Dear TBZ community:
How is this Pesach different from all other Pesach celebrations?
Two years ago, I started my Pesach greeting to you with this very same sentence. Two years ago we celebrated Pesach just as the pandemic had begun. We planned sedarim on this strange, new thing called Zoom! At TBZ we sent you ways to celebrate, resources, readings, videos and songs. Many of us spent the seder alone, at home, in front of a computer. It was hard. And a year later, though some were able to rejoin with a few family, or with some friends, we still had a Pesach that was restricted by the pandemic. This year, although not yet fully “back to normal”, some are planning to enjoy their sedarim like it was “before” -- with families and friends. Some are choosing smaller gatherings, or different kinds of gatherings, some on Zoom and some in person. Some of us may be choosing to do something completely different, to set this Pesach apart from others and find a new way to celebrate that is not at all like “before.”
No matter how you are celebrating, and no matter how like before or not like before your seder is, what is true is that this Pesach is different for all of us, because we encounter this holiday with new learnings and new experiences and changed expectations from these past two years.
I write this note from Tel-Aviv, where I arrived on Wednesday to spend the holiday with friends and family. For my family, this is a very different Pesach from any other year.
The powerful thing about ritual is that, even though the way we do them, or where we do them, and even though one year or another might be different because of the realities, the limitations, the obligations and the needs of that year, the framework for celebration and the text of the Haggadah does not change. We go back to the messages we sing and recite every year, and by going back, perhaps from a new physical place or emotional place, we can find new meanings and new opportunities for growth.
Tonight, is not different than other years – we will eat matza and recite and sing at the beginning of the Magid the words of Ha Lachma Anya:
הָא לַחְמָא עַנְיָא דִי אֲכָלוּ אַבְהָתָנָא בְּאַרְעָא דְמִצְרָיִם
כָּל דִכְפִין יֵיתֵי וְיֵיכֹל, כָּל דִצְרִיךְ יֵיתֵי וְיִפְסַח
הָשַׁתָּא הָכָא, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּאַרְעָא דְיִשְׂרָאֵל
הָשַׁתָּא עַבְדֵי, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין
This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt.
All those who are hungry, let them enter and eat.
All who are in need, let them come celebrate the Passover.
Now we are here. Next year in the land of Israel.
This year we are enslaved. Next year we will be free.
This paragraph has always intrigued me: We call matzah, “the bread of affliction,” the bread eaten in Mitzrayim, in Egypt, in the narrow place of slavery, and yet the response to eating a bread that reminds us of suffering, is the opening of our doors to all who are hungry and in need. When we eat the bread of our ancestors, that very act reminds us of our suffering, and in the same moment of being reminded of our suffering, we are also reminded of our capacity to be generous. And, at this very same moment, the text also reminds us that we are not yet free, that we have not yet arrived. One of the ways to read this, is that through generosity we can aspire to redemption.
There is so much suffering around us, in our own communities and in the world. As we gather to tell the story of the Jewish people’s original flight from persecution, we can’t ignore the persecutions around us: those fleeing from Ukraine, those who have fled Afghanistan, asylum seekers at the U.S. border and so many who are on a journey to freedom, either physical freedom or other kinds of freedom. The list is simply too vast. And Pesach is an invitation to remind us that freedom is at hand.
As I wrote last week, Pesach provides us an opportunity to experience redemption. After imagining, and tasting the possibility of redemption, after knowing what it feels like, we know what we are looking for and what we are looking to create. Afterwall, if we don’t know what redemption feels like, if we can’t even imagine what redemption looks like, how can we work towards it?
Tasting redemption, includes tasting the bread of affliction, the bread of poverty of suffering and oppression, because it is in that way that we are called to open ourselves to generosity, and generosity, perhaps, is the single most important way to achieve freedom.
The telling and re-telling of the story of the Exodus, is our practice of hope and trust that redemption is possible and that oppression can be eradicated. The practices of Pesach are a reminder that we never stop hoping and believing that freedom is at hand and that we can live in a redeemed world.
May the tasting of matzah and the celebration of Pesach open our hearts to generosity. May that generosity bring us closer to the fulfillment of the vision of redemption.
May this Pesach and Shabbat bring renewal and blessings to all of you and your loved ones.
May we find strength, courage, and patience, and open our hearts with generosity.
May all those who are ill find healing.
May we have a joyful, sweet, and peaceful Pesach and Shabbat.
Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameach,
שבת שלום וחג שמח
