This week and last week the various sections of the paperS, especially the food sections, have been filled with recipes for Passover, with seder (the special holiday meal for Passover)and other holiday stories. It is a time when families often travel sometimes great distances to be together, thus they are able to share in the holiday and groan together about how long the seder was!
But seriously, Passover means a whole lot more than that. It is a holiday that celebrates a seminal period in the history of the Jewish people, one that ostensibly began with G-d sending poor stuttering and frightened Moses to tell Pharaoh to let these people go out into the desert for three days in order to sacrifice to the Lord. Well, Pharaoh was having none of that! Who in his right mind would send out , allow, all his slaves, from youngest infant to oldest person, to leave for three days to sacrifice to an invisible G-d. Would they even return and even if they did, who knew what crazy ideas they might have gotten into their heads and what an example to set for the other slaves of Egypt! Nothin' doin'!!
So what is the true meaning of this holiday? Is it to celebrate the flat and dry bread that they took with them - which we eat in the form of matza? Hope not, as this stuff is not my favorite! Was it to celebrate the first religious days vacation taken by workers? Interesting thought. It was a whole lot deeper than that and its meaning continues through the centuries.
Four hundred years of exile was what the people of Israel were told. The promise of their own land for all eternity was postponed, just a tad it seems, but that was cut short for various reasons, and off they went to find their land, TO LIVE IN IT AGAIN. But, as with the Jewish people throughout history, nothing comes easy, and there were delays and much pain. This holiday of Passover, or Pesach in Hebrew, celebrates the return of the Jewish people into a semblance of peoplehood, of nationhood, a return of their pride, of their recognition that there is more than just survival and while we work hard to prepare for this holiday every year - and trust me, the load falls mainly onto the women! - its message is well worth it and of vital importance.
The people of Israel have kept this holiday throughout the millennia. Even in the ghettoes and shtetls, in the homes of the conversos, where survival was always at risk, even into the very death camps - this holiday was commemorated, its importance valued and its promise of momentous importance and encouragement. If this promise of G-d had taken place and been kept, surely then the rest of the promises would be kept and there would be an end to the horror and the torture, the hate and the killings.
In conjunction with that hope, it is also called the holiday of springtime. That is the traditional worldwide time of renewal and hope as the new sprigs of life burst forth from the earth, from the trees. We know then that life continues on and life is renewable.
It is a holiday that sends a message to all the peoples of the world. I just heard the statement that hope is the last thing to die but we must not let it. We have not the right to do that. We cannot let fear and hopelessness, no matter how bad, to overcome and overtake us. We must not, so in the very deepest darkest days of the Holocaust, of whatever horror befell the Jewish people throughout history, there was always hope. We would survive, there would be survivors.Scrolls were written and hidden, diaries were hidden deep in the ground to tell the story, to give the facts and on the walls were written the words, "Z'chor. Gadank. Remember." Youngsters were told by their dying parents to live, charged with that responsibility, so that they might tell the story, just as we tell the story of Passover every year, twice during the holiday, and study it every year in the schools and learning halls of the Jewish people.
Matzah? Yes, and bitter herbs as well but also that sprig of parsley and the family, and the old family recipes written in old, European style handwriting, and the memories and the faith, the joy and the sadness, the knowledge that once again we are a free people in our own land - but along with that comes the knowledge that once again there are people who would see us gone, who threaten us as we ride in a car through a tunnel in London, or walk our kids to school in a French city, or who stab us in our own land or try to blow us up - along with the rest of the world.
It seems that the hate never dies - but neither does the hope. There is a reason why the national anthem of Israel is called Hatikvah, the Hope. Despite all the wry cynicism and sarcasm of Jewish humor, there is that light of hope. This Passover, whether one be Jewish or not, let us all pray for the freedom of all, for the end to the gangs of terrorists that roam the various countries of the world, an end to the threats and the hatred, and a return to at least a somewhat more sane world, a world where Putin does not play chicken with the USA and where all reside in peace.
I would like to wish all of you out there a Chag kasher v'sameach - a wonderful holiday and even as one chows down - remember the meaning - whether one is Jewish or not and simply a guest at one of the meals. The meaning is universal. Would that its implementation and hopes were universal as well.
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