Passover and Redemption

If family defines Jewish identity, through the Passover the family becomes Israel.

Haggadah and Magid

Haggadah: Text for the conduct of the seder. The term is derived from the Hebrew verb to tellMagid the telling of the story of the Exodus from Egypt begins with the following recitation which explains the meaning of the matzah

This is the bread of affliction that out forefathers ate in the land of Egypt. Whoever is hungry – let him come and eat. Whoever is needy – let him come and celebrate Pesach. Now we are here; next year may we be in the land of Israel.Now we are slaves; next year may we be free men.

Four Questions

Why is this night different from all other nights?1.On all other nights we many eat bread or matzah, unleavened bread; but on this night, we eat only matzah2. On all other nights, we may eat herbs of any kind, but on this night, we eat only maror, bitter herbs.3. On all other nights , we do not dip our food even once; but on this night we dip twice – once karpas in salt water, the other maror in charoset4. On all other nights we may sit upright or we may recline but on this night, we all recline. Please give me the answer to my questions

The answer

We were the slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our god brought us froth from there with a mightily hand and an outstretched arm. And if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not brought our fathers forth from Egypt, then surly we, and our children, and our children’s children would be enslaved to Pharaoh in Egypt. And so, even if all of us were full of wisdom and understanding, well along in years and deeply versed in the tradition, we should still be bidden to repeat once more the story of the exodus from Egypt; and he who delights to dwell on the liberation is a man to be praised.

Then each person dips of the tip of a spoon into their wine cup, spilling off a little as they recite each of the 10 plagues: blood, frogs, lice, beasts, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of the first born.

Haggadah

Again and again, double and redoubled measure, are we beholden to God the All-Present; that He freed us from the Egyptians and wrought His judgment on them; that He sentenced all their idols and slaughtered all their first-born; that He gave their treasure to us and split the Read Sea for us; that He led us through it dry-shod and drowned the tyrants in it; that He helped us through the desert and fed us with the manna; that He gave the Sabbath to us and brought us to Mount Sinai; that he gave the Torah to us and brought us to our homeland – there to build the Temple for us for atonement for our sins.

This is the promise which has stood by our forefathers and stands by us. For neither once, nor twice, nor three times was our destruction planned; in every generation they rise against us, and in every generation God delivers us from their hands into freedom, out of anguish into joy, out of mourning into festivity, out of darkness into light, out of bondage into redemption.

For ever after, in every generation, every Israelite must think of himself or herself as having gone forth from Egypt. For we read in the Torah. In that day thou shalt teach they son, saying All this is because of what God did for me when I went forth from Egypt. It was not only our forefathers that the Holy One, blessed be He, redeemed; us too, the living, He redeemed together with them, as we learn from the verse in the Torah: And he brought us out from thence, so that He might bring us home, and give us the land which he pledged to our forefathers.”

Abraham Heschel

Truth is not in a process forever unfolded in the heart of man, but in unique events that happened at particular moments in historyThe incidents recorded in the Bible are episodes of one great drama; the quest of God for man, His search from an and man’s flight from him

matzah and Passover

Passover invites us to undergo a personal exodus from Egypt by transcending our individual limits. By eating the matzah we internalize the experience. Matzah is the bread of affliction, the bread of the poor, of people humble and without arrogance. In contrast leaven becomes bloated as it rises, symbolizes self-inflated egotism and pride

Ritual and acts

The absence of understanding at the moment of performing a ritual act does not vitiate the meaningfulness of the act. A father labouring to earn a living for his children fulfills the good regardless of whether his mind is constantly bent upon the moral intention of his deeds. Once a person decides to feed a child every day, his daily act is good regardless of whether it is always accompanied by an awareness of moral implication. What lends meaning to the acts of ritual is not only the particular intention, which is co-temporal with the acts but primarily the decision of faith to accept the ritual way of living. It is that decision – the general intention, and the accumulated insight throughout many moments of religious experience that bestows devotional meaning upon all ritual acts of our life. Heschel