Olam Tikvah Rabbis' Monthly Message

Monthly Message: Here Comes Pesach

There are two ways to respond to the above statement: Choice A) Don’t worry, it’s not until the end of the month. Choice B) “Oh my goodness—it’s THIS MONTH!!”

It doesn’t matter which you choose first. Most of us alternate between the two throughout the entire month.

As you start to think about cleaning, cooking and singing, take a few minutes and look ahead to the wonderful Seders you’ll share with family and friends.

Much of the power of the holiday, and the Seder in particular, derives from its collection of ritual acts and metaphors. The standard Haggadah text explains what each symbol means. Simultaneously, your Haggadah editor has his or her ideas of what they mean as well. Consider the items you point to on the 14th of Nissan. What does matzah or marror mean to you? Why are you reclining this evening? What do the various foods (the ones we eat or the ones we avoid) teach us about empathy, peoplehood and memory?

This year, I have found myself drawn to the image of the afikoman. From one perspective, it is one of the most playful aspects of the Seder. We hide or search for it and we give or receive gifts around its return. We joke about its attributes as a dessert. But how about the way we use it in the telling? In the story of our march to freedom, we break the middle matzah and save one piece as the afikoman. The pieces force us to acknowledge our brokenness: we need to tell the story, our story, before we can repair those pieces and become whole again. We can’t become free until we understand what imprisons us.

The story begins with the acknowledgement that we were slaves in Egypt—Mitzrayim. The Hebrew root of that word is maytzar, narrow. Like our ancestors, we can also be trapped in places that constrict us. We must first understand where we’ve been, then work hard to discover the roadmap that will guide us forward. It’s a story of hope, faith, hard work and hopefully, redemption.

A Seder takes only a few hours (and a lot of brisket) to get from broken matzah to the joy of Hallel. May the Seder’s images inspire us all to realize that with hope, faith and hard work, our individual lives and our world can be redeemed.