1. Introduction
"Thirty days before Pesach we begin inquiring as the requirements of the festival and expounding upon their fulfillment". Pesach, the holiday which celebrates the birth of the Jewish people and its liberation from slavery, is a beautiful Jewish tapestry, woven from threads of mitzvot and customs, poems and declarations, things to eat, things to drink, things to break and things to hide. By beginning thirty days before the holiday to lay its foundations, investing our energies in scrubbing and reading, cooking and inviting, we thereby prepare ourselves for a Pesach Seder overflowing with Jewish meaning and profound renewal.
When asked which holiday they would like to study in depth during the course of a Livnot program, most chevre respond, "Pesach!" People know almost instinctively the power and profundities contain in the full-blown traditional Seder. Today "the incredible shrinking Seder" is a thing of the past. Having experienced somewhere an amazing six-plus hour Seder filled with singing, spirituality, and intense discussions, people want to "do it right". But where to start? There are so many Haggadot, and so many details! It is for this reason we have created the Livnot "Companion to the Seder". The following pages are meant not to replace existing Haggadot but to set them in context. It is our hope that this booklet will help you navigate the often confusing waters of Pesach preparation and Seder leading and emerge ebullient!!
2. Freedom and Slavery
The difference between the slave and the free man is not merely one of social position. We can find an enlightened slave whose spirit is free, and, on the other hand, a free man with the mentality of a slave. Intrinsic freedom is that exalted spirit by which man - as well as the nation as a whole - is inspired to remain faithful to his inner essence, to the spiritual attribute of the divine image within him; it is that attribute which enables him to feel that his life has purpose and value. But a person with a slave mentality lives life and harbors emotions rooted not in his essential spiritual nature, but in that which is attractive and good in the eyes of another, who thus rules over him, whether physically or by moral suasion.
We, vanquished in exile, were oppressed for so many hundreds of years by cruel master. But our inner supernal soul is imbued with the spirit of freedom, the spirit of an internal self-knowledge, "engraved upon the tablets" (Shemot 32:16) - do not read "engraved" (charut) but "freedom" (cherut) [Avot 6:2]. Were it not for this wondrous gift bestowed upon us when we went forth to everlasting freedom from Pharaoh, the exile would have transformed the spirit within us into the spirit of a slave. But on the festival of our freedom we demonstrate openheartedly that we truly feel ourselves to be free men in our essence, and that our exalted yearning for the good and the sublime reflects our essential nature, which intuitively recognizes what is good.
This inner liberty is gradually manifesting itself in the small steps of our national renewal, in limited amounts according to the measure of the redemption which is being revealed to us. By the inner light of this essential freedom, we shall move forward to increasingly assert our vigorous inner independence, and independence acquired through the revelation of the Shechinah, when G-d delivered us and our forefathers from Egypt to everlasting freedom. Ma'amrei Re'ayah
3. The Spirituality of Cleaning for Pesach
The holy master, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, may the memory of a tzaddik be a blessing, would always look upon the fine deeds of his people, Israel, so as to find reason to stress their merits before the Al-mighty. When he would see, on the days preceding Pesach, the Jewish women toiling, cleaning, scrubbing, chasing after each particle of chametz, he would raise his eyes to heaven and proclaim, in the style of the prayer between shofar blasts on Rosh Hashanah: May it be Your will that the "angels" emerging from the sounds of scraping, scrubbing, washing and cleaning should ascend before Your Holy Throne and confer merit on the entire Jewish people!!"
4. Why are this night's festivities called "Seder"?
The word seder means "order". There are so many different mitzvot to perform, customs to observes, things to be said, etc., that it would all become one big jumble had not the Sages of our tradition arranged them in some sort of logical order. Thus, this arrangement gave its name to the entire night's proceedings. Yet, there are deeper reasons why the Pesach Seder is called as it is. The Maharal of Prague explained that the name seder hints to us that everything which befell us from our emergence from Egypt, when we became a people, until today, is no mere contatenation of coincidental events and occurrences. Rather, there is order - deep structure - to Jewish history, an order that when profoundly contemplated, reveals divine guidance and purpose. Every event has its meaning, though it be lost to our immediate grasp and hidden far below the surface. Perhaps that is what we, as a people and as individuals, are searching for so deeply on this night.
