Pesach
By Joe Bobker
The peak of Egyptian
oppression occurred under the 67 year reign of Rameses 11. The Jews
rejoiced at his death, prematurely it seems. For it was under the tyranny
of his successor, Mernephtah, that "they cried to God," ii
in an agonizing period of serfdom that lasted from 1522 to 1312 BC.
iii This Pharaoh was a phony
Pharaoh: according to the Midrash he would study the times of the tides
of the Nile, and enter the water precisely the moment that the water
began to rise, so that it should appear to be rising to honor him.
But how did the
Jews get to Egypt in the first place? As a result of a famine which
drove them there. How many Jews actually left for Israel? 603,550 males,
exclusive of Levites, women and children. iv
Was this a guess? No. The Book of Numbers owes its very name to a God-ordered
"counting" via the submission of shekalim, "coins,"
the results serving as the basis of the future division of Israel. vi
Is ‘600,000’ coincidental? viii
The number of Jews who left Egypt for the holy land is approximately
the same number of Holocaust survivors who left Europe for Palestine,
and the same number of Jews who left the Soviet Union for the Third
Jewish Commonwealth in Operation Exodus I (the proportional equivalent
of moving the entire population of France to the United States). ix
Pesach is the only
Jewish holiday whose title Jewish parents still use to name their sons.
Think of it: who do you know names Succas, or Shavuos? x
The Torah crowns Pesach the first of the shalosh regalim, the
"three pilgrimage festivals," when Jews ascended en masse
to Jerusalem on a regular basis, to ha’Makom asher yivchar Hashem,
"the site God chose to make His Name great," not just for
shalosh r’galim but also to eat and share ma’asrot, "tithes;"
to ask judgment or get guidance from the Kohanim; or to gather for the
mitzva of Hakhel. xi
This festival has
three precise designations: Hag haMatzot, ("Feast of the
Unleavened Bread,") Hag ha-Pesach, ("Festival of the
Paschal Offering") and Zeman Herutenu, ("Season of
Our Freedom"); each name linking the Spring wheat ‘n barley harvest
season to a people’s redemption from slavery. xiv
Although some use the term hag ha-Pesach this is technically
incorrect: it is simply "Pesach," a reference not to a yomtov
but to a day, the 14th of Nissan, the time of the Pesach sacrifice.
In English, we know
this festival as "Passover," a word derived from the Hebrew
pasah – as in "the Lord will pass over" any Israelite
home whose doorpost has been sprinkled with the blood of a sacrificial
lamb. Ironically the term passover was introduced into the Jewish
lexicon by a die-hard 16th century anti-semitic Bible scholar, William
Tyndale, a talmud of Martin Luther, the fierce Jewhater. Tyndale’s King
James English translation of the Torah is now universally accepted,
and is responsible for such theological expressions as "let there
be light," "salt of the earth," and "am I my brother’s
keeper?"
Pesach is a 7-day
festival in Israel, 8 in the diaspora, with the yomtov days falling
on the first, second, seventh and eighth days (first and seventh in
Israel), with chol hamo’ed "intermediate" days in-between.
The Hebrew term chol (from which comes the modern Hebrew adjective
hiloni, "secular") means "workaday," and
mo’ed means "holy time." Thus chol ha-mo’ed
(pronounced kholemoyed in yiddish, with the stress on the next-to-last
syllable) is the "secular" section of Pesach (and Sukkas).
On the 10th day of Nisan, the Jews were commanded (at great personal
risk) to gather unblemished lambs for an afternoon sacrifice on the
14th day. Why a lamb? Because the Egyptians worshipped it as a sacred
animal. xvii When the public
display of Jews killing the local deity passed by without Egyptian wrath
our rabbis declared the Sabbath of the 10th of Nissan the first Shabbas
HaGodol in history, literally the "Great Sabbath." xix
A perusal of the Jewish calendar shows an oddity: the second day of
Pesach always falls on the same week day as the first day of Shavuot.
A coincidence? No. It does so because of a mnemonic rabbinic device
known as at-bash, whereby the first and last seven letters of
the Hebrew alphabet are matched up (thus alef = tav, bet
= shin, etc). Since every Hebrew letter has a numerical value,
you take the letters alef to zayin, representing the first
seven days of Pesach, and link them with the letters tav to ayin,
the last seven letters taken in reverse order, to indicate which day
of the week seven other Jewish festivals will fall. xx
Although the term
Passover has become the commonly accepted one, it is a regrettable mistranslation
of the Hebrew. It presupposes the Hebrew root a-v-r as meaning
"to pass through" instead of the verb root p-s-ch.
Remember: The Hebrew language is based on verbal roots and vowels that
evoke the idea and nuance behind a word’s desired meaning. Hebrew is
thus both a visual as well as a spoken language. Since the Israelites
literally lived side-by-side with their Egyptian neighbors in Goshen
the Angel of Death would not have passed "over" but "up-and-down,"
and/or "in-between," the doorposts.
Linguistics aside,
the festival of Pesach has a magnetic allurement, a fascinating appeal,
a powerful attraction. It towers mightily and majestically in the Jewish
calendar over all the other holidays. As one of the three festivals
devoted entirely to Jewish national liberation (the other two? Chanukah,
Purim) it reigns supreme because it is the only one anchored in the
Bible itself. As a source of Judaic inspiration Pesach is fons et
orgio, exquisitely preeminent, a window through which the vastness
of all of Judaism can be glimpsed. Unlike the multiple Shavuos and Succas
Torah injunctions of vesamachta be’Chagecha, "rejoice on
your festival," there is no similar halachik dictate for Pesach.
But not to worry. It is a generally accepted principle that the inclusive
mood of each yomtov is to be s’meach, "happy."
The catalyst of
Pesach cheer is a marvelously enticing work known as the Haggadah, a
separate "stand-alone" Hebrew manuscript, an ancient piece
of narrative pedagogy that, according to Rashi "captivates the
heart" of a daring, daunting drama. Those flipping through it in
search of a logical coherent structure will be disappointed. Since this
is a night of questions, one may be forgiven for asking ma ha-seder
she-baseder?, "What order is there in the Seder?"
There is none.
The Haggadah is
not a "book," as we understand a book to be, but a mosaic
of passages, a tapestry of images, a whole-cloth of borrowings. Its
ingredients are a mixed menu from the Old Testament, enhanced and embellished
with sayings from the Midrash and Mishnah, pesukim from Tanakh,
stirred with blessings, prayers and songs ("a great and mighty
Divine poem," per Rav Kook) xxii
– all accompanied by such a myriad of Pesach halachas that an entire
tractate of the Talmud is named after it. Yet these bits ‘n bytes of
Scriptures, so seemingly diverse at first, come together in a perfect
union to comply with the order to "expound the whole section."
The epic grandeur
of the Haggadah was first transmitted verbally from fathers to sons
‘n daughters. Eventually, the Wise Men of the Great Assembly had its
original luster reduced to writing and ordered Jews to sing the Song
of Exodus daily in their morning prayers, attracting a rare Zohar reward:
"Whoever reads the Shira daily with devotion will have the merit
to read it in Olam HaBa [the World to Come]." The sweet
lyricism of Shir ha-Shirim, "Song of Songs," expresses
the joy of love and Spring and is an exquisite fixture of the Shabbas
that falls within Pesach. The 7th day of Pesach is marked by the immutable
lyrics of the soaring Shirat ha-yam, a self-abnegatory "Song
of the Red Sea," that Rav Hertz calls "the oldest song of
national triumph still extant." It is an eternal music of modesty,
a poetic and dramatic recollection by an emotional people of its liberation,
brimming with poetry of gratitude that glorifies the Name of God. Song
permeates the choreography of Torah: we find Jews singing on the night
they depart Egypt, and when a well of water springs up in the wilderness.
Before he dies Moses sings a song of comfort; Joshua, Devorah, Barak,
King Yehoshaphat, and David, the "sweet singer of Israel,"
all burst into song when they vanquish or rescape their enemies, whilst
Solomon can’t help but sing-along with his Temple’s dedication. Yes,
there were many songs, but only one Shirah! xxvi
What does ‘Haggadah’
mean?
On the surface it
means thanks, but it is more than that, much more. It is a symphony
of gratitude, a chorus of appreciation, composed from the verse, "I
acknowledge [higgadeti] today to God." This is a salute
to the Mishnah’s aggadeta, a multi-compilation of midrashic sayings
and homiletic stories designed to fulfill a direct Torah command: "You
shall tell [vehiggadeta] your son on that day." This luring
format, based on our rabbi’s instinct that "the soul of man yearns
to hear legends," has made Pesach the most aggadic of all Jewish
festivals. But is aggada binding, halachikally? No. Yet every text,
Biblical, Mishnaic or Talmudic, does not hesitate to use it as a powerful
vehicle to lead Jews to predetermined moral truths and spiritual conclusions,
hoping, along the way, to inject emunah, "faith," as
the Torah’s sole Weltanschauung. xxx
It is easy to see why: aggadah’s imaginative narrative, free-floating
metaphors and heavily annotated parables flow with such dazzle, that
it is a Judaic teaching tool par excellance.
God’s presence in
history is felt right at the seder table, making the Haggadah’s commercial
demand seem inexhaustible, its audience unlimited. It is by far the
Number One top seller, and most illustrated xxxi,
of all Jewish books. The 1454 Rhineland haggadah of the scribe-artist
Joel ben Simeon is the inspirational epitome of hiddur mitzvah,
"beautifying a commandment," with wild animals, domestic beasts,
and crouching figures all supporting elaborate decorative double arches,
festooned with fantastic towers and figurehead medallions, in which
are listed the laws of Pesach. More Torah commentaries exist on the
Haggadah than on any other Jewish text, including the Bible. From the
day it made its first appearance (1482) in Italy’s Reggio di Calabria,
Judaica collectors have amassed more than 3,500 separate editions. Consider:
during the entire 16th century only 25 Haggadahs were printed; by the
19th century publishers were churning out 1,269 Haggadahs a year…and
this record was broken in just the first half of the 20th century! Its
scholarly lure is underlined by a startling fact: in comparison to the
oldest-known, 13th or 14th century Haggadah manuscript (currently in
Russia’s Leningrad Library that consists of only four leaves (8 pages),
the early-20th century Otzar Peirushim veTziyyurim, "Treasury
of Commentaries and Illustrations," xxxii
was bursting with over 300 pages, and growing.
