Passover

About 4 pages (1,322 words)

Passover Summary

Questions on this topic? Just ask!

The Routledge Dictionary of Judaism

Passover

Festival celebrated from the first full moon after the vernal equinox, the full moon of Nisan, that commemorates the Exodus from Egypt, described in the first fourteen chapters of the biblical book of Exodus; with Tabernacles and Pentecost, one of Judaism’s three pilgrimage festivals, on which, in biblical times, all Israelite males were obligated to appear at the Temple in Jerusalem (Deuteronomy 16:16). Particular emphasis is upon the unleavened bread eaten by the Israelites as a result of their hasty departure from Egypt (Exodus 12). Passover is celebrated for seven (in the diaspora, eight) days, the first and last day (in the diaspora, two days) of which are holy days and the middle days of which are in the status of OL HAMO‘ED. On the first night (in the diaspora, two nights), the events of the Exodus are relived through a ritual meal, called a SEDER, at which the text of the HAGGADAH is read. During the entire duration of the Passover, Jews are forbidden from consuming, or even possessing, leavened products. Theologically,

Passover The Seder Plate holding the symbolic foods referred to during the Passover Seder.

Passover signals the beginning of Israel as a free people called from the slavery of Egypt to bondage to the Torah. Passover carries Israel to Sinai freely to accept God’s rule in the Torah. Referred to as “the season of our liberation,” Passover is where the people Israel starts.

The home-ritual of the Passover Seder tells the story of the Exodus by explaining the symbols present on the table:

The Youngest Present: Why has this night been made different from all other nights? On all other nights we eat bread whether leavened or unleavened, on this night only unleavened; on all other nights we eat all kinds of herbs, on this night only bitter ones; on all other nights we do not dip herbs even once; on this night, twice; on all other nights we sit at the table either sitting or reclining, on this night we all recline.

To this comes the reply:

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

The story of Israel then is spelled out, and in the course of the narrative, the people of Israel is defined:

Long ago our ancestors were idol-worshippers but now the Holy One has drawn us to His service. So we read in the Torah: And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the Lord, God of Israel: From time immemorial your fathers lived beyond the river Euphrates, even to Terah, father of Abraham and of Nahor, and they worshipped idols. And I took your father Abraham from beyond the river and guided his footsteps throughout the land of Canaan. I multiplied his offspring and gave him Isaac. To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. And I set apart Mount Seir as the inheritance of Esau, while Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt.”

All of it is deeply relevant to successive generations of Jews who celebrate Passover, for it says who those assembled around the table really are, and for whom they really stand.

They in the here and now stand for “our ancestors,” Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

All those present: Blessed is He who keeps His promise to Israel…for the Holy One set a term to our bondage, fulfilling the word which He gave our father Abraham in the covenant made between the divided sacrifice: Know beyond a doubt that your offspring will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, four hundred years they shall serve and suffer. But in the end I shall pronounce judgment on the oppressor people and your offspring shall go forth with great wealth

So Israel defines itself: a family, a people, saved by God from bondage. Through the natural eye, we see ordinary folk, not much different from their neighbors in dress, language, or aspirations. The words they speak do not describe reality and are not meant to. When Jews say of themselves, “We were the slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt,” they know they never felt the lash; but through the eye of faith that is just what they have done. It is their liberation, not merely that of long-dead forebears, that they now celebrate. One theme stands out: we, here and now, are really living then and there. So for example:

We were slaves in of Pharaoh in Egypt and the Lord our God brought us forth from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And if the Holy One, blessed be He, had not brought our fathers forth from Egypt, then we and our descendents would still be slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt. And so, even if all of us were full of wisdom, understanding, sages and well informed in the Torah, we should still be obligated to repeat again the story of the exodus from Egypt; and whoever treats as an important matter the story of the Exodus from Egypt is praiseworthy.

The symbols on the table—the unleavened bread, the bitter herbs, the lamb bone, and the like—explicitly invoke the then and there in the here and now. First comes the unleavened bread:

This is the bread of affliction, which our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. Let all who are hungry come and eat with us, let all who are needy come and celebrate the Passover with us. This year here, next year in the land of Israel; this year slaves, next year free people.

Now the message is announced in so many words:

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

Passover tells the story of Israel through time, not one time only, but all time, and its message is, “God delivers us from their hands,” and that is the point that the story of Passover registers:

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

The story relived at the Passover Seder turns Jews’ lives into a metaphor, Jews into actors, the everyday meal into drama. What continues today to speak so ubiquitously, with such power, that pretty much everybody who wants in joins in is a message that penetrates to the heart of people who remember the murder, in the near-past, of up to six million Jews, and who know, in the near at hand of anti-Semitism, that they too are a minority and at risk.

This is the complete article, containing 1,322 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page).