It has also been explained that Pesach, as the first holiday of the Jewish year (recall that we have several Rashei Shanim - "New Years" - the first of Nisan, the month of Pesach being in many ways the primary one), Pesach sets the pattern for each of the others. In a remarkable acrostic letter association in Hebrew, it turns out that the first day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the upcoming Tish'ah Be'av
the second day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the upcoming Shavu'ot
the third day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the upcoming Rosh HaShanah
the fourth day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the upcoming Simchat Torah
the fifth day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the upcoming Yom Kippur
the sixth day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the previous Purim
the seventh day of Pesach falls on the same day of the week as the upcoming Yom Ha'atzma'ut
Thus, the entire Jewish year is encapsulated in the days of Pesach, and the themes developed in great detail on each of those days are already present as seedlings of ideas on the Seder night!
5. Why is the "book" we use called "Haggadah"?
The word "haggadah" seems to mean "telling" - as in the primary mitzvah of the Seder night - telling the story of coming forth from Egypt. There is a secondary meaning of the word, however - "to pull out, to draw to oneself" - as in Shemot 12:21 - "Draw and take for yourselves sheep". On this basis, the Chasidic masters interpret that the central thrust of telling the story is to draw into our lives the power of the great miracles of redemption of those times - to make the exodus from Egypt as real for us as it was for our ancestors. As states in the Haggadah - "In every generation one is obligated to see himself as if he/she came forth from Egypt." As interpreted in a Chasidic spirit: "One is positively charged when one truly sees oneself vitally connected to every generation. Then it is as though one has him/herself come forth from Egypt". Thus, we "pull" the very fabric of the reality of then into now - we have the power by our reenactment through telling the story to create a "time warp" - a context in which Jewish identity suffers no discontinuity but rather enjoys a radical oneness - ourselves with each other, with generations past, and with the Holy One of Being.
6. The Exile of the Word
R. Yitzchak Luria Ashkenazi, the famous Kabbalist of Tzfat, taught that the word Pesach, a rare Hebrew word, is actually a conflation of two words: Peh - sach, meaning: A speaking mouth. For, he explained, during the entire period of their exile in Egypt, the Jewish people were laboring under external mental constraints which prevented the fullness of their natural expression from emerging. Indeed, throughout the account of the slavery in Shemot, we find that "the people of Israel screamed", "the people of Israel groaned", "their outcry rose up" - and so forth, signifying animal-like expression, but we do not find, "and the people of Israel prayed" - they were not capable of the most human of the various forms of verbal expression - prayer.
Upon gaining their from slavery, they regained their voice. That is why it is most fitting for the holiday of redemption to be called "Peh-sach". This also explains why it is such a great mitzvah to tell the story of coming forth from Egypt - for in the very telling of the story of going forth we are emphasizing that our powers of expression, the essense of our humanity and Jewishness, were also liberated on that day.
7. The Bread of our Impoverishment
The opening passage of Maggid, the telling of the story, is one of only two passages in the Aramaic language found in the Haggadah. Aramaic, the spoken language of the inhabitants of the Middle East, Jews among them, for over 1,000 years, was the language of the common folk even during the period of Greek and Roman ascendancy, when the Haggadah took on it present form. The question is asked, why is this passage in Aramaic, and a number of answers were given. But perhaps a better question would be, why is the rest in Hebrew? The common folk did not understand Hebrew, to the point where each Hebrew verse of the Torah, when read in public, would be translated on the spot and out loud into Aramaic by a functionary known as a Meturgeman. Indeed, the Shulchan Aruch records the custom of R. Kalonymos of 12th century London to "do the haggadah" in English (!) so that the women and children could understand and thereby fulfill the mitzvah. Indeed, the Shulchan Aruch rules, if it is a choice between the two, it is better to "do the Haggadah" in a reliable English translation than either to stumble or to race uncomprehendingly through the Hebrew.
The classic question, however, remains: If, despite the above considerations, the vast majority of the Haggadah is in Hebrew, why is this passage in Aramaic. R. Menachem Mendel Kasher, of blessed memory, suggested the following original and convincing explanation:
In Temple times, the central observance of Pesach was offering and eating from the flesh of the Pesach offering, the Pascal lamb. Hundreds of thousands of Jews from across the Land of Israel and the emerging Diaspora would converge on Jerusalem, and each was commanded to offer a Pesach offering. The timing of the offering, on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, was such that even a "chain gang" of kohan working at top speed and assisted by levi'im for those sacrificial actions permitted to non-kohahim would not suffice to provide the requisite number of animals. Thus, several extended families would pool their resources and purchase an animal together, delegating one of their number as their representative to be present at the sacrifice, and all would eat from the animal together. This large group, called a havurah, and numbering as many as fifty adults, would then gather to eat the Pesach offering, upon Matzah and bitter herbs as stipulated, and to tell the story. Sounds like a Seder? It was!