When Chaim Herzog
made history by being Israel’s first president to officially visit the
United States, President Ronald Reagan searched for an appropriate gift
and gave Chaim, yep…a Haggadah. xxxiii
It is the perfect gift because, throughout history, its variety fits
all sizes, ranging from the rare illuminated 15th century First Nuremberg
Haggadah xxxiv to the
elegant Sarajevo Haggadah (by far the best-known Hebrew illuminated
manuscript extant), xxxv to
blue-and-whites (Maxwell House), to a rarity that depicts Jews with
heads of birds (to avoid drawing human images), to Holocaust survivors
(a reproduction of the first haggadah used after liberation), xxxvi
and to hare hunting drawings (the famous medieval Ashkenazi Haggadah)
that illustrate the Kiddush. Is this last one bizarre or not? No. It
derives from a legitimate question as to which order, if Pesach starts
on motzei Shabbas, should one say the Kiddush and make Havdalah.
Our rabbis "summarized" the sequence of brachot in the Talmud
– yayin (wine), Kiddush, ner (candle), Havdalah and z’man
(as in "time" of the festival) – into yak-n’-haz, an
expression which sounds like jagt-den-Hasen, German for "hunt
the hare." This led some Haggadot and Machzorim to illustrate the
relevant page with hunting scenes (despite the fact that Judaism frowns
on animal hunting for pleasure). I have seen Haggadah’s specifically
printed for war, women’s rights, vegetarians, xxxvii
yiddishists, xxxviii
Christians – and even for impatient Jews who can’t wait to eat their
meal. It is the most hijacked sefer of all times. Bizarre "politically
correct" groups have brought out so-called multi-cultural Haggadah’s
dedicated (inappropriately) to the rights of gays, Palestinians, Tibetans,
even atheists. America’s guru-rabbi Arthur Waskow invented "Shalom
Seders" for the Dominican Friars in the Nevada desert to protest
the H-bomb ("the ultimate Pharaoh") and "Freedom Seders"
for African-Americans (with such soul-stomping heartfelt harmonies as
"Rock my Soul in the Bosom of Abraham," and "By the Waters
of Babylon").
It is therefore
not surprising, with so much exposure and saturation, to find that nearly
every Jewish child knows the adventures of the Jewish people off by
heart; how Moses led the Children of Israel from Egyptian slavery, molded
them from a loose rag-tag group of tribes into a nation in the holy
land, securing a position in the religious consciousness of all humanity.
xxxix For what purpose?
Ta’avdun et ha-Elokim al ha-har ha-zeh, "to worship the
Lord upon Sinai." xl But
wait! Moses’ name is hardly even mentioned in the Haggadah; in fact,
it only appears once and even then only casually in a quote. That the
tale is so well-known is a tribute to the Torah’s stunningly succinct
snapshot of Jewish history; first via the Bible, secondly via the Haggadah,
starting with its singular most prominent verse, Arami oveid avi,
"My father was a wandering Aramean," changed, by using different
vowels, to Arami iveid avi, "an Aramean sought to destroy
my father [Jacob]," thus going back even further in Jewish history;
to Genesis, wherein a forefather "went down to Egypt," but
only temporarily, to "sojourn there." His optimism was ill
founded, as the Jews became a community oppressed, laying painful paving
stones over centuries waiting for their future liberation.
The sensational
success of the flight from Egypt fulfilled several Divine promises,
starting with Abraham ("Your seed will be a stranger in a land
that is not theirs, where they will serve for 400 years…and afterwards
they shall come out") and, two generations later, to Jacob ("I
will go down with you into Egypt and I will bring you up again"),
xlii and finally to Moses
("I will deliver them from the Egyptians, and bring them into the
land flowing with milk and honey.")
Moses was raised
not as a Jew but as an Egyptian, in a highly cosmopolitan multi-lingual
society. His name is Egyptian, derived from the verse, ki min-hamayim
meshitihu, "taken from the waters." xliv
It is unlikely that his savior Princess Bithyah, one of 59 of Rameses
II’s daughters, would use Hebrew rather than Egyptian to name her newfound
infant. Therefore the name ‘Moses’ is more likely to be derived from
the Egyptian mes or mesu, which mean "child, son."
Later, when Moses addressed Pharoah he referred to his people as ‘Hebrews,’
but he spoke to them fondly as ‘Israel.’ The word Yehudi ("Jew")
would soon come to symbolize not just a man (Judah, the son of Jacob
and Leah) but also a mighty tribe (the Judeans) and a holy land (Judah).
All of God’s pledges
would have been pointless if the Heavens had abandoned the Jews of Egypt
to permanent slavery, certain assimilation and unimpeded Jewish infanticide.
They would have been empty unkept promises, a deceitful sham and a cruel
fraud on God’s part. Pesach is a mandatory annual celebration because
God made good on His promises; the miraculous escape and the successful
military conquests vindicating and exonerating the pledges from Heaven.
But there is an obvious question: if God hardened Pharaoh’s heart then
what good is the concept of free will? And was it fair to subject the
Egyptian people themselves to the terror plagues? xlviii
The Rambam claims
that by "oppressing strangers, and tyrannizing them with great
injustice," Pharaoh had already exercised his own (evil) free will.
God simply withheld the power of repentance in order to administer the
punishment which justice required. Wait, doesn’t this contradict the
entire thrust of tshuva, that "up to the day of a person’s
death God waits for them to repent." Yes. The only conclusion is
this: some sins, whether burying Jewish children in pyramid walls or
gassing them in crematoria, are so evil that no repentance is possible.
Rabbinic commentary
is full of concern for the Egyptian citizenry ("Rejoice not when
your enemy falls; be not glad when he stumbles") xlix
and a famous Midrash describes how God rebukes the joyful angels ("The
works of My hands are drowning in the sea, and you want to sing?").
Jewish mystics, concerned that Jews not be seen as gloating at Egyptian
discomfiture, claimed that the plagues attacked not the populace but
a legitimate spiritual target: their false gods. Since the Nile was
worshipped as the source of life and prosperity, its waters were turned
to blood; because frogs were regarded as sacred they were chosen to
spread devastation; the earth and its crops were worshipped, so locusts
swarmed to eat up every piece of vegetation; because the sun was a god,
it was neutered by a plague of darkness; and finally the first-born
son of Pharaoh, who considered himself a deity, was killed. li
I remember how my
mother, in one short sentence was able to summarize, in yiddish of course,
Pesach’s most important lesson "God will help; meantime help me,
O God, until God helps." This means God helps those who help themselves,
confirmed by the Haggadah’s account of frightened Jews wedged between
a raging sea and 600 Egyptian chariot troops. Naturally, they turn to
Moses. Who else? But their leader, once so determined now stands disabled;
frozen, immobile, paralyzed in prayer. God responds, but not the way
Moses expects. The Heavens admonish him for wasting precious time by
praying. Miracles are suddenly withheld, but only temporarily. It takes
the courage of a single Israelite, Nahshon son of Aminadav, chief of
the tribe of Judah, to affirm that "there is nothing greater than
faith." The daring Jew steps out into the waters and forces the
"great hand and outstretched arm" of God to make a homa,
a wall, and part the waters. By forcing God’s hand, Nahshon’s tribe
is rewarded with the messianic Davidic dynasty. liv
To my parents, Polish-Holocaust survivors both, it was Nahshon of Aminadav
that represented the timeless Pesach key to Jewish history. He was proof
incarnate: that "one must not rely on miracles alone;" that
individual Jewish courage means communal Jewish liberation; and that
the faith of one liberates all. lvi
The Hebrew word
for miracle(s), nes or nissim, appears a lot at Pesach
time; its English is derived from the Latin mirari, which means
"to wonder," or "to marvel at, be amazed by;" or
to see the common in an uncommon way. lviii
It is a deep article of faith that one believes in the Red Sea miracle,
even more so than Revelation at Sinai. In a famous yiddish legend a
woman in Safed becomes possessed by a dybbuk as punishment for not believing
in the miracle of the Red Sea. According to the Rambam belief in miracles,
ancient or modern, is so axiomatic in Judaism that to deny them is heresy,
"A miracle does not prove what is impossible; rather it is an affirmation
of what is possible." lx
To ask why miracles only happened in antiquity is to fail to see God’s
Hand in modern history, whether it be the creation and ongoing survival
of Israel to the collapse of Communism. When David Ben Gurion asked
Rav Herzog, the chief rabbi of Israel, why God did not send a miracle
to preserve the new State, the rabbi replied, "I regard you
as one of God’s miracles!"
The word nes
in the Torah doesn’t automatically mean miracle; it might be referring
to a "sign" (ote), or a "test" (nissa,
as God did to Abraham), lxi
or something simply to "marvel" or "wonder" at (pelleh),
whether Divine or not. It is a common myth that a "miracle"
must have some supernatural or virtuoso magical component. This is not
so. What turns a natural everyday event into a nes is not the
act itself, but its timing and consequence. That a waterway in Egypt
parted is not a miracle in and of itself; that it parted just at the
right time and resulted in the saving of Jewish lives made it one. By
the Torah’s own admission its impact lasted only three days, proving
that sometimes "even the beneficiary of a miracle does not realize
that it is happening." lxiii
Is the "Red Sea" and the "Sea of Reeds" the same?
No. The former is an inlet separating the western Arabian Peninsula
from the east coast of Egypt; while the latter is one of the lakes between
Egypt and Sinai, and is the one in Exodus. How then did the "Red
Sea" get into the Hebrew texts? From a tortured mistranslation
route that went from the original Hebrew (Torah) into Greek (the Septuagint,
the oldest Bible translation in the world, dating back to the 3rd or
4th century BC) then to Latin and finally into English (the popular
King James’s Bible of 1611). The translators took the term ‘yam suf’
from I Kings 9:26 and misapplied it to the ‘yam suf’ in Exodus
13:18, despite the vastly different contexts; the former talks about
King Solomon’s navy on the shore of the Red Sea [yam suf] "in
the land of Edom." This was a genuine mistake. They thought that
the Hebrew words ‘Edom’ (a geographic location) and adom ("red")
meant the same.
The month of Nisan
is Judaism’s an all-time favorite month, its festive merry status nicknamed
the "Month of Great Miracles," an adulation that our Sages
even extend to Jews named "Chanina, Chananyah or Yochanan."
Why? Because they are spelt with two "nuns." So? This stands
for nisei nissim, meaning "very great miracles." Nisan’s
unique status in the Jewish calendar derives from its being a beginning,
a priority, in compliance with the first post-Exodus mitzvah that the
Jews receive as a people, "This month shall be your first month."
lxv The result? Pesach is the
first Jewish holiday the Jews celebrated; a yomtov so significant that
it even changed the basis of the Jewish calendar, from BE to AE. The
former stands for "before Egypt," when the Jewish year began
in Autumn in Tishrei, the month in which the New Year still stands.
And then came "after Egypt," with a Torah dictate that Jews
"observe the month of Spring and keep Passover" (beginning
on the evening of the 15th day of Nisan), which forced the Sages to
count their months from Spring (Aviv), the end of the rainy season.
