Passover: From doubt to redemption through community
In the Fall/Winter edition of the Hartman Institute journal “Sources,” Rabbi Jonathan Zasloff wrote on this age of uncertainty in which we find ourselves. He wrote that this age is like living on a “knife-edge” and “relishing that ambiguity as the cosmic test of this generation.” To live in this age of uncertainty, he wrote, “requires a collective moral struggle to preserve both our people and our values, particularly when these two goals seem in contradiction.” Rather than seeing a sense of meaning from the outside/political sphere, Zasloff asks us to consider re-examining and returning to a sense of “devakut” or clinging to what is sacred. This, he noted, is not a “state of mind, but more profoundly, it is a way of life.” As we enter the Passover season, I wanted to suggest to you that we think about this concept of “devakut” and what it may mean to “cling” to the core values of how we choose to live our life. There may be no better symbolic representation of this than the Seder ritual itself.
The Seder begins with a question, as so many of us have now. “Why?” Not only do we ask why the night is different, but communally we have been asking for a while now, “why” is this happening? The burning and shooting of synagogues, the attacks on Jews here and abroad: “Why?” Why do we as a community that felt so secure within the embrace and promise of the United States, now feel so alone and vulnerable after October 7? Is there one answer, or several answers that represent the spectrum of human experience, much like the Four Children whose section follows the Four Questions? So, we begin to tell our story, the “Magid,” the Seder, the story that goes from slavery to hope, told against the symbolism of the Exodus and the Wilderness, itself a metaphor for each of our lives. How many of us will open the door for Elijah, sing “Eliahu Ha-Navi” and wish for peace, for the world and for ourselves in ways we never thought we would live to see?
Passover, I suggest, is a powerful ritual, done in community, but very personal. One of the rituals associated with Passover can be considered as a preview of this duality. For many Jews, the days leading up to the Seder are involved with the cleansing of the home of “chametz,” the leavened products forbidden during the festival. We clean out that which is impure from our home, but what of our soul? As one Hagaddah notes on this ritual: “Take time to look scrupulously within for parts of yourself that have fermented and gone sour, that have become ‘old stuff,’ outdated.”
The Seder thus calls on us to free ourselves from that which continues to enslave us, our own personal Egypt! This speaks to one of the most important tensions that confront us as we grow older. I speak of the tension of holding on and letting go. Our Jewish festival cycle speaks to us of this tension many times. Often, we are called upon to reexamine our life and to have the courage to let go of that which binds us, enslaves us.
The Book of Leviticus, which occupies many of our current Torah portions, deals a lot with sacrifice. That Hebrew, the word “korbon,” has the sense of drawing near to God. The need to be in community now seems to be increasingly present. A recent sermon by Rabbi Jennifer Frenkel of Cong. Kol Ami on the day following the Temple Israel attack pointed out that, amid so much uncertainty, it is community that allows us to draw near to the sacred and, equally if not more important, each other. In this way, we “cleave” to core values of the power of our relationships. This Passover season is a perfect time to re-energize and renew our sense of community and relationships through the power of a sacred and ancient ritual.
May your Passover be one of peace, life, memory and health.