The Biblical Holidays and Self-Development

-By Tzvi ben Daniel-

I was listening to the latest episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast (one of the most popular podcasts in the world) where he had Jordan Peterson as a guest. Jordan Peterson is a clinical psychologist and a world-renowned author, and he is also very interested in the Bible and the deep archetypal meaning of the stories contained therein. 

Given the secular background of the host, I was chuckling at the fact that I couldn't imagine any other guest straight out preaching to Rogan about the Bible and its lessons. And the way he was able to do it was by way of explaining certain references on a deeper level—a more personably relatable one. 

I know Peterson thought out his ideas well. In fact, he gave a series of several-hours-long conferences a few years ago about all the Biblical stories in Genesis, associating the characters and the narratives with deeper psychological meanings to which each person could relate at his core. This astonished me since I assume he arrived at most of his ideas through deep thinking and analysis, dissecting the stories in the light of their psychological nature, without any background in Jewish thought.

For those of us who grew up within Judaism or at least had a good dose of exposure to it, we already know that the Biblical stories are but the outer shell of deeper truths that we must crave to uncover. The Torah at its face value is fitting for a child to understand at Shabbat (or Sunday) school, but it (the story at its face value) will not provide the same level of nourishment for those who are not children. Shaul (Paul), in the first-century writings, would make the distinction between milk and meat.

Within Jewish exegesis, we are taught that there are different levels of interpretation of the Torah, more precisely, at least four different levels, that comprise the acronym PaRDeS. The P’shat is the plain, literal meaning; Remez is the hinted meaning; Drash is the homiletical meaning; and Sod is the secret or mystical meaning.

Even though most of these ideas became popular during the middle ages in Europe (particularly in S’farad, Spain), we can find clear connections shooting straight back to the first century. I cited Paul above, but Yeshua himself told his disciples, in response to why he talked to the people in parables, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.”

People from different times and backgrounds understood that the text in the Torah can go as deep as one’s mind, intellect, understanding, and revelation may take him. And that’s precisely why the Torah is so loved and revered. 

In the rest of this article, we will explore a deeper meaning regarding some ideas in the Bible, and the Biblical Feasts in particular.

The Purpose of the Bible as a Whole

My understanding of the Holy Book is not a static one but a dynamic one. I believe we should delve deeper, year after year, as we grow in maturity and go through life’s experiences. 

Just as our perception and understanding of the world around us is influenced and shaped by our history, knowledge, and wisdom gleaned from it, we utilize that growth and those new perspectives to apply it to the Bible in order to get a clearer understanding of what in the world God requires from us today in light of who we are today, and not last year or 20 years ago. Following up on the analogy cited above, we should not continue to be on the baby bottle when we are grown adults and have children of our own.

Although there are hundreds of commandments in the Bible, many of which apply to us today, most people agree with the classical idea that “it all hangs on the big two”. The “big two” being to love the Creator and to love our neighbor. The idea of loving the Creator may be somewhat abstract and can be arguably fulfilled through the observance of His commandments, at least from a Jewish standpoint.  On the other hand, loving our neighbor is a more tangible premise, since, unlike God, anyone can see and interact with their neighbor.

Through loving our neighbor and our Creator, we become better people, and the converse may be true as well, that, through becoming better people, we can then love our neighbor and God.

I will never put the Bible in a box and say that there is only one way to understand it (and it is MY way!), for that would be putting God in a box. But following this line of understanding, and for the sake of further developing this idea, let's agree here that the Torah is a book that can and will help us improve at a personal level. Its commandments are there to bring us closer to the Creator through our observance, and ultimately, by modeling a life of holiness (to stick to the Biblical language), to become better people. In other words, and in the modern worldview, we can say that the Bible is a book for personal development.

What can the Biblical Feasts Teach us about Ourselves?

According to Jewish tradition the year starts on Tishrei 1, in the fall. However, according to the written Torah, it’s abundantly clear that God wanted to mark a beginning for his people at the time of their deliverance from Egypt:

“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.” (Exodus 12:3)

We know that this lines up with the agricultural year, and since all the Biblical Feasts are tied to agriculture, it only makes sense to commence the year at that time. But digging into another layer beneath that literal meaning, why would it make sense to start counting from that point on?

The answer is that it is the time of our deliverance. Life (or the new life anyway) did not really begin, so to speak, until we were delivered from Egypt. And what does that mean—what does Egypt mean? To the Israelites of old, it meant physical slavery. But what does it mean for us today? It is what keeps us enslaved. 

So, we are going to see a pattern set forth in the Torah that goes from the slavery/deliverance in/from Egypt to the ultimate redemption in the Promise Land after passing through the wilderness and meeting with the Almighty on the mountain. At the same time, the stories that we tell and retell on the Biblical Holy Days are going to overlay this most basic pattern of redemption and remind us of basic human truths that we are to be made aware of. Let’s take a closer look at each of the main Holy Days.