In Israel this is the season when the fig tree is in bud, grain is starting
to ripe, fruit trees begin to blossom, wheat stalks harden, wild fowers
carpet the fields and kernels across the holy land begin to fill with
harvested grain. This explains why it we say a special prayer for dew
(tal) on the first day Pesach, whilst the prayer for rain (morid
ha-geshem) is suspended. Menachem Mendel of Koznitz breaks the word
Aviv into two: av ("father") and y’v (whose
gematria is "twelve"), to arrive at Nisan being the "father
of the twelve months (of the year.)" lxvii
On each of the first
twelve days of Nisan, one member of each tribe offered a sacrifice at
the Tabernacle, causing each day to be designated as a festival. Then,
starting on the 15th, the next eight days were the joyous Pesach days.
The month was void of any remorseful prayers (tahanunim) or fasting,
except for first-born sons on the day before Pesach, known as Ta’anit
Bekhorim, a reminder that God spared elder Jewish boys as against
the Egyptian first-born (however those who participate in a seudat
mitzvah, a religious meal following a siyum, the "completion
of a tractate of Torah," are exempt from fasting. lxviii
Pesach is synonymous
with symbols that overflow and merge one into the other in such rapid
pace that we hardly have time to catch our breath. This roller-coaster
ride takes place at the seder tisch, a festively laid-out table
on each of the first two nights where a ritual interactive reenactment
of the Exodus takes place. In the first century of the Common Era, Theudas,
the leader of the Roman Jewish community, wanted his community to actually
sacrifice a lamb but was ordered by the rabbinate to cease ‘n desist,
on the basis that without a Temple there could not even be the appearance
of a sacrificial animal. lxx
Why must the seder
be at night?
A father, standing
in a blackened cellar, called out to his little son to jump through
an open trap door; but the little boy was scared. He couldn’t see anything,
just blackness.
"Jump, jump," yelled the father, "I’ll catch you!"
"But I cannot see you."
"Never mind, I can see you! Jump."
And so the little boy jumped, into and through the murky darkness, and
found himself in the safe arms of his father.
After the pained
prophet Isaiah called out to the Heavens, "Watchman what of the
night?," lxxi
Rashi described "nighttime" as the "domain of
the destroying agencies," whilst the Zohar referred to it as a
"barren dust that rules over Israel, who are prostrate to it."
lxxii Our rabbis composed
the Hash-kiveinu prayer that God protect us from the terrors
of nightfall, a plea based on pure precedence: all 13 events listed
in the yomtov song of Vayehi bachatzi ha’layla take place
on Pesach eve, at night. lxxiii
This convinced our mystics that the final redemption, an event which
will be U’keor boker yizrach shemesh, "as clear as day,"
would appear during the darkness, when all hope seems lost; at a time
of heightened fear, insecurity and anxiety. Why? So that we could awake
to the light and confidence of a new world order, and know no more of
the dark inauspicious "it-came-to-pass-at-midnight" dread.
The seder tisch
is the single most important meal in the entire Jewish calendar; even
more than the three Shabbat meals. Did you know? Pesach not only begins
with a feast, it also ends with one, a light merry meal in the afternoon
of the last day. The litvags (Lithuanian Jews) call this "the
Meal of the Gra," named after the famed Gaon of Vilna who taught
that it was a mitzva to honor the "departure" of matza; Chabad
chassidim know it as a Seudat Mashiah, the "Messiah’s Feast,"
to demonstrate faith in his imminent arrival; yiddishists are more direct:
this "final supper" is simply begleiten dem yomtov,
which means "escorting out the festival."
Our Sages wisely
made the premier Pesach activity, the seder tisch, "a family
affair," one held at home, at night, rather than in the synagogue.
This festival thus became one of sharing and kinship, brilliantly bonding
Jews not only internally (to their own families) but externally as well
to the larger family of their scattered people. This Judaic camaraderie
made it inconceivable that one would stay home alone for a seder, or
leave one’s own family to attend another’s seder, even though both are
halachikally permissible. Rabbi Eliezer once rebuked his own pupil,
Rabbi Illai, for leaving his family to spend time with him, his teacher.
lxxiv It is this emphasis on
togetherness, of belonging, the most intimate of all human experiences,
that has contributed to Pesach’s longevity and explains why 92% of unaffiliated
American Jews still attend a seder every year, despite the otherwise
rampant apathy to all things Jewish. (David Ben Gurion once admitted
that the only novel he had ever read was the popular blockbuster book
Exodus. When asked why, he replied, "I forced myself to read it,
because I wanted to know what influences the Jews of America.")
lxxv
All Jewish adults,
regardless of their level of religiosity, carry and pass on, a fond
opium of warm childhood memories of parents, brothers, sisters and children
at a Pesach table. "Sometimes a color, a sound, a strain of music
evokes remembrances of things past," reminisces Richard Yaffe,
"For me it is smells, the delicious aromas of childhood Passovers."
lxxvii Ruth R. Wisse agrees:
"All pleasures spring from the seders of my childhood, the excitement
of which I adored." lxxix
Pesach’s remarkable fascination grabs us with a tremendous tenacity
and attracts not just wise ‘n wicked sons, but also scoffers, sinners,
cynics; even those "who," according to Heinrich Heine "have
drifted from the faith of their fathers" (Heine being a Jew who
knew all about "drifting away" from yiddishkeit).
On Pesach, we, as
children, starting with the youngest amongst us, are prodded and
prompted to talk about the nature of freedom as though we had "personally
come out of Egypt." Why? So that we, as adults, can care
compassionately about slaves, widows and orphans within the philosophy
of tikkun olam, lxxxi
which means literally, "to repair, or restore," an expression
found in the second paragraph of Alenu. Tikkun, the climactic redemption
of humanity, is a messianic concept, derived from the notion of sh’virat
hakelim, the "breaking of the vessels," in that mankind’s
task was to put Creation right after the earthly "vessels"
shattered in their inability to contain the intense Heavenly light that
caused the world to go awry. lxxxii
Yet the Mishna turns its back on this abstract component and gives tikkun
olam a here-and-now connotation, a road map of local social ordinances
mip’nei tikkun ha’olam, lxxxiii
"for the common good of society."
This is why the
Haggadah bypasses God’s own language (Hebrew) lxxxiv
and begins its story telling workshop in Aramaic, lxxxvi
the lingua franca of the Jews of Palestine and the Mid East from
about the 8th century BC to 700 CE, when it was supplanted by Arabic.
More than 3 chapters of Ezra, 5 chapters of Daniel, one verse in Jeremiah,
and 2 words in Genesis are all in Aramaic. lxxxviii
With its opening invitation ha-lahma anya, "all who are
hungry come and eat," in Aramaic the Haggadah sought to use the
language of the masses to spawn the erev-Pesach custom of giving charity
to the poor, known as maos chittim ("money for wheat")
or kimcha d’Pesacha ("flour for Pesach").
Is there any doubt
then that the "fairness" component within the seder’s universal
message ("abhor not an Egyptian, for you were a stranger in his
land") is not the factor in why there is such a high emphasis on
social causes among Jews? xc Remember:
it is on Pesach that Isaiah dazzles mankind with his insistence on social
justice, inviting us to close our eyes and imagine a perfect utopian
earth where wolves and sheep are friendly neighbors, where nations beat
swords and spears into spades and plowshares." xcii
It was this "jewish" trait that led Clarence Darrow to advise
defense attorneys to pad their juries with Jews; xciii
and when a White House visitor once remarked to Woodrow Wilson what
a pity it was that a man as great as Supreme Court Justice Louis D.
Brandeis should be a Jew, the President replied that Brandeis would
not have been so great a man if he wasn’t a Jew! xcv
The moral upgrading
of human rights, although not the primary goal of Pesach, has inspired
countless Jews in their search for a better world, spiritually lifted
by that breathtakingly courageous demand to "Let My People Go!"
That is when Zechariah looked into the future and saw a proud Jewish
nation, with its defiant "prisoners of hope," marching forward,
yearning for freedom and craving for equality, with an utter contempt
for slavery and for man-made deities. It was Pharoah’s arrogant outburst,
"I know not the Lord!," that stirred the Jewish God into a
series of plagues, designed to affect all of Egyptian society: water
and earth, air and vegetation, animals and humans.xcviii
Rashbam points out that the first 9 plagues come in three groups, summarized
by their mnemonic initials d’tzach adash b’achav, and that, in
each group, the first two plagues are preceded by a public, then private,
warning. Since neither of these approaches work, the third plague in
each group comes suddenly, publicly and with no further warning – except
for the tenth (and worse) plague. This one is announced twice. c
The dramatic mano
a mano Moses-Pharoah confrontation represented an unprecedented
revolt. It was mounted for mankind’s liberty and was different from
every previous insurrection. How? Because all the earlier rebellions
had been selfishly motivated by one ruthless self-absorbed man, or one
country’s urge for power, plunder or prestige. And yet, not all Jews
participated; the lure of freedom was not enough to move the entire
Jewish community out of Egypt. The Torah truthfully admits: only one
in 5 were sufficiently adventurous to take up the challenge of emancipation.
Included in the journey from Raamses to Succot were an "eirev
rav," a Hebrew expression whose root meaning is "to mix,"
or "mingle," a term that occurs only once in the entire Torah.
ci Who were they? No one knows.
The Torah refuses to identify them, but such is the beauty and mystery
of the am segula that only a handful, a bare minority, an insignificant
statistic, dramatically changed the course of history. ciii
"Just as a
nation creates its own history, so, too, is it created by it,"
wrote the martyred Jewish historian Simon Dubnow. The Jews were the
first to carry this captivating Theology of Liberation through the gateways
of generations. They stand guilty in the dock of world history for aiding
and abetting an immutable power of the spirit that has moved underdogs
and scapegoats, victims and losers, coram deo. By demanding that
freedom be an inalienable right for all folk, the Jewish people are
inseparable from such lofty declarations as "Proclaim liberty throughout
the land to all its inhabitants" (Torah); "The destiny of
Israel depends on the establishment of universal freedom" (Judah
Leib Magnes); "Since the Exodus, Freedom has always spoken with
a Hebrew accent" (Heinrich Heine); and "The first step toward
liberty is to miss it; the second, to seek it; the third, to find it"
(Leopold Zunz).
"Pharaoh died,
but his deeds live on" observed the articulate Ahad Ha’am, simply
echoing Russeau from 1762, "Man is born free, and everywhere he
is in chains." Was it a coincidence? Rabbi Akiva planned his struggle
against the Roman yoke of oppression around Pesach time; it was on Pesach
that young Warsaw Ghetto Jews rose up in a historic act of defiance
against their own WW II taskmaster; cv
the remnants of Adolf Hitler headed for Palestine on board Exodus
’47; cvi years later brave
Russian Jews found their liberation via Operation Exodus whilst
Ethiopian Jewry were freed from their own bondage with Operation
Moses. cvii It was the
theme of Pesach that inspired the Bastille, the Fourth of July and Emma
Lazarus’ poetry carved into America’s Statue of Liberty.
