Let all who are hungry...

Grandma's special plates, the ones I only use for gefilte fish, are already put away.
The seder plate is in the drying rack. 
Silver kiddush cups are upside down on a towel, the sunlight is hitting them just now making them sparkle.
Matzah crumbs are everywhere... as they will be all week.

My house is again way too quiet... this is the way it is now that the kids don't live here.  After the joy of the Seders and having them home, they have gone back to Boston to get back to work. 

As it has happened twice before, one of my three children was not here.  This year, my it was youngest who was not home for Passover, as he was away for his semester abroad.  He actually spent his Seder in Israel, with the same family that hosted me when I was 20, and I loved that.  But of course he was missed.  

I would like to share with you the words he sent to his sister to be read at our Seder table.  

Shalom and Chag Samayach from the holy land.  This is Jacob (Barr), writing while I wait for Yael Betzelel to take to me to her husband's family's Seder near tel aviv.  As it says in the Torah, B'shanah haba'ah b'tel aviv.

Last year at the Seder, Maddie (*point to self*) read us a portion of the New Haggadah edited by Jonathan Safran Foer where he examines the text "Let all who are hungry come and eat," and makes us really consider if we are following this commandment.  Foer  challenges us not to make this another phrase we say because of the holiday, but actually turn it into a reality.  Practically speaking there is no use saying that when you are already sitting down to eat.  Those who are hungry can't hear you.  

I've been reflecting on this since I arrived in Israel (did I mention I'm in Israel?), where I've been coasting on the generosity of friends and strangers for some time now.  I could list many many instances of when Israelis have helped me, fed me, even clothed me.  I went on a four day hike from the Mediterranean to the Kinneret and each night stayed with a different trail angel, a person who lives near the trail and opens his home to travelers.  Sometimes it was planned, sometimes not.  One family invited us in when it was raining, gave us dry socks and shoes to keep, another took us to his kibbutz breakfast, and at our last location a large group of Thai workers at a kibbutz shared their (incredibly spicy and questionably prepared) Thai food with us while they took videos of us eating from across the table.

Did my characteristic pluck and boyish charm help?  Of course.  My unparalleled wit?  No doubt.  But all this aside, I have never felt so welcomed as I have been in the weeks before Pesach. We took a trip to Safed for a shabbat and stayed with the trail angel we stayed with on the hike weeks ago, and before we left he told our group of five that if any of us or any of our friends needed a Seder we were welcome to his and to stay at his house.

I emailed my birthright tour guide from December to ask about small day trips I could take from Tel Aviv and he responded first with an invitation to his Seder and to stay in his house, and second with ideas for trips.  An adult on the Frisbee team I practice with here told the entire team of twenty that if any of us needed a place for the Seder we were invited to his.

The list goes on:  Chabad Rabbis, Taxi drivers, my Israeli friends from camp: All of them ask us not out of courtesy but from a real desire to help us and give us a place to go.  There may be turmoil, political crisis, and absurdly expensive ground beef here, but in some ways the people here really do act like its the promised land.  So b'shanah haba'ah b'yerushalyim, may next year bring us closer to a world where everyone acts with the same genuine care as I've experienced with the people here.   

At a time when I am so caught up in my own work, and then in my preparations for the holiday, I have not been able to stop to be reflective.  I am deeply grateful that my son has.  



The Haggadah he refers to is amazing...  Click here for the link on Amazon.

If it's Purim, it Must Be Passover

About fifteen seconds after someone has given me a hamentaschen to celebrate the holiday of Purim, I am preparing for the THE BIG ONE... Passover. All those crumbs falling from that cookie shaped like Haman's hat (or pocket, or ear) are just "hametz to be" ready to be swept away in a matter of weeks.  Or Friday when the cleaning ladies come.  But that's not the point.

I have written about Passover before, the aftermath that is...  here is part of an article I wrote in 2010, edited to make it relevant for today, and also to take out the Hebrew fonts that don't work well with the Blogger site.  Enjoy, but don't get uptight, we still have a few weeks to go.

(Note: when I underline the letter H, read it gutturally, like a chhcchhcchh sound.  Very good. Please wipe off the screen and continue.)

PESAH

PASSOVER

aka

Hag He'Aviv -- Holiday of Spring

Hag HaMatzot -- Holiday of Matzot

Z'man Heiruteinu -- The time of our Freedom

Hag He'Aviv- The Holiday of Spring

Although, after the winter we've been having it's hard to imagine it, hopefully by April 14, the night of the first Seder, we will be noticing many signs of spring.  We will appreciate it all the more, I'm sure, to see those bulbs bursting out of the grey ground, and the tiny buds on the trees.   But as glorious as Spring will be, and as much hope as it imbues, it really doesn't capture the meaning or feeling of Passover.  We do much more on this day than celebrate Spring.

Hag HaMatzot - The Holiday of Matzot (plural of Matzah)

This explains quite a bit more, I suppose...as it's the only holiday where we are "commanded" to eat matzah. In fact, if you are asked by a total stranger when you are sitting in the mall  why you are eating that crumbly square cracker with your tuna (falling all over the place) I hope that you, like me, will launch into a 20 minute retelling of the exodus from Egypt.  Yes, the very taste of this food reminds us of the holiday and the memories that go with it.

Z'man Heirutainu -- The Time of Our Freedom 

This begins to tell the Passover story by it's very name.  This is the holiday where we take the time to discuss, teach and retell the story of how our people left Egyptian slavery, crossed the Red Sea, and became a free people.  We take time at our seder and hopefully in the weeks preceding and the the weeks following as well, to appreciate our own freedom that there are others who are not free. 

The challenge, of course, to make the Passover holiday, and especially the Seder, the festive meal that kicks off the seven or eight day observance, relevant and meaningful to all.  How do you teach slavery to your family and friends, when none of you, thankfully, have know slavery? Or maybe we have.  

How do you express the joys of freedom to a table of people who take it for granted.  Or who don't think they are free yet?

Spoiler Alert... If you are coming to my seder stop reading.

At my Seder (the holiday meal) this year, I will be asking people to share something that makes them either feel they are free or feel they are enslaved.  (Or, of course they can pass.)  Because even though we do not have obvious shackles that we can see, some of us may feel that way:  a job that is strangling, a project that can't get done.  Others may feel free and can share that. A new set of car keys, or a paint brush. Wearing sandals after a long winter. 

I'll get some flack for this assignment... my dad has already said "that's fine, but I'll just bring the wine," but even if people don't decide to share, they will at least have thought about it before they come to the table.  And I think that's the whole point, really.

The goal of the seder is to tell the story, though most Haggadot (the books we read from at the seder) do not really tell the story very well.   This year, my seder will focus around the the passage called Avadim Hayinu, We Were Slaves. 

This is the English Translation:

We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and God the Eternal brought us out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.  And if the Holy One, Blessed is God, had not taken our ancestors out of Egypt, then we, and our children, and our children's children, would still be slaves in Egypt.  So, even if all of us were wise, all of us understanding, all of us knowing Torah, it is still a mitzvah for us to discuss to departure from Egypt. And anyone who tell the story of the Exodus from Egyptian slavery is to be praised.

Even in the mall.