Elijah, Passover and Freedom

Sermon, Shabbat 7th Day Pesach 5785

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

Shabbat Shalom and Chag Sameiach, a happy and healthy Passover, and a Zissen Pesach.  We also say on this festival mo’adim l’simcha, chagim uzmanim l’sason—may you enjoy festivals of joy and seasons of celebration. 

It’s now officially the seventh day of the festival of freedom and matzah.  For Orthodox and Conservative Jews, there is an extra day, an eighth day of Pesach, while for most Reform Jews, and Conservative and Orthodox Jews living in Israel, this the final day.  I have never quite accepted the logic of the extra day of the holiday in the Diaspora, yom sheini shel galut, or in this case, yom shmini shel galut.  You see, the original Diaspora, the place that we Jews were exiled to from Israel was Babylonia, located east of Israel.  The concern was to observe the full holiday as it was experienced in the Holy Land itself, and not to finish the festival before it ended properly in Israel.  Since the sun travels east to west, Passover arrived in Babylonia, today’s Iraq, before it began in Israel, which means it would have ended before the weeklong Pesach holiday concluded in Israel.  The rabbis decided that in order to fully cover the time it was Passover in Israel they needed to add an extra day to the holiday, so the whole of the experience of anti-leavening would be complete. 

That made some sense when most of the Jewish Diaspora was east of Israel.  But that was a long time ago.  For the majority of the past 21 centuries or so most Jews living outside of Israel have actually resided west of Israel. Which means that we begin Pesach after they have started it in Israel, and by adding an extra day we are extending it more than 24 hours after Passover is done in Erets Yisrael, the land of Israel.  Here in Tucson we are about 10 hours later than Jerusalem—which means if you observe 8 days of Pesach you are actually finishing your festival 34 hours after then first eat bread in Tel Aviv.  It’s not very logical, is it?

So I totally understand and support those of you who eat chamets Saturday night.  I mean, this year, if you observe Passover, you are already adding a day, more or less, because the first Seder fell on Saturday night, and we were basically required to have houses that were kosher for Passover an extra 24 hours early.  That’s a lot of Passover, and a lot of matzah.

Unfortunately for me, I grew up observing 8 days of Pesach, and I cannot bring myself to shorten the suffering, er, observing of this great holiday even one very logical day. 

In any case, whether you celebrated one or two Seders, I want to explore some aspects of the Seder that you may not have focused on. Especially if you had one of those, “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat!” Passover experiences…

Now, the fact is that the Seder itself is much more than a meal: it is an extraordinary educational experience on the subject of freedom. 

On every Seder table there is a large and beautiful cup just awaiting the arrival of this dramatic figure’s visit.  At the proper time, after the Birkat HaMazon, the Grace After Meals and the third of our four cups of wine, we opened the door for Elijah, sang “Eliyahu HaNavi,” among the best-known of all Jewish melodies, and invited this unique figure to join us for a few moments. 

The text of the Haggadah, the telling of the great tale of freedom and liberation that led us through the night of Passover, includes a brief passage asking God to punish the enemies of Israel throughout history.  Of course, after we watch carefully to see if the level of wine in Elijah’s cup diminishes a bit, we turned the lights back on and closed the door and resumed the Seder. 

This is a peculiar and poignant moment, unique in Jewish tradition.  We opened the door and symbolically awaited Elijah’s arrival—and while young children strained to see the magic of an invisible prophet sipping very real wine, the mystic quality of the experience could touch even the most hardened Seder veteran.

Some beautiful traditions have been attached to the Elijah’s cup at the Seder: at our Seder here at Beit Simcha we read a memorial for the victims of the Shoah, the Holocaust, and in particular remembered the incredibly courageous and doomed Warsaw Ghetto uprising that began on the first night of Passover in 1943, the very night of the first Seder.  My father’s own poem about this, which he read last Saturday night, includes “Elijah, lift your hand/appear in power; and in this hallowed hour/Now prophesy of them/ They are not dry bones lying in a vale… The table lengthens and grows wide/ they have come in/they sit on every side/ who among us is the living, who the dead?  We, saved by chance, or they?  We sit together and wait the oath/ Elijah, celebrate a seder for us both.”

Others have their own unique ways of inviting in Elijah the prophet and associating Eliyahu with the arrival of the Messiah, a connection first made perhaps 1800 years ago in the Midrash.

Elijah, we are told, will arrive on earth again as a harbinger of the Messiah, a visitor who will herald the arrival of a new, Messianic Age.  There is a powerful Midrash about Elijah the Prophet in the Babylonian Talmud Tractate of Sanhedrin, in which he teaches a great rabbi that the Messiah sits at the gates of the city of Rome, bandaging lepers, as he awaits the call to bring about the Messianic time.

