Pesaj 5776 - English

Rabbi Gustavo Kraselnik

Congregacion Kol Shearith Israel

The Seder as an Invitation to Reaffirm Who We Are

The Torah tells us (Ex. 12:7 and 13) that God ordered the children of Israel to perform a sacrifice before leaving Egypt and to use that blood to mark their doors in order to avoid the last plague befalling on their homes: 

“They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they are to eat it… And the blood on the houses in which you dwell shall be a sign for you: when I see the blood I will pass over you, so that no plague will destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”

With this text, the reader might ask: If God knows everything, why does he need a sign on the doors to identify the houses of the children of Israel?  Did he not know?  However, if we read carefully, the same text gives us the answer: “And the blood on the houses in which you dwell shall be a sign for you.”

The sign is not for God, the sign is “for you,” says the Torah, so that each Israelite could identify as such, not before God, but before himself, his family and the rest of society.  In other words, the sign is a manifestation of belonging, the formal expression of being part of the common history and destiny of the people of Israel.  

Throughout the generations, the Passover Seder has played practically the same role.  The entire ritual that accompanies this dinner exists exclusively to tell us who we are, and to know who we are we must necessarily know who we were and who we aspire to become.  

The Seder is the instrument created by tradition to fulfill the precept “Vehigadeta Levincha Bayom Hahu,” “And you shall explain to your son on that day” (Ex. 13:8).  To tell, narrate, transmit to our children who we are.  

The story of Passover begins with “Avadim Hainu”, slaves we were.  To begin the narration like this is no small detail.  On the contrary, it is an affirmation endowed with a powerful meaning, as the contemporary Jewish theologian Michael Lerner claims:

“One aspect of the Seder consists of stating we are descended from slaves… others would have done whatever possible to forget this humble past or to reconstruct history in a way that they could have seen themselves as descended from gods or superhuman heroes.  We can be proud of the fact that our people held on to the vision of itself as an enslaved people and insisted on narrating the story of liberation as a fundamental event in our history…”

But it is not enough to remember we were slaves.  The Mishnah established almost 2000 years ago that “each man must see himself as if he had left Egypt too.”  This means we must not only remember our liberation, but also feel it and experience it as if it had been our own. (Pesachim 10:5)

The Ma Nishtana, the 4 questions on the differences between this night and the rest, is an educational resource to grab children’s attention.  But there is something else: posing a question is an exercise of freedom, an ability only possessed by someone who is free, and that freedom is precisely what we are celebrating.  

This is basically what we need to transmit to our children.

Tradition has developed additional educational initiatives for the Seder, such as the metaphor of the four sons, the search for the Afikoman, and the children’s songs at the end, all with the purpose of stimulating and exciting the participation of our children.  

They are the target of this great effort.  The main objective is for them to see the “sign”, to understand who they are, to know their history and to comprehend that ever since remote times, whenever it was time for Passover, every Jewish family has sat around a table in the exact same way as we are doing today, for the parents to tell their children that we were slaves of Pharaoh, but God set us free.  

Just like the sign our ancestors had to paint on their homes in Egypt, the Passover Seder is a sign, a sign for everyone, but especially for our children. 

Shabbat Shalom and Hag Sameach

Gustavo