Passover in a Time of Captivity

  

Passover feels, this year, haunted. It’s one thing to celebrate freedom when we are full of the joys of freedom. It’s another when there are hostages and fresh memories of Iranian drones and Gazan terror.

There are many Seder supplements, additional readings and ideas that are filling my inbox; so many that a Cantorial colleague has collected them here. I encourage anyone struggling or looking for a way to hold this multi-valent time well to explore.

At the New London Communal Sedarim, and at my home Seder, we will take part in the Seder Seat For A Hostage campaign.   More information here https://bod.org.uk/sederseat-sajbd/

 

In my own thoughts about freedom and Passover this strange and bitter year, I’ve been reflecting on a basic truth of all Jewish rituals. It’s something I realised while staying in a farmhouse several years ago when the cockerel woke me up with its growing at 4am, despite it being pitch black outside. The cockerel continued to crow at ten-minute intervals through the pre-dawn and into the afternoon. The incident that prompted my realisation was the ancient blessing, instituted to be said every morning, where God is praised for giving the “cockerel the ability to understand the difference between day and night.” As I struggled to get back to sleep, and throughout the day, I realised that cockerels don’t have the slightest clue about the difference between day and night. I realised also that the ancient Rabbis would have known that and that, therefore, the blessing that suggested God endowed this annoying animal with a level of understanding it did not possess was not a statement about the world as it is, but a statement about the world as they wished it to be.

 

The same, I think, goes for every prayerful utterance in our faith, especially the prayers about peace and triumph of the decent and the punishment of the wicked.  We pray as an act of aspiration, not description.

 

The Seder itself came into existence just as the Temple was destroyed, with Roman oppression and murder all around. We’ve sung of our deliverance from slavery as we’ve been plunged into exile. We’ve sung of our emergence into freedom during the darkest of times. This isn’t the first time we’ve had to reach toward a hope for the world and our place in it, rather than reflect on a bitter reality. In fact, this state is our norm. In other Passover rituals, we blur how we have always sung of freedom against a backdrop of pain – “This is the bread of affliction,” we say in this Zman Cheroteinu – Time of our Liberation.

Freedom and slavery have always, for us Jews, been closely interwoven. Pain and hope have always been co-conspirators at Seder. And Od Lo Avda Tikvateinu –I have not yet lost hope. In fact, it’s the experience of sitting at a Seder table, with family, friends and strangers alike that most keep that spark of hope alive.

May it be that way for us all.

 

And may all of Israel – and the hostages most especially – come to know true freedom speedily in our days.

 

Rabbi Jeremy