A table set for a Passover Seder. The holiday begins Friday night. (Len Spoden Photography)
As a Jew, I always found something funny about Passover. Why, for a holiday about celebrating freedom, are there so many restrictions? We have to eat unpleasant things; we have to drink this many glasses of wine and no more; we have to eat a horrible crackerbread all week, no pasta, no peanut butter, no bread.
But it occurs to me that Passover is all about time. It’s about the way we have to have faith in time, and live time, and trust the way it turns things over: It turns water to blood, and then back again; it turns darkness to light, restriction to freedom, suffering to joy. Time is a chemist. Time is, perhaps, even an alchemist, with powers we human beings have never been able to harness for ourselves.
In our modern world, it seems we don’t really believe in time. Perhaps that’s because we’re so alienated from nature, time’s avatar in the world: We no longer regularly observe the way the hard seed faithfully, with time, becomes the soft flower, and the juicy leaf, inevitably, the dry one, and then the dust. We think we can conquer time. We can make things happen faster, happen now, as proof of our power. There’s a self-help book, one of the most popular today, called “The Five-Second Rule”: If you have an idea, it says, start working on it within five seconds, so time doesn’t have a chance to slip in there and work its inevitable decay. This presumes time is the adversary to creativity, to hope, to growth, to all good and fruitful things; it is a philosophy stuck in an eternal anxious September, imagining that summer and autumn are the only seasons there are, working furiously against time.
[ Five myths about Passover ]
In the Passover story, though, everything takes time. More than that, time reveals that difficult things — bad things — are a passage, a preparation for goodness. Moses, at first, is a stutterer, no man ready to lead a people. If he had to judge his future by what he could come up with in the five seconds after he saw the bush on fire, he’d have given up, become an accountant. His rebirth as a leader took time. The work of time on him wasn’t linear, but a kind of cyclical process, or a pendulum. It wasn’t manifested as a simple step-by-step trudge out of low self-esteem. It was down before up: a journey through his anxiety and uncertainty, through challenges that deepened him, taught him compassion, and allowed for a fuller, rounder ultimate becoming.
The Jews’ liberation from Egypt took time. They weren’t sprung after the first plague. At the many-hour Passover Seder, we say so many things. But we don’t recite the prayer Moses sang to God after crossing the Red Sea, despite the fact that we say it at every other Jewish holiday. At first blush, this seems odd. But it’s yet another gesture toward time: This all ain’t over yet. There are still 40 years wandering in the desert ahead, another passage through a winter before the spring.
During Passover, we’re also celebrating spring. There are hints of this on the Passover table: an egg, a young sprig of parsley. But mostly, during this holiday, we consciously entrap ourselves in a bodily sense of winter, denying ourselves. We scrub our houses bare of cakes and cookies, like the wind scrubs the plains clean in December. Like subsistence farmers in the winter, we live off preserved and dried things, food that just barely nourishes us, and doesn’t please us — not yet. We live in a state of self-imposed slavery, of self-denial. Often it’s said we do this just to recall what it felt like for people to be slaves. I think we do it for a deeper reason, too: to remind ourselves that accomplishment and achievement can depend on periods of difficulty, that sometimes we have to wait for goodness and let time do its work and not try to beat it.
If you want to think about it this way, time is an instrument in the hands of God. Perhaps it is God’s most powerful instrument. It does things we cannot do, produces effects in societies and in our souls we cannot manufacture with “The Power of Now” or “The Five-Second Rule.” Last year, I ran a Seder for 75 non-Jews. My first impression of the Seder as a child was that it was incredibly, mind-numbingly, achingly long. Worried about boring people, I cut out big swaths of the Seder last Passover. Still, toward the end, my friend Simon leaned over and whispered to me, “I think this is just long enough. Longer than that and people would get restless and want to go home.”
But I woke up the next day feeling my Seder was not nearly long enough. The restlessness, the waiting, the irritated feeling that things are being repeated and drawn out: These are all things meant to teach us about what it means to live in time, the discomfort and the patience and, at the end, time’s unanticipated gifts, which are unimaginable while we are mired in a lengthy explanation of prayers or choking down little bits of horseradish with dry, unleavened bread.
[ How I led a Passover Seder in Afghanistan (complete with Army-issued horseradish) ]
At the Seder’s end, we shout together: “Next year in Jerusalem!” If we said this at the Seder’s beginning, it would have no weight. But at the end, after all that pain and discomfort and fatigue, it comes as a truly emotional moment, deep and felt, pervaded by a physical experience of excitement and relief. When we say it, it’s not just a rote religious statement. We can dare to believe its literal and metaphorical meaning, because we have just experienced a night that shows us how hope can be real. We’ve experienced the way that suffering drags on but then ends.