Passover

Talking about the commemoration of the redemption experienced at the time of the first Passover in Egypt, we find this passage:

“So it shall be, when your son asks you in time to come, saying, ‘What is this?’ that you shall say to him, ‘By strength of hand YHVH brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.’” (Exodus 13:14)

We see here how WE are to tell our children how WE were slaves and the Almighty delivered US. It is from here that the Jewish sages determined that “in every generation a person must regard himself as though he personally had gone out of Egypt” (Mishnah Pesachim 10:5).

If it is so—if we are to consider ourselves as if we came out of Egypt—this would mean that we have come from slavery and into freedom. Coming out of Egypt could be understood as an idiom meaning abandoning your past in the sense of overcoming our limitations and breaking free from the yoke of the Pharaoh. Pharaoh can be understood to represent our lower nature (i.e., the flesh). This includes, in general categories: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath, and slothfulness.

When we can overcome this and break this yoke, then we are ‘crossing over’. We effectively become Hebrews; one who has crossed over. Abraham was the first one to be called a Hebrew (Gen. 14:13). In these two verses, notice the parallel in his revelation of the Creator to the one that his descendants had at Mount Sinai:

“I am YHVH that brought you out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give you this land to inherit it.” (Genesis 15:7)

“I am YHVH your Elohim, who brought you out of Mitzraim, out of the land of slavery.” (Exodus 20:2)

Whether it is Abraham or the children of Israel, they are coming out of their place of origin, their “comfort zone” if you will, and going “to the land”: coming from a place of bondage and crossing over to a place which they will possess, or coming from a place that possessed them, leaving everything behind, and going to a place where their highest aspirations would be fulfilled, but they would have to fight in order to overcome.  

Egypt in Hebrew is Mitzraim (מצרים), which means “a narrow place” or simply “straits” (as in narrow). The root of this word is tzar (צר), which means “trouble”, “tribulation” or “narrow”. Jeremiah uses this word in Lamentations 1:3 where it is translated as “dire straits” (מְּצָרִֽים, pronounced metzarim here). Pharaoh was the ruler of Egypt. He was the face or the representation of the place that kept us slaves.

In a spiritual sense, Pharaoh represents all that keeps us captive from realizing our true potential: our ‘lower nature’, or ‘yetzer haRa’, the ‘evil inclination’. Are you a slave to lust? There is your Pharaoh. Are you a slave to alcohol? There is your Pharaoh. Are you a slave to anger, drugs, food, lying, gambling, self-pity, anxiety, pornography, money, external approval, or—fill in the blank? There is your Pharaoh.

That’s right. We can rehearse every year about the children of Israel coming out of slavery. For what it matters, we could’ve been the real Israelites that left Egypt. However, we are never going to be free until we stand up to our personal Pharaoh. We have been telling the story over and over, but have we come out of Egypt ourselves yet? That is the whole point of the rehearsal. Personal redemption from personal slavery.

And I will not have the arrogance to pretend that once we have come out there is no going back, nor the possibility that Egypt lingers through the years, post deliverance from Egypt. Maybe the fact that we are commanded to rehearse year after year was ordained because we have the tendency as humans to draw back to our own personal Egypt. To revert to the easiest path of least resistance. After all, having to leave what we’ve always known to go to a place that we do not know is not the easiest thing to do.

Concerning the spiritual application of the Feast of Matzot, Paul exhorted the Corinthians:

“Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (1 Cor. 5:8)

Notice how he is expanding beyond searching for the last crumb of leavened bread in the house (the physical), to the loftier psycho-spiritual meaning of it: letting evil out of our hearts. Only then will we be able to tell our children in all confidence, “By strength of hand YHVH brought us out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”

Shavuot  

This is the next “appointed time” and the second occasion in the year when every male was required to ascend to Jerusalem to see the King. There was a caveat as well, to bring the first fruits of the produce of the land, meaning, the physical would be elevated or transmuted, if you will. This pilgrimage and offering, as well as with Passover and the other Holy Days, were deeply ritualistic experiences. The ritual has a central part in Biblical observance as well as in all ancient religions, and it is something that it is largely missing in Protestant Christianity. On the other hand, modern Judaism still preserves many rituals, such as Kiddush, Havdalah, Tefillin, Prayer, Talit, etc. Despite the fear, estrangement, or disdain that many in Chrsitianity have for rituals, a ritual is essentially a physical action that helps us connect with the spiritual— transcending the physical by means of focused attention and concentration or contemplation.

The interesting characteristic about Shavuot is that it does not appear to have a fixed day on which it is to be celebrated, but rather we are to “count the days” from Passover to the end of the seventh week, establishing a direct tie between these two appointed times.

Let’s think this through. Pesach is the commemoration of our delivery from slavery, and Shavuot is considered to be the day when the Almighty spoke to the people of Israel from Mount Sinai—the day they met Him.

If we are to consider it as if we left Egypt (our personal Egypt) at Passover, then our personal celebration of Shavuot could be understood as our personal encounter with the Creator. This is why it is no coincidence that the disciples had their “Mount Sinai experience” at the time of Shavuot in the upper room, after Yeshua’s death, resurrection, and ascension.

