As a graduate student in philosophy, I read torturously turgid texts in the “structuralist” philosophical tradition about the difference between a “sign” and a “symbol.”

A sign, I learned, has a relatively specific, fixed meaning. The message of a stop sign, for example, is unambiguous. If you deviate from the official meaning, you will be required to pay a fine. Deviate again, and you may lose your driving privileges.

A symbol, however, is more open-ended. It invites interpretation.

Think of “the Tree of Life”:

It’s a Torah.

It’s a map of God’s attributes.

It’s a map of human spiritual attributes.

It’s a Disney attraction.

It’s your favourite childhood tree.

Et cetera.

Ambiguity isn’t a problem here – it just makes the idea of a “Tree of Life” more interesting.

But after I became a professor, intellectual fashions changed. To catch up, I read torturously turgid texts in the “post-structuralist” philosophical tradition. And I learned that there isn’t any difference at all between a sign and a symbol. In reality, precise signs don’t exist. Communication is never clear, and half the time people don’t even know what they themselves mean.

I would have thrown up my hands in intellectual frustration if it weren’t for Jewish Studies scholar Lawrence Hoffman. In a book on prayer, Hoffman clarifies the whole debate. He says: “symbols symbolize.”

In other words: We don’t know exactly how symbols work, and we don’t know exactly what they mean. They work differently for different people and they mean different things to different people.

Have you wondered lately about the meaning of the zroa, the bone or (for vegetarians) the beet on the Seder Plate? Is it a sign or a symbol? And why does the traditional Haggadah call it Pesach, as if it is the essence of the celebration itself?

Our traditional Haggadot treat the zroa like it’s a sign. Through a conventional chain of associations, it directs your attention to a specific historical event. It’s the bone of a lamb. In Temple times, our ancestors ate a lamb for the Pesach meal. The meal is an offering to God who pasach (passed over) the homes of the Israelites, while striking Egypt. Torah itself says so, in the book of Shemot-Exodus.

An annotated Haggadah tells you more. The zroa recalls the Exodus story as it is told in the book of Devarim-Deuteronomy. There we read that God took us out of Egypt b’yad chazakah u’vi’zroa netuyah – with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. With this information, we cannot pretend that the zroa is a simple sign. It may recall God’s hand and arm, but these are metaphors. What did God’s hand do? What did God’s outstretched arm do? Does the mighty hand hit with ten plagues? Or with 250 plagues? Does the outstretched arm gather us at Mt. Sinai? Who knows? Symbols symbolize.

Psychoanalyst Carl Jung would not want us to get off so easily. He says that symbols are important scientific tools. Like telescopes, they help us see new aspects of our world. Symbols are contextual, and even little details of the context are important.

Let’s take another look at the pesach. According to the book of Shemot-Exodus, the Israelites were instructed to slaughter a lamb in religious style, eat together, brush their doorposts with lamb’s blood so none of their firstborn would die in that night’s plague, and testify of these events to their children.

What does the symbol of the lamb symbolize? What does Torah direct us to see?

Nachmanides, medieval Spanish commentator, focuses on the intentional killing of the lamb. He notes that Passover takes place during the astrological season of the ram. The Israelites kill a young sheep as if to say, “These events are not due to the influence of the stars, but to God’s hand in history.” He also cites a midrash teaching that Egyptians worship the sheep as a God. The Israelites kill a sheep as if to say, “We are leaving this polytheistic culture in order to worship our one true God.”

Of course, I could quibble with his interpretation. The Talmudic rabbis also believed in astrology, and the Egyptians used many animals as divine images. So understanding the slaughtered lamb as a rejection of astrology or Egyptian religion seems at best incomplete, and at worst random. But I won’t quibble. Symbols symbolize, and Nachmanides, a great scholar, is entitled to his opinion.

What really confuses me, though, is his focus on killing the sheep. Because the most fascinating part is how many sheep were alive. Our ancestors were shepherds. While we were enslaved in Egypt, working construction, we kept our sheep. We left Egypt with huge flocks. So huge, in fact, that Parshat Vayikra can designate a whole category of offerings that should be made only with sheep.

Parshat Vayikra, describes the why, when, and how of animal and vegetable offerings at the mishkan. For most offerings, people could bring whatever animal they preferred. But for a few special offerings, a sheep – either ewe or ram — was always preferred.  You were to offer a sheep at the mishkan if you were called to testify in court but did not; or suddenly came upon an animal corpse but forgot; or touched someone ritually impure but forgot.

Let’s compare the reasons for the special offerings with the situation on the night of the original Pesach. In both situations:

When you must remember to testify about something, you offer a sheep.

When you have a brush with death, and need to ground yourself, you offer a sheep.

When you have been upset by something uncanny, which in Torah makes you ritually impure, you offer a sheep.

Sheep help you remember. Sheep make you feel alive. Sheep are ordinary. Sheep are constant. Sheep have always been with us. Sheep link us with our ancestors. A sheep is a symbol that holds Israelite identity.

Perhaps that’s what Torah wants us to see. Right there, smack in the middle of a miracle, is the magic of the ordinary.

And now, good luck with that interpretation, because symbols symbolize, and you can’t help but add your own meanings.

Tzizit help us remember the mitzvot; and they are made of wool.

We are a strong community, like a flock of sheep, even though we rarely agree on anything.

Moshe shepherded the Israelites with his staff.

But he was just God’s sheepdog, because God guided us with an outstretched arm, holding a shepherd’s crook, pulling us up each time we fell.

The LORD is my Shepherd, I shall not want.

Or maybe the LORD is my sheep, because the word “sheep” is both singular and plural, like the Hebrew word Elohim, God.

Each year, Jewish creativity is re-born under the sign of Aries.

Et cetera.

Symbols symbolize.

Chag sameach. Have a happy Passover.

Images: freefoto.com, icelandunlimited.is