No wonder the Zohar
calls matza "the bread of faith," based on the similarity
between the words ‘mitzva’ and ‘matza.’ cix
Some Jewish communities have used matza as a good-luck amulet charm,
others hang it in their home, some carry it in their wallet or purse,
whilst Italian Jewish women would bite into it during childbirth for
good luck. cx When Rabbi Israel
Spira led 70 Bergen-Belsen Jews to demand flour for baking matza, it
was a demand so audacious in the SS Valley of Death that a stunned Adolf
Haas, camp commandant, acquiesced. Before the Iron Curtain collapsed
it was matza that visibly symbolized an individual’s involvement in
Judaism at a time when one dared not mention its name out of fear and
referred to it as "diet bread." cxi
In 1939 Rabbi Levi Zalman Schneerson, Ukrainian father of Menachem Mendel
and chief rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk was sentenced to exile in Central
Asia, where he died, for the "crime" of distributing matza.
What exactly is
matza? The term is derived from the Babylonian ma-as-sa-ar-tum,
which means barley, the first grain harvested in the Mid East that was
replaced centuries later by wheat. It is crisp, flat and unleavened,
made of flour and water, and baked before the dough has had time to
rise. When I was a child matza was round, today it is square. Why? Because
machine-made matzah is easier to bake and pack if it is square. It is
preferable to eat the traditional round shape, a custom based on the
Torah’s description for cakes of unleavened bread (uggot matzot),
wherein the root ug means "round" or "circular,"
and thus indicative that round matzot, symbolic of our forefather’s
"bread of affliction" is probably what our ancestors ate when
they left Egypt. cxiv
The Egyptians are
credited with "discovering" the first bread. At first they
used to crush acorns, beechnuts, wheat or barley kernels, mix with water
to make a flat cake (dough), then bake. One day the yeasts in the wind
landed on the pre-baked dough and voila!, to the surprise of
the world’s first baker, a light, soft loaf appeared instead of the
customary thin, hard cracker. And so they left the dough outdoors in
the warm air to rise, and then put it in the oven. This mysterious "rising
of the dough" quickly attracted the mystics and the weavers of
superstitions who blamed the rise on the Angel of Death plunging his
sword into the dough; causing families and neighbors of lost loved ones
to throw out all the dough left in their homes. cxv
In their rush to
leave this non-flat "bread" behind the Jews displayed a swift
urge to get away from the radical Egyptian pageantry; a desire to leave
it all, including the yeast, behind. cxvi
This is why the Maharal of Prague compares matza with freedom, since
matza is the most "simple" of all foods lacking any artificial
additives, as freedom should be; a reminder of vigilance, since the
only difference between chometz and matza is not the ingredients
(they both have the same type and amount of flour and water), the method
of baking (both cooked in the same oven) but Time (they are one second
apart); in other words the freedoms we cherish can, as Jewish history
proves, be snatched away from us at any moment. The difference in linguists
is just as astute: the words chometz and matzah are apart
only by a tiny fraction of a line, one small stroke of the pen, that
turns a "hey" into a "chet." The moral?
There is no way to make up for lost time: a second lost remains irreplaceable,
forfeited for eternity, able to cause irreparable harm – something the
Sage Nachum Ish Gam Zu found out to his dismay by leaving a hungry beggar
waiting as he slowly unloaded his donkey. By the time the rabbi was
finished, the poor man had died.
Matza qualifies
as the primal Jewish fast-food; a flavor of flight, a bread of haste,
its bumps and perforations indicative of the future agony and ecstasy
of the Jewish experience. Perhaps this is another reason to celebrate
Pesach? We went from eight days of eating slave "matza" to
3,000 years of chicken soup, gefilte fish, potato latkes, chopped liver…and
bagels! Despite its entree into the Jewish kitchen as a bread of "affliction,"
Jewish women have managed to create exquisite Pesach cuisines by using
matza as a flour replacement to get matza pie (a round meat lasagna
with softened matza acting as the noodles); matza balls (kneydlekh);
and matzo brei (gefrishte matzo). It has never ceased to amaze
me: each year there are more inventive foods, wines and recipes for
Pesach than all other Jewish festivals combined. With two full seders
and many high-fat leftovers, dietitians recommend eating more fresh
fruit ‘n vegetables and less eggs ‘n meat. Every year pharmacies in
Israel report a 50% increase in the sale of digestive stomach medication
during and after Pesach. Is Pesach fattening? Yep! A typical seder meal
adds 3,000 calories: remember, one single matza is equivalent to 140
calories (the equivalent of 2 pieces of bread) even though its fiber
content is much lower. Sweet red wine and grape juice are also fattening,
with 170 calories per standard wineglass. The world of Pesach-kashrut
can become very confusing: some Jews avoid cakes baked with matza, others
are careful not to eat matza brei (fried matza soaked in milk and eggs),
some request "no gebrochts" (gebrochts is yiddish
for "broken") which refers to cooking or baking with matza
or matza meal mixed with liquid (this is a concern that matza, although
properly baked, may contain unkneaded bits of raw flour that, upon moistening,
can become chometz).
If Judaism has a
Pesach-mania, chometz is it. And if matza, being flat and, homiletically
speaking, a symbol of lowliness (lechem oni means "bread
of humility"), then chometz was a symbol of haughtiness and selfishness,
and thus not only forbidden on Pesach, but its removal from the home,
called bedikat chometz, required meticulous attention through
every nook ‘n cranny. This pre-Pesach procedure (summarized as clean,
sell, hunt, annul, burn) is done the night before seder, and is mainly
symbolic. Why? Because the house should already be "chometz-free."
The head of the house uses a candle for light, a wooden spoon to gather
the chometz and a feather to sweep it into the spoon. Accompanied by
children the "search party" goes room by room seeking 10 (a
symbolic number) pieces which have been pre-placed (technically, "hidden").
This is followed by saying bittul chometz, a legal formula in
Aramaic which declares all chometz "ownerless like the dust of
the earth." The final step is biur chometz, done no later
than 5 hours after sunrise by burning the 10 pieces of chometz. But
what exactly is chometz? I thought you’d never ask.
During the entire
festival, chometz is assur bemashehu, "forbidden
even for the smallest crumb." It cannot be eaten, owned or benefited
from. cxxi The forbidden edible-fermented
grain products are any one of the 5 species of grains (wheat, barley,
spelt, rye and oats) although for some reason the grains themselves
are permitted. Ashkenaz-rabbinic authorities later extended this prohibition
to include the legume family of rice, beans, peas, maize and peanuts.
The chometz fever is most apparent in Israel between Purim and Pesach.
During a national cleaning frenzy stores sell more cleaning supplies
than they sell all year round, drycleaners extend their hours, Municipal
trash collectors work around the clock, Israelis air out blankets and
rugs, hang mattresses over balconies, and donate old clothes and unwanted
furniture to charity. Getting rid of chometz is an organizational challenge:
from books, pockets, toys, cosmetics, medicines. Entire kitchens are
taken apart and their screws, nuts and bolts are soaked in special liquids;
whilst pots, pans, toasters, ovens and stoves are scrubbed of chometz
– even the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo is thoroughly cleaned and the animals
are fed only kosher-for-Pesach food.
The sole purpose
of all Passover symbols is to prod, probe and provoke Jewish children,
on "whom the world exists." cxxii
Why? Because the Torah seeks active participants, not mute bystanders.
In order to ensure
that this seder barter of ideas be a cathartic experience with, adds
the Rambam, "all the eloquence we can muster," our rabbis,
knowing that stories are the lifeblood of Judaism, mandated the concept
of "up close and personal," known as the mitzva of maggid,
of "story telling." This is an explicit Biblical duty for
parents to engage in ve-higadeta le-vinkha, a creative dialogue
with their children, for "When your son asks, what is this?"
the reply must be long. Why? Because "the more a person dwells
on the Exodus, the more praiseworthy it is." cxxv
Even the plagues are stretched to ten so that "you should tell
your son and grandson;" otherwise logic has it that the Heavens
would have brought the tenth plague (makos) first and be done
with it. The Torah itself, which is usually concise and parsimonious
in its use of words, mentions "Exodus" 30 times, each time
with an inherent passion and excitement. Even the word Pesach is a linguistic
clue: in Hebrew pe means "mouth," sach means
to "converse." The Targumic translator Unkolus adds that it
is akin to the Hebrew word chos, which means to have mercy and
pity. In other words, Pesach literally "speaks," mouthing
the Jewish right to replace the Egyptian "dictatorship of the mind"
with the freedom of self-expression, granted courtesy of God’s mercy.
And in reverse: the name Pharoah is spelt peh ra, meaning "a
bad mouth," indicative of his deceit, defiance and false claims
(eg: li y’ori, v’ani osisini, "the Nile is mine for I made
it.") cxxvi
The seder is thus
conducted in a disputatious question ‘n answer format, derech she’eilah
u’teshuvah, in order to get everyone involved. Listening is passive
and stagnant; far better to inquire, probe and analyze. This creates
an energy and enthusiasm that is fresh, jolting, interactive, invigorating,
rejuvenating; emotions that Rabbi Zadok Hacohen of Lublin (the "Pri
Tzadik") claims helps us shift gears from reality into the refined
catacombs of memory. This oscillates from obligation to aspiration,
between ritual and nonritual: the former confronting us with the juxtaposition
of wealth (dippings, wine, reclining) and poverty-suffering (matzah,
bitter herbs, etc); the latter a combination of such traditional activities
as guilt (turning lily-white table clothes into wine-spilt stained momentos
of clumsiness); cxxvii
annual k’neidel cxxviii
(matza ball) controversies (between grandmothers and mothers: it’s too
soft, too hard, too big, too small, not "bouncy" enough, too
bouncy), and a rise in our cholesterol level as our dietary habits receive
an onslaught from such gastronomic traumas as horseradish and beets,
known in yiddish as chrain. I never understood why chrain had
to be eaten with gefilte fish; surely one of the strangest anomalies
of Jewish culinary art. Who takes sweet gefilte fish and then drowns
it in a substance designed to destroy taste buds? Not I. cxxix
Where does this word come from? It beets me! Perhaps from the Hebrew
selek, which means "to get rid of," an inference of the conditions
of the Exodus? cxxx
The "seder"
of the Seder consists of 15 sections of spiritual awakening (hit’oreut),
starting with kadesh (kiddush on the first cup of wine) cxxxi
to nirtzah (singing "Next year in Jerusalem"). Our
rabbis hoped that length would help restless children query, in order
to absorb, the vast national drama of our inherited past. With a word-play
on the Hebrew word oni, whose root meaning is "to reply,"
they turned the traditional matza’s lechem oni, "the bread
of affliction" into "the bread of answering;" even relying
on such rollicking speed-driven melodies as Dayyenu, a 15-line
poem that lists 15 boons which God bestowed on His folk. Why 15? Who
knows? Answers range from the 15 steps that led up to the Temple, to
King David’s 15 Psalms of Ascents, to the 15 stages that lead the righteous
to perfection. The "Dayenu" is one of the original parts of
the Haggadah, penned by an unknown author from the Second Temple era.
