How can we make Pesach this year different from Pesach in every other year?

by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Dear companions of the Matzah (“companion” means the people we share bread with).

There are four truths to the Seder that most of us don’t notice in the busy-ness of preparing the words and the foods and the companions of each Seder.

1.  It is a Diaspora celebration. The rabbis invented it to replace the great assembly at the Temple after The Roman Empire destroyed the Temple. They knew the Jews would have to live without the Temple and probably without a Land they could control as their own, for many years. But Pesach must not be forgotten if the People were to survive. They came up with a decentralized communal meal. 

2.  Its content was not a triumphant entry into the Land of Promise but the struggle against a tyrant Pharaoh and that journey in a Wilderness. They served four cups of wine to celebrate stages of the journey and noted a fifth one was possible if Elijah ever showed up to welcome us into the Land.

3.  So the story we are called to remember includes the struggle, the plagues upon Narrowland (Mitzrayyim, Egypt) that delivered freedom to Yisra’el, the Godwrestlers, Wilderness and Diaspora. Quite a wilderness! Quite a Diaspora! The people are fed with “manna,” which is really the word that some English translator invented to represent “mahn hu.” And what did “mahn hu” mean? It meant, “what’s that?” It was mysterious then and the meal we celebrate is the food of justice.

The “manna” came in just the right amount for each family. If they tried to take more, it rotted and stank. But if they stuck to what they needed, it was healthy and sustained them through the whole forty years.

And what came with the “manna” was the dream of a band of runaway slaves: Shabbat. No work, a decent meal, time to talk and meet each other, time to form a community, even before Sinai.

This was the Torah’s vision of a free and just society. A State was nowhere on the horizon. Even when they crossed the Jordan, for decades they were governed by “judges.” Not imperious people in black robes, but charismatic leaders who sided with the poor.

The tradition that grew around Pesach was tribal, but tribal with a universal difference. Pointer after pointer, there are verses that point to universal freedom, each tribe at its time.

The prophet Amos (9:7) announces on behalf of YHWH, Yahhhh the Breath of life,:

“To Me, O Israelites, you are

Just like the Ethiopians,”

– declares Yahhhh. “True, I brought Israel up from the Narrowland, but also the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir.”

And near the end of the traditional Haggadah, we read “In every generation, every human being [not just every Jew] must look upon one’s self as if we had ourselves gone forth from slavery to freedom – B’chol dor v’dor chayyav adam lir’ot et-atzmo k’ilu hu yatzah mi’mitzrayim.”

This Pesach is different from every other Pesach that Americans have known. Our government is a tyranny trying to make all Americans bend to its will. The Haggadah itself has a secret formula for what to do in such a case.

The traditional Haggadah asks us to notice a Pesach seder led by the great Rabbi Akiba. Why choose Akiba’s seder alone to celebrate on this way? The Rabbis knew that earlier Akiba had hoped that the Great Revolt led by Bar Kokhba would bring messianic deliverance. But it didn’t. The superior power of Rome shattered the entire Jewish community of ancient Israel/Palestine. So many Jews were sold into slavery, that the price of slaves across most of the Roman Empire dropped precipitously. They pointed to Akiba’s seder as the better answer.

4.  The Seder, ancient or modern or post-modern, takes the old Hellenistic form of the symposium and turns it upside down. In the symposium, a sage asks all the “dummies” questions and gets the answers that he wants. In the seder, the children ask the questions and open up new creativity.

In the name of God, YHWH, Yahhhh the Breath of Life, this year let us open our ears and our hearts to a seder that welcomes creativity and nonviolence. That celebrates not a State, but many many many Diaspora communities that thrive to share the “manna.” To us each, the work that freely fits our own abilities; to us all, the shared abundance that fits our own needs.

With blessings of Freedom and Shalom,

Arthur