Passover 2022

Pesach has always been my favorite. My parents ran a bakery, so our home was Hametz Central. Two nights before the holiday, mom and dad sent my brothers and me to bed early. Then they stayed up almost all night scouring the kitchen, changing the dishes, bringing out our Pesach treasures. We’d wake up to a whole new world. That magical day, my grandmother and her sisters would descend on our home to cook…chicken soup with knaidel, gefilte fish from scratch, brisket, potato kugel, tzimmis, and compote…until the whole house reeked of tradition. Jewish history was not an abstraction in our home. We feasted on it.

The Rabbis of the Talmud engineered a revolution when they moved the celebration of Pesach from the Temple of Jerusalem to our homes. Our kitchen table would be the altar, our meal the offering, and we – each one of us, the priests. Children would be welcomed, their questions and songs celebrated. And all of us together, responsible for bringing the presence of God into the rite. Not Levites, or Rabbis, or sacred officiants, but every one of us is duty-bound to tell the story of liberation and sing the songs of thanksgiving for the miracles we have known. And at the end of the Seder, all of us open the door to Elijah, and declare our hope for a tomorrow more peaceful, more blessed, more gentle. 

This year, perhaps more than most, we need to taste our history – its bitterness together with its sweetness – and to imbibe four full cups of Jewish hope. We need to say, as Jews have said in each generation, “Because of what God did for me when I came out of Egypt…” to shake off cynicism and despair, sadness and worry, and to join in singing a loud and joyful song of hope. Hope is the heart of the Jewish people. And even if the world is still far, far from redemption, Dayenu, we will sing of hope.

May your home be filled with the spirit and song of this great holiday.

Hag Kasher v’Sameach. For a joyful, sweet and peaceful Pesach. 
Rabbi Ed Feinstein