I can remember as a child the vivid atmosphere that used to build up as the holiday of Pesach approached. The house was frantic with activity.
During Pesach, not only are we not allowed to eat any chametz, we cannot have any in the house. So for weeks in advance we would be turning out rooms, getting rid of any crumbs that might be lying about, and getting out the special cutlery and crockery reserved for the festival days.
With all the cleaning and packing and unpacking, it was almost as if we were getting ready for a great journey. In a sense we were, because Passover is more than just a festival. It is the journey each of us is invited to take from slavery to freedom, tracing the route of one of the most powerful events ever to have fired the human imagination.
Any journey involves many transitions. Transitions are never easy. You decide to leave one place that is known to you for some unfamiliar territory. You don’t feel quite like yourself (and probably won’t for a while). You try to act like everything is fine even though you know that your whole life has just been upended. It will take time until things begin to fall into place – when you start to integrate the “old” you into your new identity, when you can trust that your life will make sense as you take this step into the unknown.
And while we all might experience one or two of these major transitions in our lifetime (marriage, divorce, becoming a parent or moving cities), the transition for the ancient Israelites, from slavery in Egypt to freedom, was one of epic proportions.
At Pesach we are encouraged to grapple with one of the most profound questions to confront human civilization: What is freedom?
In the biblical account of the Exodus, the Israelites celebrated their freedom while still slaves to their Egyptian overlords. How can one explain this?
The answer is both powerful and life-affirming. On April 19, 1943, the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto held a makeshift Passover meal, celebrating their freedom. The Ghetto, however, was anything but free, and Nazi soldiers were in the process of liquidating it.
Freedom is not just the absence of oppression, but the presence of a meaningful route to self-fulfillment. The Israelites and the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto found spiritual freedom even in the midst of the most extreme hardship. In Jewish tradition we differentiate between “yi’ud,” which means fate, and “goral,” which means destiny. My fate is the hand of cards that I am dealt. My destiny is how I choose to play them.
Regardless of the hand we are dealt, every one of us is free to shape our own destiny even in the most challenging of times. The Seder is not just a celebration of Jewish emancipation. When we tell our story of freedom from slavery, and the exodus from Egypt, we are reminding ourselves not just of the past, but of the present as well. The Haggadah, the Passover story, is the foundation of Judaism. The Jewish nation was born, not amidst battles and victories, but in slavery. Through experiencing injustice, cruelty, and the loss of freedom, we learn the importance of justice, truth, compassion, and liberty. These values form the basis of our faith, our ethics and the society we strive to create.
There have been times and places in Jewish history where Jews felt the fear of physical oppression but today Jews enjoy greater freedom than they have ever experienced.
There are moments in life that bring us a deep sense of value. It could be the birth of a child, a wedding day, or a moment of great accomplishment. When we experience such moments, it is as if the world reveals itself to us in perfection. We perceive these moments to be filled with grace, and we might feel that our lives are worth even one such experience.
This is what lies behind the portion of the Haggadah we call Dayenu (Enough). Dayenu lists the gracious acts of God that brought us out of Egypt. After mentioning each one, we exclaim Dayenu! – “It would have been enough for us!” not because we wouldn’t have needed more, but because the experience, even once, of the Creator’s kindness would have been enough for us to say that it was all worth it.
Dayenu is part of the Seder because our freedom is fundamentally based upon the idea that the world has meaning and, so do our choices. We yearn to be free in order to choose and achieve meaningful lives. When we are fortunate enough to experience a “Dayenu moment,” we are reminded, deep in our hearts, that our lives matter, our choices matter, and that even if it is but once in a lifetime, seeing it is knowing that it is indeed enough.
The Torah teaches us that night precedes day. First came evening and only then morning. What is the message of this process? Why should night precede day?
This is a world which starts in deficiency, in night. In this world, perfection can only come after imperfection. Morning can only come after evening. Light can only come after darkness. In the existence beyond this world, perfection can exist without a preceding imperfection. That is a world of truth. A world of light. A world of total revelation.
But in this world we can only approach perfection by a journey from the imperfect. Thus, in this world, our view of perfection is something which is always preceded by imperfection. Absence leads to presence. Emptiness becomes filled. Night becomes day. The essence of the Passover story is a journey from slavery into freedom, from darkness into light. As the Haggadah says, “Originally our ancestors were idol worshippers, but now the Omnipresent has brought us near to Him.”
The Seder is designed for us to experience the Exodus to the maximum degree. Our aim is to feel as though we ourselves were actually leaving Egypt. The great Sages who formulated the Haggadah wanted us to experience that journey from darkness into light, not just in the context of the words of the Haggadah, but in its very form and style. They constructed the Haggadah as a paradigm for the Exodus itself. Slavery to freedom; darkness into light; questions into answers.
Wishing Am Yisrael a happy and kosher Passover.