Passover is a time for questions. Here are two I have been pondering. Please add your thoughts in the comment section below.
On Children:
Children stand at the center of this holiday. The Torah says vehigadeta levinkha. “And you shall tell your child” the story of our exodus from Egypt. It is on this basis that we have a seder and a haggadah, a book of “teling” to begin with --- for the children. But why? Why are children so central to this holiday of freedom?
A few thoughts:
1) Perhaps telling the story to our children means learning to hear and tell the story in the way that children do – with wonder, excitement, and a no-bounds sense of identification. Children know what it means to see yourself “as if” you left Egypt. They play those kinds of imaginary games all the time. We begin the Seder with questions to encourage not just the children to ask but also ourselves to ask, to look with wonder at what is new and different, to be curious and engaged like a child.
2) The holiday of Passover is about both children – the future – and also the past – retelling our national history. The point of the holiday is to preserve this link between past and future. Doing so embeds each of us in a chain, makes us and our children a part of a larger, eternal network stretching backward and forward in time. And, in so doing, we do attain a kind of freedom, a freedom from mortality: we escape our individual straits, the confines of our short individual lives.
3) The holiday is also a holiday of hope. Think of the contrast between Tisha b’Av and Passover. On Tisha b’Av we mourn the sad events of our past. On Passover we assert with great clarity that redemption happens, that difficult times always do eventually come to an end. It is this climate of faith and hope that is an essential backdrop for raising and educating children. Passover is a holiday of education because it is a holiday of hope. Children are the future; they are themselves signs of hope, like the spring rebirth after the winter sleep. To face the life that awaits them, we need to fortify them with hope and faith in the possibility of redemption.
On Cleaning:
What is the connection between cleaning and Passover, between the act of ridding ourselves of all our hametz and the process of achieving freedom and redemption? There is something about freedom, something about redemption that requires us to remove certain obstacles. What are these obstacles?
The puffiness of hametz has been traditionally connected to the puffiness of the ego, the constant human pursuit of honor, and certainly such preoccupations are a kind of enslavement, an obstacle to both freedom and redemption.
But the obstacle that strikes me most clearly this year is fear. We cannot be ourselves and play the role we are meant to play in the world if we have fear – fear of physical pain or harm, fear of evil-doers, fear of new things, fear of intimacy, fear of social disapproval or embarrassment. Fear keeps us preoccupied with the “what if” instead of focusing on the present moment of connection and holiness. Perhaps it is for this reason that the Seder night is designated as a leyl shimurim, a “night of guarding,” of divine protection. For one night, we imagine what it is like to shed these fears like bread crumbs and feel the possibility of a bold freedom.
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Children: I would add that it is the relationship of parent to child that the Seder emphasizes. There is something immensely satisfying in the very act of transmitting values to our children, in the very moment of transmission.
ReplyDeleteFear: I've never thought that fear is at all relevant to the Seder. I think you're suggesting that that is because it is banished, and the serenity and comfort of the Seder is what takes place in its absence.
The one place when the issue of fear surfaces is when we throw open the doors for shfoch chamascha (which is also the one time when it loses its universalistic appeal). Perhaps that is a counterpoint, that allows us to appreciate the message of serenity, connection and holiness you describe, in contrast to the dark night outside.
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