How to Do Passover This Year

Pre Passover Seder this week at our Hebrew School branch in Windsor Terrace

Dear friends, 

Last Friday at Kabbalat Shabbat I chose to speak about how to prepare ourselves for Passover this year. Although in the background of what I said was the relationship between Jewish liberation and Palestinian oppression, I purposefully avoided speaking about the war head on, for the first time since October 7th. When the service ended Maia thanked me for my words but expressed dismay at the fact that I hadn’t named the difficulty this year. How could we celebrate freedom while we are killing tens of thousands and displacing millions? Everyone I know who will be at a seder this year is asking themselves a variation of that question. So instead of schmoozing, I suggested we sit down with whoever would like, to discuss it.  

Of the many honest, thoughtful voices, it was Rene’s that stayed with me most. “In the camps,” she said, recalling her childhood escaping the Nazis, “people celebrated Passover. There was hunger – just like the hunger in Gaza today – so people took the horse feed, ground it into flour and baked Matzah out of it.” This short description cut to the chase of it all. Anyone there who thought that it’s impossible to celebrate Passover this year, immediately questioned their attitude. And anyone who thought they could ignore the war at their Seder this year couldn’t shake the Holocaust survivor’s clear-eyed comparison of the human situation in the camps and Rafah. 

So how do we do it?  

Ezzy was sick this week, which gave me a chance to read some of the Haggadah with him.
בכל דור ודור חייב אדם לראות עצמו כאילו הוא יצא ממצרים, he read. 

“In each generation each person must see themselves as if they came out of Egypt.” 

“Why,” he asked.  
“What do you think it does, to imagine that you came out of Egypt?” 
“Makes you appreciate what you have,” says Ezzy. 
“Is that it?” 
“It also makes you relate to other people’s suffering.”  

I find these two pieces the keys to this year’s holiday. We can’t ignore the first one: the family and friends gathering, the joy of being together, the beauty of our traditions. Nor can we unhear the cries we have heard, the images we have seen, the situation our Palestinian brothers and sisters are in, and the one our Israeli brothers and sisters are in. 

There’s one thing missing in this picture though, and that’s the way Passover connects us to the miraculous. Last Saturday’s thwarted Iranian attack was not quite the parting of the sea, but it was still miraculous. When we open the door for Elijah, let it help us keep the door open to the possibility of unexpected change. Let us remember that peace can come, that despair can be overcome, that human wickedness, greed and stupidity, has – incredibly - not completely undone us up to this point in history, and may yet be transformed. 

This week’s Haftarah describes the type of reconciliation that Elijah’s return brings: 

וְהֵשִׁ֤יב לֵב־אָבוֹת֙ עַל־בָּנִ֔ים וְלֵ֥ב בָּנִ֖ים עַל־אֲבוֹתָ֑ם 

And the hearts of parents will turn back toward their children,  
and the hearts of children toward their parents. 

I leave you with one suggestion for a transformation of the text of one sction of the Haggadah that seems appropriate this year. Written by Elana Blum from the NYC Anti-Occupation Block, it suggests that something’s got to be different about this year’s Seder, maybe even radically so, but we have to build it on the Seder as we know it. Instead of the usual text about the four children, and how parents should deal with each type, we find the opposite. Maybe instead of parents teaching kids, this is the year that parents learn from their kids.  

“The Four Parents”  
by Elana Blum 
With love to your people and mine / Passover 5784 (2024) 

1. The wise parent says, ‘Here are all the laws which God commanded us to observe on Passover, and all the customs of the Seder. Come and study them with me.’ To this parent you shall say, ‘I will study our laws and customs with you, and I will also think about them in new ways.’ And you shall share your thoughts with them, even those they do not recognize, so they can see that you will treasure the legacy and make it yours. 

2. The wicked parent says, ‘How dare you reject my tradition and my version of our history? You do not belong at my table.’ To this parent you shall say, ‘it is because you value me only as a reflection of yourself that I reject your teaching. I will read our story in my own way, and you will not be part of it.’ 

3. The simple parent says, ‘We are having a feast with matzo tonight! Eat, my child.’ You shall say to them, ‘I do not love matzo. But I learned that we eat it because our ancestors escaped from slavery, and I will tell you the story.’ 

4. As for the parent who does not know how to teach, you must begin for them, and explain: ‘This ritual belongs to us, and I will bear it forward.’
  
Wishing you a happy Passover, a Zissen Pesach and Shabbat shalom, 
Rabbi Misha