What of the poor, however, who could not afford a Pesach offering, nor were they in a position to "go in" with several others to form a havurah of their own? Well, why not just invite them to some other havurah? This was actually difficult to arrange, for anyone not present when the group was first drawn up, was not counted as one of those on whose behalf the Pesach was offered, and it would be forbidden subsequently to feed them of its flesh. The solution (and here is R. Kasher's ingenious insight) was to form the havurah including one or two people - the poor, the stranger, etc. - to be named later. Thus, when a particular person showed up, it became clear in retrospect that this was the previously unnamed person for whose sake the Pesach was offered, and the legal requirements were fulfilled. More than this: Since the offering was offered on behalf of extra people, those spaces had to be filled - the members of the havurah needed the poor stranger just as much as he or she needed them!!
Thus, to this day, we say, in a language understood by all: All who are hungry and needy- for food, for companionship, for hearing, for being heard, let them come, eat and take shelter under for a Jewish roof as we reconstitute our people in microcosm!!
8. Double Dipping
One of the famous four questions asked on Pesach is: "On all other nights we do not dip our food even once - why on this night do we dip twice?" [ In fact, the original wording of this question in the Mishnah was, "On all other nights we dip our food only once" - due to the fact that the prevalent custom was indeed to serve an "appetizer" which involved dipping. A subsequent change in eating habits dictated the adaptation of the wording of the question. With the popularity of Israeli/Middle Eastern foods such as humus and techina nowadays, perhaps we should reinstate the original wording. ] What are the two dippings. The first is almost at beginning of the Seder. Immediately after kiddush and the first cup of wine, we wash our hands as though for bread, but without a blessing, and dip Karpas - a green vegetable - in salt water and say the regular blessing for vegetables before eating it. Which green vegetable? There are different customs, including parsley and celery, but it should be one which is not used for the bitter herbs later in the Seder. The second dipping is when the Maror (bitter herbs) are dipped into Charoset (the sweet paste for which several recipes appear elsewhere herein). For Maror, people use either horseradish or romaine lettuce. If horseradish is used, it should not be the pickled kind with beets mixed in. Rather, buy a fresh horseradish root and cut it or grind it before the start of Pesach, but seal it immediately in an airtight container to retain its zap!! (The "burning" taste is volatile and if left in the open air will simple disappear). Obvious, ground horseradish cannot be "dipped", but you can take a spoonful with Charoset. A chunk of horseradish can be dipped, but watch out as you chew it!!
What is the dipping mean to communicate? It has been written that they symbolize two dippings which "bookend" the story of our slavery in Egypt. The first: Yosef was Ya'acov favorite son, being the son of his old age and of Rachel, his beloved wife. Ya'acov made Yosef a coat of many colors (literally, a coat of stripes - k'tonet pasim). Yosef's brothers envied Yosef, and hated him for his talebearing and dreams of overlordship. When he came out to the field in search of them (at his father's behest, to bring back report of their doings), they stripped the coat off him, threw him into a cistern, and subsequently sold him as a slave to itinerant traders down to Egypt. They then slaughtered a goat-kid, dipped Yosef's special striped coat in the blood, brought it to Ya'acov and say, "Recognize, please, we found this!" Ya'acov recognizes the coat and assumes that a wild animal has torn Yosef. He retreats into mourning and all the attempts of the brothers to comfort him are in vain. With this act of deception and concealment, the family estrangement is complete and, it can be said, the descent into slavery has begun in earnest.
The second dipping comes as the Jewish people are about to emerge from slavery. The tenth and final plague - the killing of the Egyptian firstborn - is unveiled in Shemot, chapter 11. In chapter 12, the first mitzvot to be given to the Jews in their newborn status as a people are delivered: those surrounding the pesach offering and accompanying meal to be indulged in while the final plague is at its midnight peak. All the Jews are to gather in their homes, no one is to step outside. The doorposts are daubed with the blood of the lamb offered as the pesach offering, applied with a makeshift paintbrush: a bunch of hyssop herb dipped in the sacrificial blood. This second dipping is performed in the presence of each and every Jew - no one is missing, everyone sees. It has been explained that the blood was placed on the inside of the doorposts, for it was the Jews - and not G-d - who needed to see the blood of the Egyptian's gods dripping from their doors to know they were really free.