There are some funny stories about Elijah’s arrival, too, of course: one is the classic Haiku for Jews:

On Passover we

Opened the door for Elijah

Now our cat is gone

One of my favorite stories about Passover is a Hollywood tale, and it comes from Sandy Hackett, writing about his father, the late, great comedian Buddy Hackett (“the guy with the marbles in his mouth”):

“Ever since I was a little kid, I remember Dad having an open house for Passover.  Actors, fellow comics, singers, they were all there for the Seders. One thing vividly stands out in my mind.  I went to open the door to let Elijah the Prophet in—and standing there was Gregory Peck.  He asked me if it was too late for the service, and I said ‘No, go right in; we’re all expecting you.’”

I guess if you open the door for Elijah the Prophet and Atticus Finch comes in, you are still doing pretty well.

And at our first, very successful congregational seder at our own Congregation Beit Simcha, the children present rushed to open the door for Elijah—and saw a rattlesnake sitting just outside.  We hastily closed the door, called some animal handlers to pick up the snake, and instead of Eliyahu HaNavi we named him Eliyahu haNachash—Elijah the Snake.

But who was Elijah the Prophet, this dramatic figure in Jewish conception, really?  What does the Tanakh, the Bible, say about him in its description of this story, in the tales it tells from his own life?

In essence, Elijah was a brave, committed believer in the one true God, who spoke truth to power, who stood up courageously to the corrupt leaders of his generation who suppressed dissent and cultivated falsehood.  He represented truth and morality, fought against the popularity of false ideas and vindictive and powerful rulers, and only triumphed at the very end by a narrow margin.  And he came to represent to Jews, for all time, that fervent belief, moral conviction and faith in the God of Israel could carry us through the darkest of times.

It is perhaps no mystery why Elijah became such a treasured figure in Jewish life.  He is present, by tradition, at every brit milah, every bris of an 8-day old boy who is circumcised, and a kisei shel Eliyahu, a chair of Elijah is set aside for him, often with a pillow for his comfort.  He is present at the end of every Shabbat, when we sing Eliyahu haNavi at havdallah, the conclusion of the Sabbath and the beginning of a week that we pray will bring joy and peace.  And of course he comes to every Seder to remind us that even when freedom may seem like a distant hope, still its promise is ever present, and we must work to secure it for ourselves, our children and the entire world.

By the way, the Elijah’s cup didn’t make it into the Haggadah until the Middle Ages.  The Passover Haggadah is an evolutionary text, added to in every generation, as a way of exploring the meaning of freedom for each new era.  It seems that the Messianic aspect of the Seder became more significant for our medieval ancestors, and those ideas were attached to Elijah then, and added to the Haggadah.

You know, Passover is perhaps our most historically focued holiday, and the ways it evokes memories—like that of Eliyahu haNavi—can have a significant influence on us.  There is a winsome, evocative quality to the way that memory can tease at the edge of our minds, can touch our emotions in unique and delicate ways.  When we take the time to remember, when we make memory a deliberate choice, we have the capacity to infuse our present with depth and meaning that would otherwise be absent.  Memory allows us to bring to life, and to light, what has been obscured behind the filter of time.  It is a challenging but ultimately critically important process for each of us.

Passover is, in a very special way, a holiday of memory.  If the seder is, almost literally, a history feast, then this festival of freedom is a period that touches so many mystic chords of memory that it can actually seem overwhelming.  We remember the tastes and smells of seders long past, the shared suffering of the week of matzah, the joy of finding the afikoman, the slight magic of Elijah’s cup—or, perhaps the sudden jolt of seeing Elijah the snake. 

But by now we are no longer at the beginning but the end of Passover, and this night begins the final day of Pesach.  Soon this holiday too will recede into memory. 

On this Shabbat, too, we will include the memorial service of Yizkor during tomorrow morning’s observances.  Yizkor, especially, is a time of remembrance, the four-times-a-year ceremony when we recall those people whom we loved and who shaped our lives and who are now gone.  It is a way of using memory to bring back, in love, those we have treasured, of opening ourselves up to the possibility that their souls and spirits remain with us, that the memories we treasure can be revived—not to bring us pain but a sweet sadness of remembrance.

The Baal Shem Tov said, “Memory is the beginning of redemption.”  He meant by that, I believe, that in order to begin the process of healing, of seeking wholeness for ourselves and our world, we must begin by honestly seeing what has gone before.  We must look at our past and see there the lessons that help us embrace the present, and proudly face the future.  We can be redeemed from loss and doubt, as Elijah promises.

May the conclusion of this remarkable festival bring each of you memories that inspire, and help all of us realize just how precious freedom truly is.