Jewish Recovery Thought - Behaalosecha

“If any man of you or of your future generations shall be unclean... or be on a journey afar off, he shall observe the Passover offering to G-d on the fourteenth day of the second month...”

Numbers 9:10-11

There is a commandment to celebrate Passover, the anniversary of the exodus from Egypt, by bringing a special sacrifice -- the Pascal lamb.

This week's reading relates the story of a group of men who were unable to participate in the rite of the Pascal lamb because they were ritually impure and would not be able to complete the requisite purification process in time for Passover. Distraught over this missed opportunity, these men approached Moses and asked that he somehow make an exception for them. Moses asked G-d and G-d told him to establish a make-up date one month later for all who had missed the first Passover. The "Second Passover" was thus issued as a divine commandment for all time.

But if the Second Passover was destined to become a commandment, why didn't G-d simply relate this commandment to Moses when He told him about the regular Passover offering? Why did G-d not reveal this "back-up plan" until asked?

The answer is that the possibility for a Second Passover derives from the power of teshuvah - (literally: "return"). When one returns to G-d, spiritual deficits are transformed into spiritual assets, for it is the penitent's prior distance from G-d that serves as the very springboard for his current heightened desire to cleave to Him now. Ironically, had he not once been estranged from G-d, he would never have come to feel the kind of yearning for Him that he does now. Thus, the darkest moments of his past, what were once his greatest liabilities, become the source for an intense motivation for closeness with G-d.

Such a condition, however -- where the darkness of the past is converted to light -- cannot be premeditated. G-d's rule book could never prescribe the failure to serve G-d properly as a way of later becoming closer to Him. The opportunity to transform the past must come from the penitent himself. He must ask for it.

In recovery, we've found a new relationship with G-d. We have an appreciation for His wisdom, love and guidance that we are quite sure could never have been possible had we not been forced to turn our lives over to Him as the only known treatment for a disease which is progressive, incurable and fatal. But we did not become alcoholics so that we could later discover G-d in recovery. Nor is that something that we could ever have planned. It isn't even something G-d would have told us to do. But once it did happened, and we reached out to G-d, the possibility for transformation was granted.

A certain Hasid was once chided about the fact that the Hasidic Jews tend to make a big to do about the Second Passover. "You celebrate a holiday established for impure people," his detractor laughed. "No," he answered, "Not a holiday for impure people. A holiday for impure people who became pure."

Some might think it odd when they hear an alcoholic in recovery say something like: "Being an alcoholic is the greatest thing that every happened to me." Perhaps they think that recovery is meant to only make us more like normal people, to catch us up. But we do not have the dubious luxury of being “normal people” who may decide how and when to let G-d into their lives. Such is our fortune: that we are among that happy lot for whom their very survival requires giving themselves over entirely to G-d.

We could never have planned it. G-d would never have advised it. But this is how things worked out. And this is what has made us closer to Him today.