I am writing to you with a few hours to go before we begin
this year’s Passover. I want to say that this is a truly communal experience on
many levels. Think about all the families who are hosting Passover Seders and
have been preparing for them for weeks. I especially wan to express my
appreciation this congregation’s Sisterhood for organizing the community Seder
tomorrow evening. God bless them for their devotion and their efforts. Then
there are those of us who have contributed to these individual Seder meals and
are invited guests. They all help to create the proper festive mood for Pesach.
Of course we have done our best to clean our houses of
hametz. The test is not to eat matzah for eight days. Remember the mitzvah is
to eat matzah on the first night of Passover. The real mitzvah is to abstain
from eating any hametz or leavened products for eight days. The idea behind
this is that we are supposed to cleanse ourselves of the spiritual leaven that
impedes our ability to rise to the best of ourselves in life. In addition the tradition tries to help us
enter the time machine to feel and imagine that we too were slaves in Egypt.
Some of us who came from lands less hospitable to Jews have experienced that
condition before we immigrated to America. Yet most of us have never
experienced living in a country where being a Jew was a liability, a danger to
life and limb. So we must find other ways of identifying with our ancestors.
Servitude to the Pharaoh is likened to slavery to the things that too often
seem to define our lives. What this year’s Passover could be about for us is to
take a good look at what we need versus what we want in life. The choice is up
to us to reevaluate the hametz or the leaven inside ourselves of what is fluff
versus what is truly essential to our meaningful existence.
There is also another aspect of Passover I want to emphasize
to you in this message which is to remember that this holy day does define us
as a people and it also highlights our values as a people whose ethics do not abandon our obligation to
others not of our faith. The Torah tells us that along with Israel an “erev
rav” a mixed multitude came up with us out of Egypt. I would like to believe
that we were hospitable to the strangers and took them in as if they were our
own. How often did that value resonate
through Jewish history that we would take in the stranger even when in too many
episodes in Jewish history others cast us out into the darkness? It is our
highest moment to welcome the stranger in our midst at our Seder tables and to
practice what we preach that we are a welcoming and compassionate people.
Finally, let’s talk about what the phrase “Next Year in
Jerusalem” means? The haggadah narrative
starts with “Avadim Hayinu” We were slaves in Egypt and it concludes with
L’shana HaBaah Byerushalayim. We begin with the degradation of slavery and
complete the Seder singing for the hope of the redemption of the Jewish people.
It is God that guides our steps and it is the belief in God who has sustained
our memory and our passion to remember the journey that we the Jewish people
still travel after all these years.
I know that we will delight in the Passover culinary
delights and the discussion of the recipes that made for the most delicious Seder
meals. May I respectfully suggest that we reserve some segment of our Seder
experience to discuss the timely and timeless matters of the soul and the moral
conscience that each of us as individuals and that we as a Temple community are
bound to as we embark upon this Passover journey.
I hope to see you at morning services Tuesday at 10am and on April 1st at 10 am for Yizkor.
I hope to see you at morning services Tuesday at 10am and on April 1st at 10 am for Yizkor.
On behalf of Linda, Leah and myself, I wish you a Zisen
Pesach, a joyful and insightful experience.
Rabbi Brad Bloom
