texts to analyze it further. One of the questions that lingered for me after this class was how these passages about longing and searching have to do with the Passover story.
In chapter 5 of Song of Songs, the woman is sleeping when she hears a knock at the door. It is her male lover knocking (5:2). She hesitates for but a moment (5:3). When she arrives at the door, he is already gone (5:6). Rather than going back to bed, she goes out in the middle of the night to look for her lover (ibid).
She does not know where he can be or whether he can be found. She does not know whether her search will yield any results, but she carries on. Upon her search, she was physically assaulted by watchmen (5:7). Even when met with harm and misunderstanding, the search does not collapse.
Rather, she continues the search. But why? One answer is that she has a reference point: the lover. Not even assault deterred her from finding him. She is already in motion. When people are often in a state of grief, loss, spiritual yearning, or love, people persist and take that momentum, even with the pain. She does not stop to ask if it is worth continuing. She simply presses on. Why?
It is not because the search has been fruitful at this stage. It is because the assault of the watchmen does not resolve the absence of her beloved nor does it change her North Star. Her North Star is not a guarantee of outcome or even a clear sense of direction. It is a relational anchor that persists even when clarity is missing. The beloved is not visible and his location is not know, but he remains meaningful. It is carried forward in spite of the uncertainty.
This echoes a dynamic I explored with Psalm 27, a passage Jews traditionally read during the Jewish month of Elul. Faith is not build because of doubt, but through that doubt. Although the Psalmist's enemies are closing in on him (Psalm 27:3), he has trust even though he does not know the outcome. It is the ability to remain emotionally and spiritually oriented when one is surrounded by uncertainty, instability, and threats. Doubt is not the deterioration of faith. It is often the very thing that makes it stronger.
Interestingly enough, she continues when she talks with her friends (6:1-3). She does not respond with confusion or despair when her girlfriends ask her where her lover is. She still has no clue where he went or whether he will return. Yet she speaks with confidence and clarity, that he's in the garden looking for lilies and that "I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine" (אני לדודי ודודי לי). In that sense, faith is not the elimination of uncertainty. It is the ability to move forward when that uncertainty remains intact.
This structure of faith is not confined to the love story in the Song of Songs. It reappears on a far larger scale in the narrative of the Exodus from Egypt. Although they were slaves under Egyptian rule, the Israelites leaving Egypt without knowing the full shape of the journey ahead was scary. That uncertainty was not a minor detail. It was a major underpinning of the emotional and existential difficulty of the journey of the Exodus It helps explain why the process of leaving Egypt is marked not only by movement forward, but also by such unstable moments as the Golden Calf and multiple episodes of kvetching.
Song of Songs and Passover ultimately reflect the same spiritual movement, although one was intimate and the other collective. In Song of Songs, a woman searches through absence and disruption yet continues forward without certainty of outcome. In the Exodus narrative, an entire people leaves Egypt while still inhabiting uncertainty, fear, and internal resistance along the way. After all, how does a walk that should take a few weeks turn into 40 years?
Perhaps this is why Song of Songs belongs on Passover. Liberation in the Exodus narrative is not a clean transition from bondage into clarity. It is the beginning of freedom lived inside uncertainty, fear, and unfinished longing. Even after leaving Egypt, the journey is marked by desire for what was left behind and uncertainty about what lies ahead.
Seen this way, liberation and longing are not opposites are not opposites, but rather intertwined realities within the same act of moving forward. The same people who step into freedom also carry with them hesitation, complaints, memories, and emotional baggage. Becoming free does not give you a clean slate. In this sense, liberation is not the end of longing or searching, but rather its beginning in motion.
No comments:
Post a Comment