When it was first discovered in its present form in the early Middle
Ages it was not an exclamation but a question: if God had only given
us one good fortune, would it have been sufficient? – to which our answer
is a resounding "yes!" Why? Because we must be thankful even
for small mercies and not expect ongoing miracles.
The idea that ignorance
is bliss is alien in a religion that believes every "why"
invites a "because." Centuries of religious literature shows
an overwhelming index of challenging questions and humble answers. To
help prepare we are even encouraged to begin asking questions about
the laws of Pesach thirty days before. "If the other does not know
how to ask," teases the Haggadah, "ask for him!" Why?
"Because the finest quality of Man is asking questions, since his
wit is judged better by his questions than by his answers." cxxxvii
That is why the
seder immediately opens with the first of four ma nishtana halayla
hazeh mikol haleloth, "Why is this night different from all
other nights?", sung in the same melody that students use when
studying the Mishnah, in order to kick-start the inquisitive element
of childish curiosity. These particular questions are only samples;
in fact, the Mishnah lists only 3 questions, one of which is not included
amongst the traditional four found in the Haggadah.
The obvious question
is why the emphasis on the number "4," the most repetitive
symbol of Pesach. We actually have 5, not 4, cups, if one includes the
cup of wine for the prophet Elijah, known as Eliyahu HaNavi. It is here
that Jewish mystics delight with gematria: the Hebrew word for cup is
kos, whose gematria is 86, the same as "Elokim"
(one of God’s names). Five cups times 86 is 430, the gematria of nefesh,
the human "soul," which happens to be the number of years
the Jews were in Egypt. cxxxix
Yet the number "4" predominates throughout the evening: there
are 4 sons, 4 questions, 4 cups of wine, and 4 expressions of God’s
promise to redeem Israel (vehotzeiti, vehitzalti, vegoalti, velakachti).
Why four? Reasons abound. The medieval Talmudists connected the number
to the four "legs" of Torah known as Pardes, which
means "orchard," a word formed from the acrostic of the four
levels of understanding the Torah: Peshat (the straightforward,
literal meaning); Derash (the midrashic-homiletic meaning); Remez
(the allegorical, philosophical meaning) and Sod (the mystical,
esoteric meaning.)
To infuse an atmosphere
conducive to peek the curiosity of fidgety and impatient children isn’t
as easy as it sounds. This task has been the longest running laboratory
in Jewish history, to see what works, what doesn’t. A rare 15th century
Haggadah suggests, by way of drawings, the following: suspend a curtain
across the room, hold it up in two places from behind, letting it hang
in three festoons, each at a different level to indicate openings to
solve the "mystery" of Pesach on the other side of the curtain.
Did this work? I don’t know. Rabbi Akiva had a better idea: he would
hand out candies in shul to keep the kids in good spirits. He even sent
his entire Bet Medrash staff home early with the advice, "Now is
not the time to review another halakhah, but to attend to your child,
so that he or she will participate actively in the seder." cxli
Rabbenu Manoah, a medieval commentator, was more aggressive: he got
attention by starting the meal backwards. The sight of desserts first
was a sure-fire attention winner, until the desserts were no more. A
custom amongst Afghanistan Jews was to strike the person they were sitting
next to with a green onion stalk during the singing of dayenu,
which means "enough already!" This must have easily got the
attention of aggressive children. In Iraq and Kurdistan Jews began their
seder with a dramatic dialogue. One of the children goes outside, knocks
on the door, and then answers a series of questions from the head of
the household.
"Where have
you come from?"
"Egypt."
"Where are you going?"
"To Jerusalem."
"What are your supplies?"
The child’s final answer is reciting the Ma Nishtana.
Yemenite Jews perform
a symbolic reenactment of the Exodus as the family head throws a knapsack
over his back containing the afikoman, walks around the room leaning
on a cane, and begins to reminisce on how he had just come out of Egypt.
The Talmud offers up its own suggestion: that of akzrat hashulhan,
which required removing the fully-set table from the room. Apparently
this worked for little Abbaye who asks Rabbah, "why are you removing
my table? We haven’t eaten yet!", to which his uncle jubilantly
replies, "You have freed us from the Ma Nishtana!" and then
begins telling the story of the Exodus. cxliii
This is why the
seder is designed to start with a series of unusual, and hopefully attentive
steps. The head of the household drinks the kiddush wine sitting, after
arranging pillows in order to eat derekh haseiba, in a "reclining"
manner, freely as in an aristocratic style. He then washes his hands
without a blessing and without leaving the table, and starts to dip
(an unconventional table etiquette) assorted vegetables (lettuce, parsley,
potatoes) into salt water. Just in case none of this has worked he then
resorts to the can’t-fail-formula of hide ‘n seek, with prizes for the
winner. The middle matza is broken in two and the larger portion (afikoman)
is "hidden" for the children to find. The word is derived
from the Greek Epi Komon, which means "after-meal deserts,
songs, entertainment." cxlv
The Rishonim were the first to use the term but disliked the whole "game"
idea although they tolerated the activity under a different rational:
"We snatch away the matza from the children, in order that they
should not stuff themselves with it and become drowsy and then, no questions
will be forthcoming from them." cxlviii
By introducing the afikoman "game" at the beginning of the
meal our rabbis kept the young awake, alert and interested enough to
continue asking questions until the end of the meal, since the seder
could not end until the afikoman was "found," a prize negotiated
– and then eaten. But wait! What then? The seder is "rounded out"
with songs and melodies that try and keep the young ‘uns awake. My favorite
was the delightful tongue-twisting Chad Gadya, the swansong of
the evening that first appeared anonymously in a 1590 Prague Haggadah.
Many Jews view this as some sort of light-hearted children’s rhyme ‘n
riddle. Not so. The Kotzker Rebbe regarded the song as the holiest of
all the Pesach piyyutim, tracing its theme, that life is a vicious
circle, to Hillel’s comment when he saw a skull floating on the water:
"Because you drowned others, they have drowned you; and in the
end they that drowned you shall themselves be drowned." cxlix
All these bizarre
maneuverings had one purpose: to fulfill the halachik requirement to
motivate Jewish children to ask questions, and ask them again, and again
– and hopefully get answers. But what exactly is the message we’re trying
to "pass on" on Passover? Is the mission only to be celebatory,
joyful, blissful? No. The Talmud insists that we begin with the unpleasant
details and finish with the pleasant; from negative to positive, from
ruination to salvation. To begin with the not so flattering, explains
the Slonomer Rebbe, makes the story more potent, uplifting and liberating;
which is why the Haggada opens with memories of Abraham’s idol worshipping
family and bitter recollections of slavery. cl
The seder tisch
provides the main assault of symbols on our senses with a varied imagery
of matzah, maror, karpas, zeroa-shankbones, eggs, salt water, dipping,
haroset – and wine whose very color is regulated as being red, symbolic
of the great quantity of Jewish blood spilt by Pharaoh. clii
The town’s wine seller once complained to the rabbi, "If I had
been Moses, I would have improved upon the Passover arrangements. I
would have given the Egyptians only four plagues and I would have provided
for the Jews ten cups of wine."
The list of symbols
and customs seems endless, continuous, even infinite, nevertheless the
diversity is intended to make the whole equal to the sum of the parts.
The Hebrew word
seder in seder tisch means "order," and although
the Earl of Sandwich is credited with inventing the "sandwich,"
in fact it was one of our great Sages, Hillel, cliii
who made the first sandwich by eating paschal lamb and bitter herbs
placed between two pieces of matza. (According to Chaya Burstein’s "Jewish
Kids’ Catalog", Roman Jews invented pizza when they put cheese
and olive oil on matzah). Not surprisingly, more than any other Jewish
festival, Pesach requires the most expenditure of time, money and effort.
Halachists were so concerned at the costs of this yomtov that they positioned
the law of kimcha depischa as an introduction to the Laws of
Pesach (this demands that a communal charity assist Jews who could not
afford such essentials as matza, wine, etc).
Like all other Jewish
festivals, the seder begins with the kiddush, chanted in the same tune
as the kiddush for the other two pilgrim festivals. Participants are
informed, in the name of Rabban Gamliel, the obligation to discuss the
lamb, matza and maror. Why these three? Because they represent the first
seder in the land of Egypt.
What is maror? "Herbs"
that commemorate the harsh conditions of slavery, consisting of either
romaine lettuce or horse-radish (because of its sharp, bitter taste).
According to the Magen Avraham if the numerical value of karpas
(celery or parsley) is read backwards, we get the "60 myriads"
of Hebrew slaves. clvi What
does the shankbone symbolize? The Pascal sacrificial lamb, z’roa
in Hebrew, that was slaughtered at the time of the Exodus: the z’roa
netuyah being the "outstretched hand" with which God led
the way. And the roasted egg? A symbol of the chagigah ("festival
offering"). In my home we eat hard-boiled eggs right at the beginning
of the meal. Why? I don’t know. The egg is a religious symbol in nearly
every culture and the Talmud even has a tractate called Betzah
("egg") which deals with the use of eggs laid on Jewish festivals.
The size of an egg is often used as halachic guides to measures (eg;
the kiddush cup must have the capacity of one and a half eggs). When
my mother would shop in pre-war Poland she would search for a "betzah,"
an egg size of oil. Saltwater is a symbol of the tears that were shed,
and a reminder that the first day of Pesach always coincides with Tisha
B’Av. Dipping of green vegatables (karpas) into salt water at
the beginning of the meal symbolizes hope associated with Spring, whilst
haroset is a brownish relish (usually made of fruit, nuts, spices
and wine) that is eaten with the maror, to symbolize the clay
and mortar used to make bricks from the mud of the Nile
But why do we need
a special "retell" meal if the Torah has already commanded
us zekhirat yetzi’at Mitzrayim, to "remember the exodus
from Egypt" every single day of the year? clvii
Rav Chaim of Brisk is quick to answer: ‘remembering’ is a private act
in contrast to ‘telling’ which requires a public presence, and a sharing
with others (although this command is surprisingly absent in the Rambam’s
list of mitzvot.) clix
The interactive
symbolism includes a cast of children, four to be exact, listed in descending
order of intellectuality – the wise (and his mirror image, the wicked,
who is clever but antagonistic), the simple (ranging from foolish to
simply uninformed), and the one who does not know how to ask. This fourth
son may be too young to ask questions, or perhaps an adult for whom
the occasion is overwhelming and strange. From wise, wicked, simple
and inexperienced…to for some, the sadly absent Fifth Child – the
child lost to assimilation, to foreign cultures. The Haggadah contemplates
no more than four brothers, including the one who knew not what to ask
(included, as our yiddishists would say, because es is besser vi
gornisht, at least it’s "better than having nothing").
