Reprinting my annual Passover post on LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSION®, scrubbed and cleansed and covered with vinyl shelf paper for this year:

Arthur Szyk's Four Sons of the Haggadah

This year Passover takes up two weekdays, Thursday and Friday, and abuts against the Sabbath, so I’m “out of pocket” through Sunday and essentially on mission-critical-only duty for most of the rest of next week, too.

Here’s a nice thought on the topic, apropos for the blogging and social-networking lifestyle:

The 21st century is certainly a marvelous time in which to live. Space exploration, computerization, the taming of vicious diseases are all truly amazing feats. But we also suffer more burnout, mental exhaustion, attention deficit disorders and high blood pressure than ever before. They are no doubt the effects of our own hi-tech servitude. Like it or not, we’re ruthlessly on call to someone for something all the time. And, we call it “normal.”

Well, on Passover everything comes to a halt. It begins with the destruction of the chametz, leavened foodstuffs, our daily bread. What could be more symbolic of the mundane, ordinary and routine than a piece of bread? We scour our homes and clear every morsel. The “normal” is simply unacceptable for eight days each year. Then we turn off our cell phones, close our places of business and sit down to a Seder with all the time in the world to discuss the Exodus experience. And, while many of us cringe at the seeming never-ending questions our kids can annoyingly ask the rest of the year, on this night they’re encouraged to ask the four questions, along with any others they might have.

As for the rest of Passover, the simple commandment prohibiting us from eating leavened foods automatically creates a huge paradigm shift for a whole eight days whereby our regular routines go out the window. We are free of fast food restaurants. Free from the mundane obligations and vicissitudes of life. Passover is freedom indeed, from the spirit-stunting routines of modern life.

The fact is that each and every week we’ve simply got to take a day off just to catch our breath. That day is Shabbat. But in order to “clean house” and truly free our inner selves from the overwhelming clutter of life lived in the fast lane, we need the extra-strength, paradigm shifting power of Passover.

See you on the other side of the Sea of Reeds.

One of my best friends called me this morning at 6:30 AM to say the Hebrew words that translate: “Blessed is the True Judge”:

We write these words with great sadness and disbelief — our beloved Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Noach Yisrael Noach ben Yitzchak Mattisyahu Weinberg – passed away this morning, Feb 5/ Shevat 11.

“Reb Noach” changed my life more than any other person. We were not very close, but in many important respects he was like a father to me. He was the founder of the Aish HaTorah College of Jewish Studies, as it’s called officially, otherwise known simply as “Aish HaTorah” or “Aish.” Aish is a system of educational programs, including a full-blown yeshiva for students of all levels in Jerusalem as well as introductory and outreach programs throughout the world based on the premise of getting Jews back to Judaism.

I attended one such program, in Israel, after I emerged from college in 1985 as a puffy purposeless preppy who at least had the good sense to look for meaning, direction and truth. I was a little disappointed to realize, as I did, that Aish HaTorah was actually the vanguard of a whole “movement” — I didn’t want to be part of a movement; I just wanted to move. But I did move, and Aish helped move me, and what I learned and became and, in no small measure, what I left behind have made my life what it is today in virtually every positive aspect of it.

I was not young enough, or at least not in Aish early enough in my life, to be a close student, much less any kind of disciple, of R’ Noach. I don’t think I could have, anyway. I don’t believe we were simpatico that way. But still, personally, R’ Noach taught me plenty. He taught me how to live a life of resolute meaning, how to focus ambition on something greater than oneself, and how to give and give and give.

And though R’ Noach was sick, and I had been anticipating this day for years, and even had a premonition of his passing yesterday, I am very, very sad.

And when I found the picture above I realized that I loved R’ Noach more than I perhaps understood until just now; and when I found the next picture in my scrapbook, of him warmly kissing my then-young children as if they were his own (for they were), I understood this even more, and even harder; and I let myself feel and admit that I miss him far more than I ever thought I would when I anticipated this moment, even already.