Some New Questions for Passover
鈥淗ow is this night different from all other nights?鈥� This one question turns out really to be four, each about the reason for a ritual in the Seder. In the Haggadah, as we know, the four questions are asked and answered.
But the most interesting questions have no easy answer. They are in the Haggadah, too, but they are harder to find. Here are two that struck me this year:
鈥淲hy would we celebrate our freedom by restricting it?鈥�
Yesterday one of my teen children asked me this question, in our anticipation of the upcoming holiday 鈥� and the dread of observing its rules . I began to try to give a simple answer, and then I realized this question is a central message of the Seder. The entire holiday places freedom alongside bondage. We enjoy a feast that took days to prepare, and yet we refrain from any yeast that had time to rise. We tell the story of our suffering in slavery, while reclining on pillows and drinking wine. Personally, I look forward to the week of giving up bread, not because of what I cannot eat, but because of all of the other things I do eat during this week (including multiple jars of peanut butter along with my matzah!) At the same time, the combination of celebrating what we have and mourning what we didn鈥檛 have, and what many others still don鈥檛 have, is for me the essence of Passover. The Seder and the weekly observance serve to keep this tension as a question in our minds.
鈥淲hat is meant by the sentence, 鈥楢rami Oveid Avi?鈥欌��
One of the opening lines of the traditional Haggadah鈥檚 Magid section (the telling of the story) is the sentence, Arami oveid avi. Arami means, 鈥渁n Aramean.鈥� Avi means, 鈥渕y father.鈥� The word in the middle, oveid, can mean 鈥減erish,鈥� or 鈥渓ost.鈥� In addition, the verb鈥檚 form is not clear in the Hebrew. So, the phrase could mean, 鈥淢y father (Jacob) was a wandering Aramean,鈥� or, 鈥淎n Aramean (Laban) tried to destroy my father (Jacob).鈥� There are multiple questions that come from this brief statement! Are we recalling Jacob鈥檚 migration from Haran to Canaan, or his near destruction by his own father-in-law? The rabbis do not agree, and we do not know. More broadly, which story are we telling tonight? The story of the exodus from Egypt, or the story of the origin of our people many generations before? Or, is the Haggadah鈥檚 true agenda to get us to mine our people鈥檚 past, all of our families鈥� pasts, and the experiences of our neighbors, for the stories we long to tell?
Wishing you a meaningful Pesach,
Rabbi Jeffrey Saxe