Today, it is more likely to find the father who knows not what to answer.
Interestingly when the Haggadah tells the parent, at p’tach lo,
"You open the subject for him," it uses the feminine tense
for "you." Why? Because the command is addressed to the mother
who is usually the child’s first teacher and the greatest influence
on his moral and Jewish awakening.
The Haggadah’s pedagogic
use of The-Four-Sons teaches us the importance of taking into account
the knowledge, and personality, of the questioner in order to gear a
befitting and respectful response. Remember: many a wrong demeanor to
an innocent question has driven a Jew away from his Judaism. The great
20th century American halachist, Rav Moshe Feinstein, often pointed
out the similarities in the questions asked by the wise and wicked sons,
in order to highlight the fact that sometimes, in real life, it is hard
to distinguish between the two. That is why Judaism is super sensitive
and careful not to define the wicked son as "wicked," but
as tinokos shenishbu, a "child captured and raised by non-Jews"
– in other words, these children are not to be judged on their lack
of knowledge since they were raised in Jewishly-ignorant homes. And
more: a close reading of the text shows that the son who is "wicked"
is not because he doesn’t observe the commandments, but because
of his attitude, language and tone of voice. "What is the meaning
of this seder to you," implies "you" and
"not me;" an exclusionary statement, one of division, making
him an enemy of Judaic unity, a kofer be-ikar, a "denier
of the foundations of Judaism." But wait: doesn’t the "wise"
son also use the same directive, "What are the testimonies which
God has given you?" Our rabbis see a difference: the latter
"you" is directed to the father by an underage boy not yet
obligated to observe mitzvas; thus his is a sincere quest for knowledge,
in contrast to the former’s use of "you" as a tool for internal
destruction.
Rabbi Yehudah Leib
Chasman, the great musar teacher, does not see these "four
sons" as four boys with distinct personalities, claiming that the
traits the Haggada exemplifies the struggle within each Jew: one moment
we are wise, the next wicked; in one instant we can become a laissez-faire
simpleton, the next moment we are unable to ask. The Pri Tzaddik sees
the inclusion of the wicked son as a sign that no Jewish child is ever
irretrievably lost. Unfortunately, this is not so today. The chances
are that the missing "fifth" son is irretrievable by his very
absence. Rabbi Isaac Schneerson once compared the four sons to the history
of American Jewry: the first "wise" son represented the first
generation out of Europe (the learned father, or grandfather), the second
son was the next generation ("wicked" in his desire to assimilate);
they were followed by a generation whose son grew up confused (torn
between father and grandfather), finally the fourth son suffers from
amnesia (he doesn’t remember his bubbe and zeida from Europe, and has
no knowledge of anything). The fifth son, the one that is "absent,"
is so because, as the offspring of the fourth, he has totally assimilated
and no longer even calls himself Jewish.
Strange, isn’t it?
Weeks before the seder, we meticulously prepare all the holiday symbols,
except one. The most important one. The most precious one.
The one elementary
Pesach requisite that no one prepares for in advance, yet whose absence
is conspicuous at the seder, is the presence of a child – any child,
for only Jewish children can accelerate the maggidization of the tale
of the Exodus by their imaginative interaction.
In 1946, the first
year following the liberation of Adolf’s death camps, some of the U.S.
Jewish military personnel stationed throughout the world found themselves
in Germany over Pesach. A thoughtful U.S. government had provided everything
for their seder, except for a Jewish child. Realizing that they had
no one to ask the Ma Nishtana foursome, a frantic and agitated
search throughout all of Berlin was launched. It failed. Adolf had been
thorough, sweeping, determined. Whilst stalking the land of Europe he
had gratuitously slaughtered millions of God’s first, second and third
born so there was not a single solitary Jewish child to be found. That
missing Jewish-Germanic child (the "Fifth Child") had disappeared
alongside one-and-a-half million other tortured European Jewish children
into the deep black hole of history. At that particular time and place,
any child would have been sufficient. Wise, wicked, simple, inexperienced
– no matter. In the end, they settled on an American barmitzva boy who
had just arrived with his father, a chaplain.
Pesach without children
is like a cantor without a song; like an actor without an Oscar, or
a storyteller without an audience. Why? Because Jewish children are
the ultimate yomtov symbol. They represent victory over disaster. Their
presence shouts destiny over destruction. They make Pesach both whole
and wholesome; enjoyable and enduring.
I remember, as a
child, that the best part of my father’s seder tisch was not
the songs, nor the food, nor the four cups of wine, nor the reclining.
Not even the search for the "hidden" afikomen. The part that
awed my sister Chanala and I came just before the thanksgiving prayer
of Hallel.
Our childish imaginations
were awed and stirred by the mystery of that omnipresent Fifth Cup;
a goblet of wine, known as the koso shel Eliyahu, that just sat
there all night, untouched by human lips. The cup belonged to Eliyahu
Ha-Navi (which means "my God is God"), the invisible Prophet
Elijah, a man of great mystery, a phenomenon sui generis, defender
of God, and champion of monotheism, who lived during the 7th century
BC in the northern kingdom of Israel. Elijah appears in the Bible out
of nowhere and after years of revolutionary leadership persistently
battling religious leaders and such monarchs as King Ahab and his foreign
wife, Jezebel, for their worship of pagan gods, he is miraculously "taken"
to Heaven "in a whirlwind," thus ending his incognito good
deeds on earth as a nomadic protector of the underprivileged and oppressed.
We never hear from him again until the very last words of Micah, the
very last prophet, who promises Jewish history that Elijah will return
as the unifier of generations, the reconciler of parents and children.
In the antique Mantua
Haggadah of 1560, reflecting the iconographic minhag of German and Italian
Jewry, a shofar-carrying Elijah is shown walking in front of the Messiah
riding on his donkey, with men, women and children being carried on
the donkey’s tail. In a 15th century version, the illustration shows
how grim were the times: next to the messianic expression of hope, "Next
year in Jerusalem," is written, "or in Bruenn."
Elijah is not mentioned
once in the Torah nor in the Book of Prophets clxi
and, chronologically, has nothing to do with the Exodus since he lived
some 600 years after the time of Moses. What then does he have to do
with Passover?
When the rabbis
of the Talmud couldn’t agree whether Jews should drink four or 5 cups
of wine, they decided to pour a fifth cup that would remain full – and
defer the answer until the future when, according to tradition, Elijah,
expecting to return before the Messiah, would prepare his way by settling
all of history’s open-ended rabbinic disputes. clxii
(I imagine that his first answer will be whether his own cup should
be drunk or not). Whenever these "hard questions" appear the
Torah text concludes with the word teyku which is derived from
the Hebrew root kum which denotes, "let it stand,"
or from tik, a "file;" thus the term teyku suggests,
"File it away." Jewish mystics see teyku as the synonym
of Tishbi y’taretz kush’yot v’bbayyiot, "Elijah the Tishbite
will resolve all problems and difficulties" (Tishbite referring
to Elijah’s birthplace, the village of Tishbe in Gil’ad, north of the
River Yabbok).
In the meantime,
Jewish tradition had assigned to Elijah the task of upholding brit
ha’drot, the "covenant between the generations," the unseen
prophet-guardian of the people of Israel whose miraculous presence attests
to this time being leil shimmurim, the "night of Divine
watchfulness." It is in this role that the prophet injected tension,
bated breath and anticipation into our seder. Would he show? Would he
drink? From the filling of Elijah’s cup to the entrance of the invisible
prophet, our childish eyes remained frozen on the level of Elijah’s
wine. He was the enigma of Pesach; the conundrum of the wine-stained
pages of the Haggadah. He was responsible for the sudden hush, the silence
around the seder tisch, the anticipation. I watched my father
strain his ears in the hope of hearing footsteps. My mother held back
tears of hope that Judaic redemption was, finally, about to enter her
home.
With such a near-impossible
task in his portfolio, Elijah becomes something more than mortal, something
larger than life. The prophet who will accomplish the miracle of warming
the hearts of the generations to each other becomes endowed with even
more qualities, with a range of universal to very personal implications.
The figure of Elijah transforms into an invitation – to ultimate redemption,
to peace and reconciliation in this pained world.
He is seen as the
front-runner of the Messiah, the one who will announce that better days
are coming for all of us. But his powers are not limited to that vast
application. In talmudic literature, we see a figure who appears, inexplicably,
in all variety of situations: a synagogue, a study hall, a rabbinic
discussion. Always, Elijah acts as a wise man, a counselor to the rabbis,
a dispenser of special insights. But Elijah’s mysterious appearances
do not stop there. Throughout our literature and lore, the prophet has
been known to show up even in unlearned circles, in the streets, homes
and businesses of the common man. Stories abound, granting him numerous
cameo roles as mystery guest, miracle worker, guardian angel, agent
of God. For thousands of years, mortals have encountered Elijah, realizing
only after the fact that the quiet visitor, the beggar at the door,
the magical man – often lining up help for the poor and suffering –
was Elijah himself.
He is a richly textured
and multidimensional character. Bringer of the Messiah and guardian
of orphans. Many parts of a complex whole. But what’s he doing at our
seder? Jewish tradition imbues Elijah with the job of heralding the
ultimate, worldly redemption. And Passover night, with all its sights,
sounds, words and images, is a celebration of redemption. But there
is even another reason for Elijah’s nocturnal visitation. In the Talmud,
when there are matters of debate that cannot be solved by mortals, Elijah
is invoked: the Rabbis declare "Teiku," an acronym for words
which mean "Elijah will someday come and resolve all difficulties
and problems." Through Elijah, stalemates will end. Impossible
questions will be answered. And the darkest recesses will be illuminated.
On Pesach, the night
of redemption also is a night of questions. From "Ma Nishtana"
through the song "Echad Mi Yodeia," the act of questioning,
of pointing out problems and inconsistencies, defines the seder ritual.
Questioning and redemption are two sides of the same coin. A sense of
Israelite redemption can be experienced only through a process of rigorous
asking, through hours of seeking. "Where is he?" my son wants
to know. "When is Elijah coming?" Perhaps he is here already,
happy to fulfill his many tasks as long as we seek him with our questions.
One could cut the
tension with a knife when I was sent to open the front door (a task
I demanded each year), and then rushed back to the dining room to watch
the rim of the wine. It had to move. That was like halachah in my home.
It was predestined, foregone, inevitable. And Elijah always obliged
me, always; each year he would slip in and out, taste the wine, participate
with us in our annual celebratory evening of freedom and birth as a
holy nation.
The wine? Yep. It
always moved. I saw it with my own eyes.
During his seder,
Rabbi Menahem Mendel Morgenstern of Kotzk once opened the door to welcome
Elijah. As he left the room one of his thirsty guests drank the wine
from Elijah’s cup. When the Rebbe returned and saw the cup empty, he
turned to his guest and, not wanting to embarrass him, said, "My
dear friend, both you and Elijah are welcome guests in my home. As the
prophet did not appear to drink his wine, you are certainly entitled
to it."