Two dippings - of Yosef's striped coat into his father Ya'acov's salty tears, and of the disbelieving bitterness of unending slavery into the powerfully sweet "blood" of wine-apple-nut freedom - frame the telling of our story, as we dip into the inexhaustible fund of our tradition's riches to flesh it out.
9. Four Cups or Five?
Drinking four cups of wine is one of the most prominent and well-know features of the Pesach Seder. Unlike eating matzah and bitter herbs, and telling the story of the Exodus, drinking the four cups is not a mitzvah stipulated in the Torah. The Sages established the practice in ancient times, and several explanations were offered as to the basis of instituting the four cups. The most well-known is that each cup represents one of the expressions of redemption of a key passage in the book of Shemot. In that passage, Moshe complains, "Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your Name, he has dealt worse with this people; and still You have not delivered Your people". G-d's response is:
"Say, therefore, to the Israelite people: I am the Eternal. I will free you from the labors of the Egyptians and deliver you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and through extraordinary chastisements. And I will take you be My people ... I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'acov and I will give it to you for a possession, I the Eternal."
Each verb indicate yet another stage in the process of fully emerging from slavery. Being freed from labor was but the first step - the people were still legally slaves until they were delivered from bondage. Once no longer legally slaves, they would need to be redeemed - that is, given the potential for intrinsic worth - both from the context of their slavery and their abject self-conception. This was to be accomplished by removing the people from Egypt via wondrous marvels. Finally, the people were to be "installed" at Mt. Sinai as G-d's people, the bearers of the Divine message. Four stages, each praised and celebrated over a cup of wine.
The question was asked: If the cups parallel the stages of redemption from Egypt, each stage represented by a Hebrew verb, then what about the verb, "I will bring them to the land"? Is this not an integral part of the process? Such, evidently, was Rabbi Tarfon's view in the Talmud, for he taught that a fifth cup is to be drunk. The majority of the Sages, however, mention only four cups. Perhaps they felt that this matter of coming to the land is a different matter entirely from Redemption from Egypt. In anycase, subsequently there was uncertainty as to whether to drink a fifth cup or not. The matter was left suspended, and, together with all suspended legal uncertainties, will be resolved by Eliyahu (Elijah) when he returns to prepare the way for the final redemption in Messianic times.
The seder, as has been indicated, is divided in two by the meal. What goes on before the meal is retrospective in nature - "a backward glace o'er traveled roads". The portion of the Seder reserved for after the meal is anticipatory of the future. If the first part of the Seder - the story of coming forth from Egypt - is to be told "as though one personally emerged from Egypt", then the anticipation of the final redemption must also be engaged in as though it is right at the doorstep, literally. Thus, we open the post-meal section by opening the door to the future, to reconnection and wholeness, to Eliyahu.
Now we can understand why it is called the "cup of Eliyahu" - it is not for him to drink (as we all used to think in childhood" - rather, it is for him to rule whether our drinking it as a fifth cup is appropriate. It so, then why pour the cup before we know the answer ? What if Eliyahu doesn't come this evening?
On Pesach night that thought cannot be entertained - of course Eliyahu and all he signifies will come, and of course he will rule that our return to the Land of Israel is the final stage of our redemption from exile and servitude - in Egypt and in all the places ever since Egypt, as the Egyptian experience served as archetype for Jewish historical experience. For, as the Tosefot said in parable in this regard: "A slave who has been freed and into whose hands has been entrusted his master's precious vessel, if he not bring him to his own dwelling-place, how has he really benefited him?"
10. Chametz, Pride, Idolatry
What could be the reasons why, of all prohibited food substances, there is nothing whose prohibitions are as severe as Chametz on Pesach? We find several explanations in the sources, one being that, since it is something which is permissible all year round, we must be extra careful with it during the period of its prohibition lest, through sheer habit, we come to eat it.