The poet Charles Péguy called hope the “frailest” virtue, yet also the one that “vivifies” the others. He called hope “that little flame in the sanctuary.” The possibility of light held within, and visible only because of darkness: It’s a typically Christian image, but it is Passover, too; Passover finally. Hope and possibility are substanceless words without the perception of time. And this is the gift this holiday gives.
PASSOVER begins on Friday March 30 this year, and will last until Saturday April 7.
After the festival has ended, the second Passover, Pesach Sheni, comes on Saturday April 28, ending the next day.
Getty Images Observing Jews will start celebrating Passover on the sunset of Friday March 30, and will eat special food such as matzoh bread
What is Passover?
Passover is an annual spring festival that Jews celebrate to remember the Israelites being freed from slavery in Egypt.
It is celebrated with friends and family who eat ceremonial meals such as Seders and cook traditional foods.
There is also a focus on helping the needy, with many communal Seders being held in public halls or synagogues.
Some Jews opt to take holidays during Passover, and some Jewish businesses may close or have reduced service during the period.
Getty Images Passover is celebrated with friends and family who eat ceremonial meals such as Seders and cook traditional foods
When does Passover end?
The festival is celebrated in early spring, during the Hebrew month of Nissan.
In 2018, the celebration ends in the evening of Saturday April 7.
This means it lasts for eight days, although it goes on for seven among Reform Jewish groups.
Getty Images There are 15 steps to the Seder, which include celebratory toasts and readings
What is the Jewish spring festival commemorating?
Passover celebrates the freedom of the Israelites from slavery in ancient Egypt, and you may know the story from the Bible or the Prince of Egypt film.
The festival represents a time when God sent Moses to the Egyptian Pharaoh to free his people from their hard labour.
When the Pharaoh refused, God then sent down ten plagues that devastated Egypt, including locusts that ate all the crops and an infestation of frogs.
God spared the Israelites from the plagues and “passed over” their home, which gave the name to the holiday.
Due to the devastation, the Pharaoh released the slaves and they left in such a hurry they didn’t have time to wait for their baked bread to rise.
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What foods are eaten at Passover?
Popular food and drink during the festival include:
Matzah - Dry, cracker-like bread
- Dry, cracker-like bread Maror - Bitter herbs, usually horseradish
- Bitter herbs, usually horseradish Beitzah - Hard-boiled egg
- Hard-boiled egg Zeroah - Shank bone
- Shank bone Charoset - A sweet paste made from nuts and fruit
- A sweet paste made from nuts and fruit Karpas - Leafy green vegetables, usually lettuce
- Leafy green vegetables, usually lettuce Four cups of wine
What is a Seder feast?
Getty Images A woman breaks matzoh bread during the traditional Seder ritual
The Seder meal is held on the first two nights of Passover after nightfall.
This year it is being held on Friday March 30 and Saturday April 1.
There are 15 steps to the Seder, which include celebratory toasts and readings.
It involves a marathon feast of eating, drinking wine, singing and telling stories.
How do you say happy Passover in Hebrew?
To wish others a "Happy Passover" the phrase in Hebrew is "Pesach Sameach".
In Hebrew adjectives come after the noun with "Pesach" translating as "Passover" and "Sameach" meaning "Happy".
The phrase is pronounced "PAY-sock sah-MEY-akh."
Other phrases you can say are:
Chag Sameach which means Happy Festival
Chag Pesach Sameach which means Happy Passover Festival
Getty Images Just like the first Passover celebrations, the unleavened bread is consumed on Pesach Sheni
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When is the Second Passover, Pesach Sheni?
Pesach Sheni falls exactly one month after 14 Nisan, the day before Passover.
This year, this will begin on Saturday April 28 and end on Sunday April 29.
The date serves as a "second chance" for those who didn't bring an offering in the weeks before.
Just like the April festival, the Jewish calendar date is celebrated by the eating of matzah, in remembrance of the Passover offering.
For Christians as well as Jews, Passover – beginning at sundown Friday and ending at sundown on April 7 – is a particularly important holiday.
You say that Christians don’t celebrate Passover? But of course we do. Easter is Passover.
Most modern languages bear witness to this and use similar words to describe both the Jewish and Christian holidays. The words are taken from Pesach, the Hebrew name for Passover. Spaniards call Easter Pascua. Italians call it Pasqua. And the Dutch say Pasen. In Zulu it’s IPhasika.