The punctual prophet
honored our family with his imbibe drinking habits, with his majestic
and mysterious presence; just as he had honored thousands of other Jewish
homes for the past 3,000 years; invisibly passing over Auschwitz arches
and through Gulag gates, blood libels, Christian stakes, task masters
and slave lords all. clxvi
Eliyahu is closely
tied to the unity of families, based on the verse "He will return
the heart of parents to children, and the heart of children to their
parents." clxvii
This is why, since he is regarded as the protector of young children,
a special chair (called kisse shel Eliyahu) is brought in at
every circumcision for Eliyahu.
Relief was the highlight
of my seder; a relief that Elijah was consistent in his zealousness
to visit my family, my home, to sip from my, (sorry) his, goblet. His
silent presence stirred my childish imaginations. His stubborn insistence
at showing up each year, just at the right time, was reassuring. That
is why so many yiddishe folk songs have been composed in his honor as
the harbinger of unity, salvation and consolation, expressing love and
longing, sung when the Pesach doors are flung open or at the closing
of the Sabbath.
When the prophet
exited our home he may have exited incognito but he left behind
something very tangible: hope, a quality that if "deferred maketh
the heart sick." clxix
That hope springs eternal in the human breast is why Elijah’s annual
comings ‘n goings left in their wake a contagious symbol of enthusiasm
and expectation for a better world, for the light of liberty, for an
indomitable Judaic optimism.
Hope, in the home
of Holocaust survivors, was better than life; and it was "hope"
that began our seders with hashatta avdei, l’shana h’ba’a benei chorin,
("currently we are subservient, but we can envision our liberation")
yet also ended them, around midnight, via the soft lyrics of Nirtza
that yearned for the swift arrival of Mashiach tzidkenu.
I confess: Sometimes,
when I watched my four sons’ eyes fixed on the full goblet of Isaiah,
I bumped the table ever so slightly to make the wine move. I’m sure
my father, my father’s father and his father never resorted to such
cheap trickery – and the wine still moved.
I feel guilty. I’ll
try not to do it next year.
ii
Exodus 2:23 (back)
iii
Whether 210 or 430 years the Torah uses the word vayagar, "temporary
dwelling," which seems way off for either stretch of time. The
transitory expression is used because the Jews never considered themselves
Egyptians, and always looked ahead for the permanence of their own homeland.
(back)
iv
Numbers 1:46 (back)
vi
Exodus 1-4; 26; 30:11-16; 38:26; Numbers 26:53 (back)
viii
The number of Israelites who left Egypt is more or less the same as
the number of Hebrew letters in the Torah; as evidenced by the letters
of the word "Yisrael" (Israel) which are an acrostic
for the phrase, yesh shishim riboah l’Torah ("there are
600,000 letters in the Torah"), and yesh shishim riboah anashim
l’Yisrael ("there are 600,000 Jews.") The Baal Shem Tov
compared each Jew to one of the Torah letters and the Jew who falls
away from his people as causing harm akin to a missing letter disqualifying
the entire Torah. (back)
ix
How many years from Creation to the Exodus? 2448 years. How many years
from the Creation to the building of the Temple? Add 480 years to 2448
to arrive at 2928. Then deduct 2928 from 3760 (the year the Common Era
began) to get 832 BC (Rashi Sanhedrin, p 97, Maimonides of Shmita Yovel,
p.10; Kings 1, p. 6). (back)
x
There have been times in Jewish history where "Shabbas" inspired
the name Shabtai. Jewish parents basically dropped this name in the
17th century after Shabbetai Zvi stepped into Jewish history as one
in a long line of phony messiahs that began in 431 CE when Paul of Tarsus
spread the "messiah" line to Greek Jews in Salonika and Rhodes.
(back)
xi
Deut 12:5-14; 16:1-17; 14:22-27; 17:8-11; 31:10-13. (back)
xiv
Exodus 23:15; 34:25 (back)
xvii
Exodus 8.22; 12:3-6 (back)
xix
Tosefot, Shabbat 87b. (back)
xx
Thus you get the following pattern: Alef (1st day of Pesach)
= Tav, Tisha B’Av; Bet (2nd day) = Shin, Shavuot; Gimel
(3rd day) = Resh, Rosh HaShanah; Dalet (4th day) = Kof,
K’riat HaTorah ("Torah reading", i.e. Simchat Torah); Hay
(5th day) = Tzaddi, Tzom ("Fast", i.e. Yom Kippur);
Vav (6th day) = Pay (Purim). Whilst the general concept
of "at-bash," as applied to the first 6 days of Pesach, was
well known for centuries, it was not until 1947 and the birth of the
State of Israel that the newly-formed Yom Atzmaut became attached as
the calendrical partner to the 7th day of Pesach as represented by Zayin
(7th day) = Ayin, (Yom) Atzma’ut. (back)
xxii
Daniel Goldschmidt, Introduction to the Pesach Haggada, Mosad
Bialik, Jerusalem 5737. (back)
xxvi
Pesachim 10:4; Megillah 31a, 10b: Mechilta, Beshalach 2; Soferim; Shmuel
II, 23:1; Deut 26:3; Exodus 10:2. (back)
xxx
Psalms 119:86; Abraham Maimon, Introduction to the Aggada, S.
H. Glick ed., (En Jacob: Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud, Vol.
1, 1916). (back)
xxxi
For a fabulous book on Judaic-Haggadah art, see La Haggada Enluminee.
Etude iconographique et stylistique des manuscrits enlumines et decores
de la Haggada du XIIIe au XVIe siecle, by Dr. Mendel Metzger, preface
by Rene Crozet. E. J. Brill. Leiden, 1973-4. Vol. 1). (back)
xxxii
Compiled by J. D. Eisenstein, NY, 1920 (back)
xxxiii
The Moss Haggadah, designed in 1980 by artist David Moss. (back)
xxxiv
Very few works of Jewish art by Jewish artisans survived from the late
Middle Ages in Europe. One is this richly decorated First Nuremberg
Haggadah, with its naïve charm, is handwritten in Ashkenaz
Hebrew script in sepia ink on parchment, embellished with gold and vibrant
red, blue, green and yellow paint. It was produced in Germany in 1449
by scribe-artist Joel ben Simeon (aka Feibush Ashkenazi), known as "the
Leonardi da Vinci of Jewish illustrators" and dedicated to Rabbi
Nathan ben Solomon. (back)
xxxv
The famous 14th century 109-page Sarajevo Haggadah is a lavishly
illuminated masterpiece, considered one of the most precious and priceless
Jewish manuscripts in the world. Produced in northern Spain, it was
brought to Bosnia via Salonika in the 16th century by Jewish-Spanish
refugees from Spain and, for many centuries, belonged to the Sephardic
Koen family in Sarajevo until it became the property of the Sarajevo
National Museum in 1894. The three coats of arms displayed shows it
comes from the Kingdom of Aragon; its style, replete with full-page
miniatures, relates to the Gothic school prevailing in 14th century
Catalonia. It resurfaced in 1894 when a little Jewish boy brought it
to school for sale after he had been left penniless by the death of
his father. During World War II, just before the Germans entered the
city, it was smuggled to a Muslim professor who hid it in a mountain
village. It resurfaced again in 1995 when Bosnia’s then President Alija
Izetbegovic produced it to "prove" it had not been damaged
during the 1992-96 siege of Sarajevo. It now resides in an underground
bank vault in the heart of the capital of Bosnia. (back)
xxxvi
A Survivors’ Haggadah, published by the American Jewish Historical
Society 50 years after the war, is a reproduction of a Munich-based
Displaced Persons camp haggadah which features the work of Lithuanian
Yosef Dov Sheinson, who wrote and decorated the pages; another survivor,
Miklos Adler, created the woodcuts. (back)
xxxvii
Haggadah of the Liberated Lamb, Micah Press, Marbelhead, MA (back)
xxxviii
Haggadah for a Secular Celebration of Pesach, Sholem Aleichem
Club of Philadelphia, PA, 1975. (back)
xxxix
The Jewish exodus from Egypt has, like all the Biblical sagas, no shortage
of skeptics – especially when there is no mention of any Exodus-type
event in any Egyptian records or chronicles. However, historians are
well aware that most ancient cultures, especially those of the Middle
East, were engaged in historical propaganda, simply ignoring any self-failure,
flaw, or such unfavorable-humiliating events as military defeats or
perhaps, successful slave rebellions? The Egyptians themselves were
oppressed for 150 years under the Hyksos, yet there is hardly a mention
of this in Egyptian historiography. In the archeological records of
the Hittites vs Ramses II battle of Kadesh on the Orantes River, both
sides record it as a major victory. The British Museum displays military
inscriptions and graphics from the 8th century BC palace walls of Sancheriv,
the Assyrian Emperor, showing destroyed enemies. What is conspicuous
is the absence of any dead Assyrians. Unfortunately, the earliest known
objective historian, the Greek Herodotus, the "father" of
dispassionate historical records, wasn’t born until 800 years after
the Exodus. What is amazing about the Torah is its willingness to display
the Jewish people with all their faultiness and failures, warts and
all: which is why Israel Zangwill would comment, "The Bible is
an anti-Semitic book. Israel is the villain, not the hero, of his own
story. Alone among the epics, it is out for truth, not heroics."
