Rabbi Konigsburg's Blog

I remember reading a few years ago about a study from the University of Notre Dame on the phenomenon of forgetting something when you walk into a room. Has that ever happened to you? You get off the couch to do something, and as you stand in the middle of the room scratching your head, you wonder, “what was it I was going to do?” Professor Gabriel Radvansky explained that when you pass through a doorway, it acts as an “event boundary” which causes you to shift your frame of mind creating a new reference for your activities. Thus, researchers recommend that if you don’t remember what you got up to do, go back to where you started to increase your likelihood of remembering it.

This perspective on doorways adds a new dimension to our understanding of the original “pass over,” where God’s angel passes over the houses of the Israelites when meting out justice on the Egyptian first-born children. The Torah recounts how the Israelites are instructed to paint the posts and lintel of their doorway with the blood of the Passover sacrifice. While the Rabbis offer many reasons for painting those particular locations, we can now also wonder whether the blood served as a reminder for them to maintain the correct frame of mind, lest they cross the threshold and forget what that night was all about.

There are certain religious rituals that demand our attention and mindfulness. Of course, we can mumble through the siddur or the Haggadah and say all the words, and we of course can go through the motions of the prayer services, or of kashering our kitchens. But maybe that first Passover night is a reminder that our religious ceremonies require the correct intentions. We must be present and aware of the meaning of our rituals and stay focused on the tasks at hand. And while wandering through the doorway in Egypt on that night might have been more fraught with dire consequences, perhaps we can take more time to reflect before passing through doorways now. Before getting up and venturing into the next room, let’s be a little more mindful of whether we finished what we were working on, or if we are ready to shift gears into something new.

Chag Sameach and Shabbat Shalom