Rabbi Mendel Kaplan was an accomplished European-born Torah-scholar who came to America after World War Two, where he taught for many years in the yeshivot of Chicago and Philadelphia. To supplement his modest salary, he went into the wine business. Rabbi Kaplan rented a basement from a religious Jew to use for his wine-making operation. The basement was cold and damp, an inhospitable place to work; but he took it to minimize overhead. Once, the lights went out and Rabbi Kaplan called up to the landlord, ”Please put on the lights. It’s dark down here!”

The landlord answered him from upstairs: “We Jews don’t say that something’s dark, we say it’s not light.” Reb Mendel remained silent at the time, but later he confessed to his son, “At first, I thought of telling him, ‘Here I am stuck in your pitch-black basement and you’re telling me how to talk?’ But then I realized that he was right, for the Gemara at the beginning of tractate Pesachim spends two pages discussing that point” (Yisroel Greenwald, Reb Mendel and His Wisdom).

Why is the Talmudic tractate Pesachim discussing the fine points of how a Jew should talk? What does it have to do with the festival of Passover?

The function of the Gemara is to analyze and elucidate the mishna, the core teachings of the Jewish Oral Law. The mishna at the beginning of Pesachim teaches that on the eve of the fourteenth of the month of Nissan, we search our homes for chometz (unleavened bread), so that we should dispose of it and not transgress the Torah’s prohibition of eating or even owning any chometz during the week of Passover. But, why is it, the Gemara wants to know, that the mishna refers to it as “the light of the fourteenth”? After all, the search is conducted at night?

As it turns out, sometimes in Torah and rabbinical tradition the word “light” is used to refer to night. But the question remains why? And, in particular, why in the context of the night before Passover?

The anecdote about Rabbi Kaplan may help to answer the question. There he was, toiling away in the cold, damp basement when he was suddenly plunged into darkness. Despite the dubious timing of his landlord’s moralizing, Rabbi Kaplan, once he had a chance to reflect on it in a warm, well-lighted place, agreed. No matter how unpleasant the situation, no matter how dark and cold it might be, one should always try to maintain a positive attitude. Judaism recognizes the power of speech to influence our thoughts, indeed to frame our whole way of looking at life. Not that we should be oblivious when things go wrong; but that we should not be overwhelmed by it. By speaking in a positive way, we can exert a measure of control, if not over events, at least over our reactions to them. A person who has trained himself to say, “It’s not light,” has not merely succeeded in a type of linguistic acrobatics; he has made himself master of reality. Instead of cursing the darkness, the damp, the cold, and his landlord as well, it enables him to see the light in the situation.

The mishnaic phrase “light of the fourteenth” has halachic ramifications. It is taken to mean that the search for chometz should commence while there is yet some light in the sky, just after the stars begin showing (Mishna Brura, 431:1).

The symbolism is inescapable: The first law of Passover, the festival of freedom, is that there is always light, even in the darkest times. The Jews were enslaved for generations in Egypt, a land from which “no slave ever escaped.” But they never gave up hope of redemption. God told Abraham that his progeny would have to undergo enslavement; but He also promised to deliver them (Genesis 15:13-14): And He said to Abraham: Be it known to you that your seed will be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and they will be enslaved and afflicted four hundred years. And the nation that will enslave them I will also judge; and afterwards, they will go out with great wealth.

That Divine promise was the light in the darkness of Egyptian exile. Their steadfast faith, living as Jews, with a distinct language, names, mode of dress and circumcision, as the Midrash tells us, kept that light burning.

We, too, live in difficult times. Though the Jewish people have returned, at least in part, to the land of Israel, the era is far from messianic. It is not the full redemption. Hatred and violence abound; the peace among nations and universal knowledge of God of prophetic tradition awaits realization. But as the prophet said: Let not my enemies rejoice; though I have fallen, I will rise; though I will dwell in darkness, God is my light (Michah 7:8).

by Rabbi Yisrael Rutman

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