To bring the attention back to the sequential connection between these two days, we must highlight that there is no mountain top experience without first leaving Egypt. This is an extremely important point since, in our own personal walk towards redemption, our progress through the pilgrim's road, we must actually walk in order to get there. 

At this point, I want to preemptively speak regarding the “salvation through grace” (and not through works) that many times is misunderstood in Christianity. Grace was displayed to the Israelites when they were delivered from Egypt. They had to pay no price and do no work, in order for them to be delivered from Egypt. What they did have though, was a deep yearning. They cried out to YHVH to be delivered. But then, we see a series of supernatural events that allow them to simply walk out of Egypt. At that point they were free agents. They could do with their freedom as they saw fit. They were delivered or saved through grace, but from that point on, and especially after the experience at Mount Sinai, they were responsible to put in the work and were held liable if they didn’t.

Mount Sinai was the point where each person said to the Creator, “Na’aseh veNishma—we will do and obey.” No one had gotten into a covenantal relationship with the Creator until the Book of the Covenant was presented and read, and the blood of bulls was sprinkled upon them and the book.

A certain commitment is established at that point, where each person will take responsibility to aim to behave in a certain kind of way, seeking what is good and opposing that which is not. We committed to also walk towards a certain goal, represented as the Land of Canaan, where the wisdom of the path we follow would shine forth to become a light unto the nations. 

We know that didn’t happen quite that way in history, but that is precisely why and how the Messianic pattern of redemption arose within Jewish thought—in order to set forth an ideal of how things would be or could be in a perfect world. That is one of the reasons why we got the person of Yeshua who lived a life as an example, or a prototype, in order to display that even without having yet the ultimate grand fulfillment of the redemptive pattern in Torah on the macro level (i.e. establishing the Kingdom on earth), man should strive to fulfill that pattern of redemption on a personal (micro) level. 

Sukkot

For brevity's sake, I am writing in this article about the main three so-called pilgrimage Feasts. There is a special importance ascribed to these three appointed times. A great mobilization was to happen at these times, and even today. Believers in Israel and around the world go to great lengths to make these opportunities meaningful.

Sukkot parallels Passover in its seven-day duration and mirrors it on the calendar, being on opposite points on Earth’s journey around the sun. Pesach is celebrated around the time of the spring equinox, at the beginning of the agricultural cycle, while Sukkot is commemorated around the autumnal equinox, at the end of the agricultural cycle. Hence it is called the Feast of Ingathering.

As far as what we are told to remember during this Feast, there is the dwelling in booths (sukkot) at the time of our wanderings through the wilderness. In order to shift our attention to the personal level of this rehearsal, we need to think what the time in the wilderness can possibly represent in our life. 

The 40 years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness create a gap between the time when we were delivered from slavery and the time of our redemptive goal of reaching the Promised Land. This period contained tests, trials, and tribulations that cost all but two Israelites to perish in the wilderness. On the other hand, this time in the wilderness had a purpose from YHVH’s perspective:

“And you shall remember that the YHVH your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.” (Deut. 8:2)

Yeshua said, quoting the Psalm (37:11), “Blessed are the meek (humble) for they shall inherit the earth.” There was a process, or a purge, that was to take place within Israel, that would get them ready to inherit the land. We must also go through a similar process on our personal journey towards the Promised Land. The narrative of Deuteronomy continues:

“So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger, and fed you with manna which you did not know nor did your fathers know, that He might make you know that man shall not live by bread alone; but man lives by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the YHVH.” (Deut. 8:3)

A Sukkah is a physical structure to protect us from the elements. But we can also understand the Sukkah as a symbol of supernatural protection on our journey through the wilderness. In other words, we will go through trials and tribulations, and we will be tested, but through it all we must be aware that there is a deeper purpose for our experiences. We are not simply going around the mountain in circles, but there is a point of departure and a destination.

We know where we are coming from, and we know to where we are going, and while what happens in between can be confusing, troublesome, terrifying, or challenging, we are reminded that we are being watched and cared for.

There is much left to cover and much more to be uncovered, including the Eighth Day (after Sukkot), Yom Kippur, Rosh haShana/Yom T’ruah, and others. But it was not my intention in this article to expound on everything that there is to be interpreted, but rather to lay out a pattern—a system, a complementary understanding—and to allow the reader to continue to seek out wisdom and receive it from the only Giver, through His Spirit.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tzvi is an Argentinian-Israeli Jew who currently lives in North Carolina, USA. During his time in Israel, Tzvi worked in archaeology in the City of David and the Ophel area with Eilat Mazar. There, he developed a special interest in Biblical history and the Hebrew language. He currently teaches Biblical Hebrew to Spanish speakers online and co-hosts a successful radio show on a US based Messianic Ministry, speaking and writing articles on a variety of topics, ranging from the Hebrew language and Biblical history to current events in Israel and the world.