It has seemed to some that this explanation is insufficient to explain the "deep" meaning of the prohibition of Chametz. One more promising approach is to look at what chametz might symbolize. The classic association is of yeast (S'or in Hebrew) with the urge toward evil, the Yetzer Harah, or, in more modern terms, the tendency to see everything as revolving around oneself. We speak of having an inflated, or overinflated sense of self, of being puffed up with overweening pride, and the imagery is very "bread-like". Recall the Pillsbury Doughboy, recall the feel of breadmaking, of flour and water becoming springy and fleshlike as you knead them into dough, and you'll understand the imagery of the prayer uttered by one Sage of the Talmud: Master of the Universe! It is revealed and apparent before You that our desire is to do Your will. What stands in our way? The "yeast" in the "dough". Matzah, on the other hand, symbolizes humility, a lack of self-inflationary arrogance, an ability to see things from the other's perspective, and consequently, an ability to see thing from the Divine perspective. The Talmud records G-d saying, as it were, of the prideful and arrogant: I cannot live in the same world as this one" - implying that too much self-referential pride "crowds out" G-d, so to speak.
Thus the road is paved for a deeper, more spiritual understanding of the symbolism of Chametz. Rabbi Kasher has explained that the origin of the severity of the prohibition of Chametz lies in its connection with idolatry. Bread as we know it was invented in ancient Egypt (as was another product of indolent fermentation: beer!). In that mother of ancient civilizations, indulgence and idolatry mixed freely in the upper classes. The Jews in Egypt were steeped in idolatry, and that is why they were commanded: (With)draw and take for yourselves a kid for each household...and slaughter it as a sheltering (pesach in Hebrew). The Oral Tradition explains: Withdraw your hands from idolatry and take the kid, the god of the Egyptians and slaughter it before their eyes. Pesach starts with a public renunciation of idolatry. And as evidenced by the Talmud, in ancient Egypt a choice offering to the gods was the newly developed, delicate and tasty leavened bread.
Some of the legal parallels between idolatrous images and appurtenances and chametz serve to further confirm the symbolic connection:
1) Both are prohibited in the smallest possible quantity - there is no minimum amount less than which is considered to be nullified by whatever else might be present in a mixture.
2) It is prohibited even to possess both chametz during Pesach and idolatrous images.
3) Both must be disposed of by burning or otherwise completely destroying them.
4) Both can be nullified by the declaration or action of their rightful owner - in the case of idolatrous images, that is a non-Jew; in the case of chametz, that would be a Jew before Pesach.
5) Regarding both it is required to make a thorough search to make sure nothing has been inadvertently left behind.
11. Breaking the Middle Matzah
For Shabbat and most holidays, we begin the meals with a brachah over two loaves of bread. We are careful that the loaves should be whole, as they represent the double portion of manna with which the Jewish people were blessed on the eve of Shabbat. Yet on Pesach, we intentionally break one of the loaves. The middle of the three matzot is broken ceremoniously, the larger piece wrapped and set aside to be used as the afikoman, the final taste left in our mouths at the conclusion of the Seder's meal. Why are we not concerned with the same symbolism as occupies us on other holidays?
In fact, there are those who explain that the whole purpose of the third matzah is to provide the second whole matzah to ensure that the brachah of hamotzi will be said over two whole loaves. But that just begs the question: why break the second matzah in the first place, thus necessitating a third?
The simple answer is that matzah is called "Lechem Oni", which can be translated - "answering bread" - bread over which people's needs are responded to and answered. The same phrase literally means, "Bread of Impoverishment", and, presumably, the poor have always had to make due with scraps and pieces, rather than whole loaves.
Referring to Matzah, however, as "The Bread of Impoverishment", or, more standardly, "The Bread of Affliction", isn't so easy, however. The only reference to matzah in the Torah is when the Jewish people were so rushed to leave Egypt that they did not have time to allow the dough to rise before they needed to leave. They therefore baked it into flat, unleavened cakes, and those cakes - matzot have ever since represented redemption.
Which is it ,then, bread of liberation or bread of enslavement. Was is the hand of another which hurried us from task to task such that we had not the time to properly tend to our own well-being, or was it that internal compulsion to rush to assume our identities as new, free beings that made bread-baking a secondary concern?
Pesach is a time for splitting things: The Red Sea was split for the Jewish people upon their Exodus. G-d smote the first born, while sheltering the Jews, at the "splitting of the night" - at midnight. The darkness of night is the enveloping oppression of slavery and exile in Egypt. As the Jewish people was about to slide into total oblivion, as it was poised to merge into the morass of peoples that was Egypt, G-d, with exquisite timing, split open the visionless night. The night was split and the Jewish "split" Egypt.
Rav Yehoshua Kahan
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Rav Yehoshua Kahan is a teacher at Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He has held pulpits in Knoxville, Tennessee and Los Angeles, and served as educational director of Livnot U'Lehibanot. He blogs on Parashat Hashavua here |