What Does It Mean - Chronicle Online/The WORD 06/05/2025

Weekly On-line Rabbi's D'var-Torah

June 05, 2025

9 Sivan 5785

Parashat Nasso

In The Princess Bride, Inigo Montoya famously told Vizzini, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." Vizzini is not the only one to have that problem.

In a story that appears only in our Passover Haggadahs—and no place else in Rabbinic literature—we learn about five rabbis who stayed up very late on the eve of Passover talking about the Exodus from Egypt. They stayed up so late that their students came into the room and said, “Our masters—the time has come for the morning Sh’ma.”  

At face value, this story tells us that a group of rabbis got carried away with their Passover Seder and their students had to make sure that they weren’t late for morning services. However, most scholars don’t think that’s what the story is all about. It might not mean what we think it means.

It turns out that the five rabbis mentioned – Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Joshua, Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva, and Rabbi Tarfon – all lived at about the time of the Bar Kochba revolt in the 2nd Century CE.  So, over the years, many readers of the text have surmised that there’s more to the words, “Our masters – the time has come for the morning Sh’ma,” than meets the eye.  It must have been some kind of code.  Perhaps, it was a warning that some Roman authorities were coming.  Perhaps, it was a call to action – that it was time to start the revolt.  No one really knows.

This story is a reminder that we human beings have been using coded language to convey messages to a specific and knowing audience for a long time.  Even if WE can’t figure out what those words once meant, clearly the five rabbis in the story knew what to do after hearing them.

In recent weeks, it has been clear that antisemites have a new code for calling their allies to violence against Jews.

It started with the arson attack targeting Gov. Josh Shapiro as his family slept in the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion.  It continued with the murders of two young Israelis leaving an AJC event in Washington, DC.  And this past week, we heard it again after the Molotov Cocktail attack in Boulder, CO.  

In all three of these violent attacks targeting Jews (even though one of the victims turned out to be a non-Jew) the alleged perpetrators all spoke the same words – “Free Palestine.”

At face value, there’s nothing wrong with those words.  Palestinians deserve to live in freedom the same as any other group of people.   However, those words no longer simply convey their original meaning.  They have become a code for violence against Jews.  They have become a call to antisemitic bloodshed.  And at this point, anyone who chooses to chant those particular words has to know what they mean.  They are aligning themselves with the violent actors in Harrisburg, Washington DC and Boulder.

I know how it makes me feel when I hear those words being chanted or screamed.  No matter what those words literally mean, no matter what they used to mean – they’ve come to mean something else altogether.  Those words are terrifying to me as a Jew.  So, if you hear those words and you think it’s just about freedom for Palestinians, I hope you’ll consider the possibility that those words don’t mean what you think they mean.

Shalom,

RAF.