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Tag Archives: Passover

Pesach Sheni: How Access and Experience Shape Us

25 Sunday Apr 2021

Posted by dinabrawer in Jewish Festival

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access, belonging, exclusion, inclusion, Passover, Pesach, ritual

Our Pesach Seder is largely focused on the Haggadah. In the time of the Beit HaMikdash however, the key ritual was the Korban Pesach (Paschal Lamb). Ritual purity was required of every individual in order to partake in the sacrificial lamb. Anyone finding themselves unable to return to a state of ritual purity before the fourteenth of Nissan would be unable to take part in the Korban Pesach and be in fact exempt from this mitzvah.
When Moshe gives instruction on how Pesach should be observed and commemorated after the Exodus, a number of individuals, finding themselves ritually impure on erev Pesach, approach Moshe in protest:


‘We are impure through contact with a dead body’-
they say- ‘Why should we be diminished and not bring the
offering of the LORD in its appointed season among
the Children of Israel?’ (Numbers 9:7)


The words ‘why should we be diminished?’ speak of an attitude towards religious ritual that sees it as something beyond the obligation to adhere to a set of laws and traditions. While the individuals in question are technically ‘exempt’ from taking part, they are sorely aware that they nonetheless are missing out on an experience fundamental to their core identity. Through the Korban Pesach one enters an inner circle of belonging, as each individual is required to be counted in a specific group who will gather to consume the Paschal lamb at the Seder.


In the aftermath of the pandemic the frustrating experience of missing out on key celebrations is all too relatable. Over the last year we had to abstain from many family gatherings and cancel communal celebrations. As the world reopens and we re enter our circles of belonging, Pesach Sheni invites us to pause and consider how inclusion and experience shape us as individuals, and to reframe the concepts of purity and impurity as access or exclusion.


Like those who challenged Moshe, we now are in a position to better appreciate how taking part in a key communal event shapes our overall experience, and how diminishing exclusion can feel.
The frustration of those who lack access to the Korban Pesach is heard by God, Who, in response, establishes a new festival on the fourteenth of Iyar, a month after Pesach, known as Pesach Sheni, literally a second chance Pesach. Granted, this alternative celebration cannot replace the original entirely, but it does convey the importance of creating alternative opportunities to access and
experience.

In Search of Seders Past

05 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by dinabrawer in Jewish Festival

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faith, family, memory, Passover, religion, stories

Mah Nishtanah? Why is this night different…?

This year, this question doesn’t feel staged. It rings true and urgent.

This year, despite the variations in Passover customs across families, we are united in experiencing the seder through social isolation. 

Our reference points for what a seder is, are shaped by our memories of seders past, which dictate what a real seder feels like. 

So yes, this year it will be very different. 

But will it even be a real seder? 

Can we imagine a seder that feels authentic, without our extended family, friends or guests ? 

But is there such a thing as the authentic seder, the real thing?

The mishnah (Pesachim 10:5) sums up the goal of the seder as:

In every generation a person is obliged to regard themselves as though they personally have been redeemed from Egypt.

The seder is a process of reenactment of the original story, largely focused on the haggadah, the moment in which we recall and retell our most important story. 

But the haggadah isn’t just the retelling of our people’s journey from slavery to freedom, it is also an exercise in telling the stories of seders past. 

We’re invited to do so by the haggadah itself, as it opens by narrating: 

‘We were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Lord our God brought us out’, but rather than continuing that story, it detours to reminisce of another seder: 

‘R’ Eliezer, R’ Yehoshua, R’ Elazar ben Azaria, R’ Akiva, and R’ Tarfon were reclining in Bnei Brak…’

IMG_4617

A story within a story: In this 1929 Vienna Haggadah, the artist recreates the Seder in Bnei Brak by imagining a gathering the five most prominent rabbis of that time: R’ Yosef Karo (Beit Yosef), R’ Jacob ben Asher (Ba’al haTurim), R’ Shlomo Yitzhaki (Rashi), and R’ Issac Elfasi (Rif).

The haggadah continues to weave stories and memories of other rabbis performing their seders; R’ Yehudah abbreviating the ten plagues into three sets of acronyms, R’ Gamliel capturing the essence of the seder by pointing to three symbolic foods.  

And so, as we  immerse ourselves in the haggadah’s narrative, we don’t find a linear, original story, but stories embedded with stories. 

What the haggadah is doing is akin to frame story, a literary technique that enables us to access and connect to the main narrative through multiple side stories, or stories within stories, like a Russian doll.

The truth is that memories are themselves built in the process of retrieval. And while we may set out to retrieve the original exodus story, we can only achieve this by recalling our own stories and in so doing creating memories.

And so when we contemplate this year’s seder, rather than obsessing about how different and strange it feels compared to seders past, we can celebrate it in the knowledge that we are weaving another seder story into the rich stream of Jewish memory. 

This year’s seder is certainly unprecedented, but in years to come, the memory of it, with its particular references, questions and symbols, will become an important chapter of the continually unfolding haggadah story. 

Let’s write this chapter with all the joy and creativity we can summon.

Future generations will retell it with reverence.

 

Mah Nishtanah- What Has Changed?

20 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by dinabrawer in Jewish Festival, Uncategorized

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Orthodox Judaism, Passover, Spiritual Growth


At the Seder we ask Mah Nishtanah – ‘what is different?’ but the same words also mean ‘what has changed?’

Following the Hasidic masters, who teach that Pesach is about achieving personal freedom from imposed limitations that inhibit our spiritual growth, I would like to suggest the following symbolic reading of Mah Nishtanah:

Why is this night different from all other nights?

What has changed in our lives on this night as we look back over the past year?

1. On all other nights we eat leavened products and matzah, and on this night only matzah.

Matzah represents humility, have we made space for others?

2.On all other nights we eat all vegetables, and on this night only bitter herbs.

What pain have we experienced and how have we grown from it?

3.On all other nights, we don’t dip our food even once, and on this night we dip twice.

What have we been immersed in and how has it shaped who we are tonight?

4.On all other nights we eat sitting or reclining, and on this night we only recline.

Have we taken time to recline, to be mindful of the special moments in our lives?

May we experience a reflective Seder that will inspire much spiritual growth and personal development in the coming year.

!לשנה הבאה בירושלים

IMG_1589

from my favorite Art Deco Haggadah, Vienna 1929

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