(back)
xl
Shemot 3:12. (back)
xlii
Genesis 12:1; 46:3: Deut 26:5. (back)
xliv
Exodus 2:10 (back)
xlviii Deut 26:7; Exodus Rabba 1:16;
Exodus 4:21; 7:13. (back)
xlix
Proverbs 24:17 (back)
li
If the "boys" were killed why does the Torah use the feminine
expression mahcat bihchrote instead of mahcat bihchoreem? Because in
Hebrew grammar "bechorot" is the generic, plural form of bechor,
"first born," regardless of male or female. Is the "smiting
of the firstborn" just a metaphor? No. The Hebrew verb used is
"hee-ka" whose root is clear: "to smite," in Aramaic
"to be defeated (or) to inflict an injury;" even the Egyptians
cry out, "We are all dead!" (back)
liv
Exodus 14:15; Mivhar Hapeninim; Sota 37a. (back)
lvi
Pessahim; Psalms 118:5 (back)
lviii
Noah benShea (back)
lx Guide to the Perplexed, 2:25, 29; the
Eight Chapters on Ethics, Ch 8; commentary on Mishnah Avot 5:6. (back)
lxi
Genesis 22:1. (back)
lxiii
Exodus 15:22; 16:1; Nidda 31a. (back)
lxv B’rochos 57; Exodus 12:2. (back)
lxvii
Binath Moshe (back)
lxviii
Orach Hayyim 429.2; Exodus 12.27 (back)
lxx Berachot 19a. (back)
lxxi
21, 11 (back)
lxxii
Rashi, Shemot 12:22; Baba Kama 60b; Tehilim 90:14; The Zohar, Vayishlach
169b-170a, p. 151, Rebecca Bennet Publications. (back)
lxxiii
The Beit Halevi lists several Pesach-night "redemptions;"
ranging from Abraham defeating the four Canaanite kings; the destruction
of Egypt’s first born at midnight; Jacob triumphing over the angel;
God warning King Abimelech of Gerar regarding Sarah; Laban’s warning
not to harm Yaakov "in the dark of night;" the armies of Sisera
and Sancherib were defeated; the collapse of Nebuchadnezzar’s giant
idol Bel; Daniel’s revelation and deliverance from the den of lions;
Haman’s ultimate downfall; Belshazar’s assassination, etc (also see
Artscroll Haggadah pp. 201-204; Rabbi Nosson Sherman, ed., Haggadah
Treasury, Zeirei Agudath Israel of America, pp. 174-5; The Vayaged Moshe
Haggadah, from the writings of Harav Moshe Feinstein, Artscroll Mesorah
Publications, NY 1991; M. M. Gerlitz, ed., Haggadah shel Pesach MiBeit
Levi (Brisk), Jerusalem 1983.) (back)
lxxiv
Succa 27b (back)
lxxv
TIME, December 10, 1973, p. 62. (back)
lxxvii
They Don’t Make Passovers Like That Anymore, Jewish Digest, April 1976.
(back)
lxxix Ruth R. Wisse, Between Passovers,
COMMENTARY, December 1989, p 42. (back)
lxxxi
Gerald J. Blidstein, Tikkun Olam, TRADITION, Winter 1995. (back)
lxxxii
Gershom Scholem, Kabbalah, Keter, 1974, Ch 3. (back)
lxxxiii
Gittin (back)
lxxxiv
Modern-day "Israeli" Hebrew is spoken with the Sephardic pronunciation
despite the fact that its revival by Hebraist Eliezer Ben-Yehuda was
European Ashkenaz based. This is because a Sephardic-accented Hebrew
was the lingua franca of Palestinian Jews in the yishuv and newly-arriving
Ashkenazim adapted their way of speaking, instead of vice versa. Even
Ben-Yehuda, the first Palestinian Jew to raise his children in Hebrew,
picked up the language from their schooling, which was Sephard. (back)
lxxxvi This early Proto-Semitic language
reveals many Hebrew to Aramaic parallels in vocabulary, grammar and
phonetic systems. Many times one need only replace the Hebrew shin with
a taf to get its Aramaic equaivent. For example, "ox" in Hebrew
is shor, in Aramaic tor or tora; similarly, Hebrew’s "eight"
is shmoneh, in Aramaic tamnei, etc. (back)
lxxxviii
31:47 (back)
xc Deut 23, 8; Lawrence H. Fuchs, The Political
Behavior of American Jews, Glencoe, Ill., Free Press, 1956, pp. 173-191.
(back)
xcii
Isaiah 11:6-9; Micah, 4:1-3. (back)
xciii
Clarence Darrow, Attorney for the Defense, ESQUIRE, October 1973. (back)
xcv Stephen J. Breyer, Zion’s Justice, THE
NEW REPUBLIC, October 5, 1998. (back)
xcviii
Zechariah 9, 12; Exodus 2:15; 5:2. (back)
c
Abravanel (back)
cii
Exodus 12:38 (back)
ciii
Jewish history doesn’t belong to the majority vote. When given choices,
most Jewish communities and their leaders have made fatal errors. When
King Cyrus encouraged Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild it as
a Judaic metropolis with a new Temple (Ezra 1:14) only a few (42,000)
went back. When England released its Balfour Declaration in 1917, promising
the Jews sovereignty over Palestine, only a few rose to the challenge.
After 1948, when the State of Israel finally became a reality, the majority
of World Jewry reacted with apathy and avoided aliyah. (back)
cv
Tribuna Wolnosci (back)
cvi
Aviva Halamish, The Exodus Affair, transl by Ora Cummings; Vallentine
Mitchell, 1998. (back)
cvii
David Kessler, The Falashas: The Forgotten Jews of Ethiopia, Holmes
& Meier, 198). (back)
cix
The most successful matza manufacturer in the world was an orthodox
Jewish schochet from Lithuania called Dov Behr Manischewitz who arrived
in Cincinnati in 1886 and founded B. Manischewitz Baking Company. (back)
cix
What is "sh’murah" matzah? Matza produced with more care in
its manufacture to ensure that moisture does not cause fermentation,
as per the command "You shall watch over [ush’martem] the matzot"(Exodus
12:17). (back)
cx
Edda Servi Machlin, The Classic Cuisine of Italian Jews 11, Giro Press.
(back)
cxi
Nearly all matza produced in the Soviet Union then was non-kosher because
it was made with regular flour, however the rabbinate OK’d it as "kosher"
because it was the only matza available. (back)
cxiv
Deut 16:3. (back)
cxv
How does yeast come about? Its enzymes convert starch to sugar, then
breaks the sugar down into alcohol and carbon dioxide gas whose bubbles
make the dough rise as the alcohol evaporates. These gas bubbles remain
"trapped" inside and give bread its light, airy textural appearance.
(back)
cxvi
Exodus 12:39 (back)
cxxi Deut 16.3, Exodus 12.9; 13.3, 7. (back)
cxxii
Shabbat (back)
cxxv Sefer HaMitzvot Positive Mitzva #157;
Exodus 13.8; Haggadah (back)
cxxvi
Yecheskel 293 (back)
cxxvii
I know some families who consider it bad luck to spill the "plague-wine"
down the sink so they throw it onto ugly weeds in the garden, hoping
the cursed wine will keep the weeds. Kids, don’t try this at home: it’s
an old wives tale, "unJewish" – and it doesn’t work either.
(back)
cxxviii
A yiddish word derived from "to test food test (before eating)."
(back)
cxxix
I also cannot eat garlic, despite the Talmud’s suggestion to make it
a Shabbas delicacy because "It satisfies hunger; warms the body;
illuminates one’s face; increases seed, and destroys intestinal parasites."
Garlic was fed to the Jewish slaves by the Egyptians who thought it
possessed magic powers and would increase Jewish stamina in shlepping
2-ton stones. So accustomed were the Jews to garlic that they named
it (Numbers 11:5) as one of the foods they grieved to leave behind (together
with leeks and onions, two more of my most unfavorite foods). (back)
cxxx
One year before Pesach the Jews of Spain panicked: there was no horseradish
to be found in the land. So they imported a planeload from Israel but
the cargo was blocked because of the complexity of agricultural permits.
Turning to his congregants the rabbi sighed, "the chrain in Spain
stays mainly on the plane". (back)
cxxxi
Kadesh and kiddush derive from the same word "kadosh" which
means "distinct," or "holy" (back)
cxxxvii
Alcalay; Pesahim 6a; Megilla 29b; Sanhedrin 12b; Avoda Zarah 5b; Mivhar
Hapeninim; Mishle Yehoshu’a (back)
cxxxix
What’s the significance of "5?" According to kabbala there
are five parts of a man’s body over which he has no control: 2 ears,
2 eyes, and the "Os Bris Kodesh." (back)
cxli Pesahim 109a; Rashbam. (back)
cxliii
Pesahim 115b. (back)
cxlv
Shmuel Pinchas Gelbard, Rite And Reason: 1050 Jewish Customs and Their
Sources; Mifal Rashi Publishing: Petach Tikvah, 1998, Vol. 2, pp. 367-371,
393. (back)
cxlviii
Tosafot Megillah 21a; Pesachim 119b; Pesahim 109a; Hak Yaakov 472:2.
(back)
cxlix
Avot 2:7 (back)
cl
Pesachim 117a (back)
clii
Shulchan Aruch 472:11. (back)
cliii
60 BC – 9 CE. (back)
clvi
473:4 (back)
clvii
Deut 16:3. (back)
clix
Minchat Chinukh, #21; Hilkhot Keri’at Shema 1:3, Berakhot 21a. (back)
clxi Elijah, like Elisha and Nathan, don’t
have their own "books" because, as "pre-classical"
prophets they did not write down nor have their words recorded. (back)
clxii
Not all Sages agree: "Should Eliyahu appear to inform us that we
may not conduct the chalitza ceremony with a sandal, we would not listen
to him" (Yevamot 102a; Rabbi Zadok Ha-kohen, Resisei Layla, 11;
Rabbi Elimelekh Bar-Shaul, Ma’arkhei Lev, p.14.) The Mishnah quotes
other rabbis (eg; Rabbi Judah) who claim that his role is not "to
declare clean or unclean" but "to bring agreement where there
is matter for dispute" in order "to bring peace in the world"
(Eduyyot 8:7; I Kings 17:1; Mal. 4:5). (back)
clxvi
In Jewish exile, Pesach became cruelly synonymous with the frightening
Blood Libel, an absurd yet deadly ritual-murder-accusation that Jews
eat and drink the human flesh and blood of Christians. This hideous
accusation started with Antiochus, King of Syria, who, during the Maccabean
struggle spread the lie as part of a propaganda blitz to discredit Judaism.
Antiochus’ charge lay dormant for several centuries until 1144, when
it reappeared in Norwich, England and quickly spread to Germany and
Blois-France where anti-Semites used it as a convenient excuse for pogroms
or theft of Jewish property. This is where the custom of opening the
door after the seder meal began. In the Middle Ages several families
would sometimes gather in the home of one of them to hear the Haggadah.
When the time came for the meal, they would go home to eat. In some
cases a more learned person would go from one house to another to read
the Haggadah for those who could not do so for themselves. He would
then proceed to his own house to eat his Pesach meal. Since Pesach attracted
anti-Semitic attacks, it was not always easy for people to return for
the second section of the Seder, and the door would be opened in the
hope that God would protect them and they would get back safely, an
opening accompanied with the Biblical verse, "Pour out Your anger
upon the heathen who know You not" (Psalm 79:6). NonJews pointed
to this verse in the Haggadah to "prove" the immorality of
the Jews. In fact this is not a prayer at all but a collection of four
Psalms-Lamentation verses written during the 13th century when medieval
persecutions evoked bitter anguish and the yearning for the Heavens
to remove evil from the earth. Since Jews could not strike back they
instead "prayed back" for Divine assistance. Some Jews would
"expose" their seder tisch with open front doors so that all
could see they have nothing to hide; and to make sure that no mischievous
anti-Semite planted a body near the house as blood libel "evidence"
(Cecil Roth, History of The Jews in England, Oxford University Press,
1941; (The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue, Soncino Press,
London, 1934, p.16). (back)
clxvii
Malakhi 3:24 (back)
clxix
Proverbs 13, 12. (back)