I just ate my third slice of a cake that ended up on our counter despite my protestations that I’m off sugar. Which I am, or was, a little regimen I adopted from Purim until Pesach (Passover), or at least that was the idea, until the cake appeared on my counter. It was a gift. What’s a girl to do?
I share this because discipline and indulgence are themes of Pesach, the first cousins of slavery and freedom. We have all of them mixed up inside: the drive for a fiery discipline, for some internal or external voice keeping us on track and within bounds; and also, the yearning for liberty, that second piece of cake (or third) no matter what the disciplinarian has instructed. Rebellion is one sixtieth of liberty (in the way the Talmud says that a dream is one sixtieth prophecy, or maybe just the way the chicken soup is still kosher if the milk that accidentally fell into it was less than one sixtieth of the broth. Ratios matter, it seems, as does effort and careful consideration of what’s what.)
How do we make our way from servitude to liberation? This is the question Pesach asks of us, and the answers are multidimensional. The Torah calls Pesach chag ha-aviv, the holiday of spring: liberation from the bounds of winter as the earth turns, a matter of the natural course of things. Do nothing and it comes anyway, though you will enjoy it a whole lot more if you planted those tulips last fall. The Torah also gives us our foundational story, the covenant in which God chooses us for this particular way of being in relationship with one another and with the Divine, and we say yes. Far from natural: this is a willed, conscious choice, one that requires gathering with family and friends to tell the story and participate in rituals handed down for 3,000 years. The first Pesach was celebrated after Joshua led our ancestors into the Land of Israel in about 1400 BCE. And then there’s the rest of the week, the seven days (eight outside of Israel) that are ours, where the only real instruction is about how we eat. No chametz, nothing leavened. Here our liberation comes down to that third piece of cake: choice and discipline about what we eat, how quickly we give away our heritage in our rush for a slice of pizza, how interested we are in exploring a kind of freedom that comes with discipline. Liberation is not a one-shot deal.
Heading into the seder night this year, I find myself thinking a lot about Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet. You know, the one we sing to, open the door for, pour that cup of wine for, the one we don’t drink but hope he does. Elijah makes his appearance in the Biblical Book of Kings, where he is full of anger and wrath and gets his way a lot on behalf of God and also overdoes it. He is the only prophet fired for having too much zeal. He exits the world stage in a chariot of fire (see II Kings chapter 2), which means we don’t actually see him die. This opens up a whole universe of legends. The rabbis of the Talmud create dozens of Elijah stories. But none of them have to do with Pesach, or the Seder. So how do we wind up with him there? As scholar Daniel Matt put it (Becoming Elijah: A Prophet of Transformation):
“There’s never a mention of Elijah at the Seder described in Torah or in the Talmud and nothing about pouring a cup of wine for him or opening the door. But there is an early folk tradition to open the door based on the line near the beginning of the Haggadah, ‘Let all who are hungry come and eat.’
“Then in the 11th century, a rabbi says, ‘Passover is a time of redemption, and the Messiah is the ultimate redemption, so we’re leaving the door open because we hope Elijah will come, and we want to make sure we go out and greet him right away.’ So the tradition begins not with opening the door so Elijah can come in. It’s opening the door so we’ll go out and greet him.”
By the time the rabbis are done with Elijah, he is the symbol of hope, the one who comes to announce a new era in which even the most estranged families will reunite, wars will end, and the Jewish people will be beloved members of the world community.
Wars ending and the Jewish people beloved and at peace in our homeland, families getting along and a giant lovefest all around – all of that sounds pretty good right now. Redemption is a complicated word in English; beyond coupons and soda cans at the recycling station, I’m not sure what we redeem these days. It’s commercialized. In religious terms, though, redemption – ge’ulah – means something profound. It means peace in our homes, peace among peoples, the end of wars. Redemption is the realization of God’s covenantal promise of liberation for the Jewish people extended to all people, all at once, right now. This is the heartbeat of the Seder, of all 8 days of Pesach, of the counting of the omer, of the Jewish people.
There is, in Hasidic thought, an idea that each of us has a spark of Elijah inside. A spark of zeal, an intensity that is powerful and good until it gets us fired for being too much or just fires us up in a flaming ungrounded chariot of self-righteousness and pride and fighting and war. But there is also the Elijah spark that wants peace, that wants to help people, that wants to tell people good news and bring joy and reconciliation and make things really, really good for everyone.
This is how we end the seder; this is how we go into spring. By letting the fires we’ve tended all winter die down, by flinging the doors open wide to greet Elijah, by saying: we are here to help make the world a better place, to be God’s partners in liberation.
PS. A few beautiful and under-observed rituals to deepen your Pesach. Go into each room of your home searching for what’s stale tonight (the night before Passover): bedikat hametz guide here. and counting the omer which begins on the second day of the holiday and brings us from spring into summer, a daily blessing practice for 49 days.