D'var Torah

So, how was your seder?

For many of us, the weeks leading up to Passover this year were punctuated by a variety of emotions, including, perhaps, some amount of trepidation. What would our celebrations look like this year? What could they look like this year? 

What I heard from many of you, and also experienced within myself, were a variety of questions and concerns. They ranged from interpersonal — how best to have a seder with family members or friends who disagree strongly about aspects of the present moment, maybe for the first time? — to theological: what would, could, should the words of the seder mean this year? What does it mean to remember our own liberation in a time when some of our people are literally held hostage by Hamas (still, agonizingly, after so many months), and we’re not sure how to help them become free? What does it mean to say “let all who are hungry come and eat” when there is so much terrible hunger in many parts of the world, including in Gaza? What does it mean to “see ourselves as having left a narrow place” in a time of rising antisemitism, rising hate? 

We each navigated these questions differently this year. There is so much creativity and wisdom in our community, and I would love to learn from you about how this went for you, what was in your mind in heart, and how you are doing in this moment, as Passover continues.

Sometimes, Passover arrives at a moment in world history where we feel secure about our place in the world, and can reflect on our liberation as a thing of the past — we’ve made it! Now let’s ally with other people who are trying to make it too! Sometimes it arrives when we feel great clarity about how to make positive change in the world, whether or not we ourselves feel secure about our status, as Jews or as any of our other identities. Seders in times like these can be galvanizing — a reminder that we are in this work for change together, and we can support each other as we navigate what comes next.

One thing I have been thinking about a lot this Passover season is the way that Jewish communities have celebrated this holiday every year, without fail, for centuries (millennia, even) — even in incredibly hard times. There are stories of people celebrating Passover in concentration camps. What must Passover have been like for them?

In “Gates of Freedom” — the really lovely haggadah that the Reform Movement published in the late 1990s — there is a beautiful short commentary on a teaching by Ben Zoma (the second century sage) that deals with this question. Ben Zoma taught that the Torah’s commandment to “remember the day you went out of Egypt all the days of your life” (Deuteronomy 16:3) meant that the Exodus story needed to be told at night, too (he argued that if the Torah had meant you should only remember the story in the daytime, it wouldn’t have said “all” … and hence, he taught, the Passover seder happens after sunset). Gates of Freedom adds to this: “It is easy to remember your liberation when the sun is shining. But you must remember it ‘all the days of your life,’ even when the day is dark. … Let our remembrance of liberation help us change the world as it is into the world as it ought to be.” (Gates of Freedom, p.23). 

Sometimes, we remember that positive change was possible once (many times) in years gone by, not because we know what our next step is, but because it gives us strength to keep going until we find it. 

May this be a Passover in which we support each other in finding our way into steps, whether large or small, that can help change the world as it is into the world as it ought to be. Speedily, and in our days. 

Shabbat Shalom, and Chag Pesach Sameach,

Rabbi Alexandra Stein