Across 5 Passovers
Sermon Shabbat Passover 5783
This is the 5th Passover we have experienced at Congregation Beit Simcha, and each has been unique, and extremely different from the preceding Pesach chagim. This year, just two nights ago, we had 100 guests for a wonderful First Seder right here, with our incredibly gracious hosts from Church of the Apostles joining us for a truly extraordinary experience. There were many highlights. One of them came during the 4 Questions, when I asked people to say or chant them in various languages. Shira Klayman asked if I had them in Arabic, the language of her Iraqi and Indian Jewish forebearers. I have a book, given to me long ago by a good friend and congregant, Gladys Hanfling of blessed memory, that has the 4 Questions in 400 different languages. Shira and I quickly scanned through the book, and eventually found them in Arabic—specifically, in Iraqi Jewish Arabic, and on the same page was a photo of her mother Rahel Musleah, an expert in Indian Jewish music. She had given the authors the translation… amazing. But perhaps the best moment for me came when Sidney Finkel, a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor from Poland, came up with his friends Bruce and Anastasha Lynn and told me, “This is the best Pesach Seder I have ever been to!” Now that’s something: he is 91 years old and has been to many, many seders. High praise indeed.
Each Pesach in the life of our still-young congregation has been extremely different from the preceding one—and all the preceding ones. Last year, in 2022, the first night of Passover happened to arrive on Friday night, while our lovely Congregational Seder was held Saturday night, Second night of Pesach. It was in our Ina Road location, where we were located for nearly three years, but it was our first truly post-pandemic Pesach, with over 80 people attending. That Seder occurred just two months after Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine, and Ukraine was on everyone’s mind, emphasizing as it did the fact that freedom often must be fought for.
Two years ago, in 2021, our Passover was arranged in the midst of the Coronavirus pandemic, when we celebrated “Apart/Together”, and set up pre-made Passover meals and seder elements and kosher wine that people could pick up, made by Louise Stone and Catalina Caterers, and then join us online for our fancy professionally pre-recorded Seder. Like everything in pandemic times, it was complicated, but for us, that year, it worked.
Three years ago, in 2020 we were forced to cancel our Beit Simcha Congregational Seder just two weeks before it was to be held; everyone had to cancel public seders that year when the orders came down from the White House to avoid any gathering with as many as 10 people in the midst of the pre-vaccination COVID-19 mess. My dad and I created, in short order, a Facebook Seder that was one of the very first such offerings online, and about 1000 people attended. Who knew then just how important these remote offerings would prove to be?
And four years ago, way back in 2019—remember those pre-pandemic days, so long ago?—we held our very first Beit Simcha Seder with 100 guests in attendance at our Skyline and Campbell location. It was created out of love and with great energy, as we figured out how to do a Congregational Seder together for the very first time. The Seder went well right up to the point where we sent the kids out to open the door for Eliyahu HaNavi, Elijah the Prophet—and there was a baby rattlesnake waiting. We kept the doors shut, called a snake handler, and named the rattler Eliyahu haNachash, Elijah the Snake. A Seder no one could possibly forget.
Somehow, no two Pesach Seders here at Beit Simcha have been at all alike, even though we had the same rabbi and used the same Haggadot… Each was held in a different location. Each was truly a different night, as Seder is supposed to be. After all, the purpose of a Pesach Seder is to make you question all the rituals and rites you are performing. What could be more Jewish than doing that as the best way to learn the great lesson of liberation from slavery?
I must add that each of these Passovers, even the strained and rushed 2020 pandemic Pesach, has been a remarkable learning experience. As we grow and mature as a congregation, we also have retained the incredible volunteer energy that is so central to our identity as a congregation. When we need help, and we ask for it, people come forward with enthusiasm and talent to create great things.
And now, as we truly look forward to a permanent home and no longer being wandering Jews in the desert, we are able to use the lessons we have learned about the best way to make Pesach resonate for every member of our congregation and community. I believe we will always retain that spirit of dedication that has enabled our congregation to grow and develop in our four and a half years of history, and our Jewish people to survive and thrive for so many more years—and many centuries—of our history.
There is one theme of Pesach, the zman cheiruteinu, that I’d like to highlight tonight. It’s not an obvious aspect of a holiday in which we celebrate liberation from oppression and seek freedom for all who remain oppressed in our world. It might not occur to you that a festival of freedom, when we sing about throwing off the chains of bondage, would even contain this element. And yet it is there from the beginning.
When Moses first approaches the Pharaoh and asks him, famously, to “Let my people go,” he has a specific request: God says, “Let My people go for a three-day festival in the desert to worship Me.” That is, the initial ask is not for total freedom, but for the opportunity to go out into the wilderness and serve God. In fact, the Hebrew word for religious service, avodah, is the same as the word for work. God, through Moses, is asking the enslaving power to allow the Israelites to go and work for God.
Of course, Pharaoh refuses. He sees any such loosening of the bonds of servitude to him as a threat; the Israelites will be serving a different master, God. That simply cannot be permitted. And indeed, it could prove to be a prelude to the ultimate liberation of the whole people of Israel. Still, the initial challenge is simply that the Israelites will be serving another master. It is not that they will be completely free of all responsibility. It is that they will have acknowledged a greater authority than the pseudo-god-king of Egypt.
Pharaoh’s refusal leads to the famous passage that underlies the entire structure of the Seder: the four promises of freedom in Exodus 13. They are v’hotzaytee, I will bring you out of Egypt; v’heetzaltee, I will save you from the brutal bonds of slavery; v’go’altee, I will redeem you on the shores of the Red Sea; and finally, v’lakachti Li l’am I will take you to Me to be My people.
Those first three promises are about liberation and salvation. But the fourth promise is actually about entering into a form of service—a word that is closely linked to servitude—to God. None of us is truly free of all responsibilities, nor are we free of the duties we owe to one another. It is this element that transforms a simple message—“Let My People Go!”—into a religious one, a moral one, a meaningful one. “Let My people go so that they may serve Me, God.” Let My people be free of service to a human tyrant so that they may enter into a covenant of ethics, meaning and beauty. So that they, the Israelites, the Jews, may fully be able to act with meaning and holiness in their daily lives. That they may find in true service to God a higher purpose for their very existence.
What is it that Bob Dylan said? You got to serve somebody.
Perhaps what these five Passovers have taught us here at Beit Simcha is that our role is to serve, to give of ourselves so that we may each value and appreciate this community we have created, and give our Judaism meaning, purpose and beauty.
Chag Samei’ach, my friends—may we all celebrate this Passover fully, and join together next year in another unique festival.