Only a few languages – English, German, Polish – give the Christian holiday a name unrelated to Passover. We call it “Easter,” though it loses much in that translation.
In ancient Israel, Passover was a sacrificial feast of massive proportions. The first century historian Josephus tells of one year when 255,660 lambs were slaughtered in the Jerusalem Temple. Other sources tell us that the city’s streams ran red with blood from the sacrifices.
It was a holy day of obligation. The Book of Exodus (23:14–17) required all Israelite males to celebrate three feasts in the holy city, and Passover was chief among the three. At Passover a family would share a meal tightly scripted with prayer, known as the seder. They’d share the sacrificial lamb along with unleavened bread and four cups of wine.
Jesus’ Last Supper had a Passover setting and character, and so it was a solemn, sacrificial banquet. But his offering was not an ordinary lamb. It was rather the person made known in the Gospels as the “Lamb of God.” It was Jesus himself.
In the Upper Room, Jesus made an offering of his “body” and “blood.” He spoke of the action as his memorial (another synonym for sacrifice). Echoing the Passover Haggadah (the prayer book and guide used to conduct the seder, still used today) he told those who attended to repeat the action they had witnessed.
The sacrifice offered at the Last Supper was consummated on the cross. The sacrifice that took place “once for all” was extended to all peoples by its re-presentation in the meal that Christians call the “Lord’s Supper” or “Eucharist.” In his First Letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul called Christ “our paschal lamb” who “has been sacrificed” (5:7).
It was Jesus’ action at the Last Supper that transformed his death from an execution to a sacrificial offering. At the Last Supper he gave his body to be broken, his blood to be poured out on the “altar” of the cross.
Because he did so, his death on Calvary was not simply a brutal and bloody execution. Jesus’ death had been transformed by his self-offering in the Upper Room. It had become the offering of an unblemished Passover victim – the self-offering of a high priest who gave himself as a victim for the redemption of others. “Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2).
Christians came to understand this event – Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection — as the Paschal Mystery. It is the mystery of Passover, foreshadowed from the dawn of creation by the blood of Abel, the murdered shepherd. It is the mystery of Passover, prefigured by Abraham’s offering of his son Isaac on Mount Moriah. It is the mystery hidden in Israel’s deliverance amid the final plague visited upon Egypt.
All of these mysteries found fulfillment in Jesus’ Passover, which the early Christians understood as a “once for all” sacrifice (Hebrews 7:27, 10:10).
It was a supremely important event. As Jews renewed their covenant through the Passover sacrifice, so Christians renewed their “new covenant” through the offering of the body and blood of the Lamb of God. They marked every Sunday as the Lord’s Day by re-presenting the once-for-all sacrifice. And Passover – Pesach – was the first feast the Christian Church celebrated annually.
We still celebrate Passover every year. In our country we might call it by a different name, but the reality remains the same as it ever was. Don’t let it pass you by without a keen awareness of its deepest meaning.
The essence of Passover, which begins Friday night, isn’t matzah (unleavened bread) or the four cups of wine at the seder meal. Those merely point to the real message: the importance of our humility in the face of God’s ability to work miracles.
I think of two old sayings: “When we take one step toward God, he takes 10 steps toward us;” and “God is a gentleman – he doesn’t go where he isn’t invited.”
The meaning? God can do the seemingly impossible, but only if we signal him that we’re open to his divine intervention in our lives.
The Exodus story depicts the Israelites in Egypt smearing their doorposts with lambs’ blood, so as to guide God not to kill the firstborns in their homes on the night of the 10th plague.
God certainly didn’t need people to remind him who lived where. But by marking their doorposts, the Israelites signaled to God that they wanted his protection. They invited him in.
Perhaps the biggest display of humility I’ve ever seen in a religious setting took place when I was studying in a Jerusalem yeshiva (a Jewish educational institution) 37 years ago this week, just prior to Passover.
At 6:30 p.m. every day, discussion in the communal study hall wound down because one of the rabbis would give a 15-minute sermon, prior to evening prayers and dinner.
Two nights before Passover, we students were surprised to see the mashgiach ruchanit (the rabbi concerned with the day-to-day welfare and spiritual needs of the students) preparing to give the sermon. He was knowledgeable about the Torah, but he didn’t have the reputation for great scholarship the rest of the rabbis enjoyed.
When 6:30 came, the rabbi stood there and we all went silent. He was silent as well, studying his notes. Gradually, we concluded that he wasn’t about to start speaking. So we went back to our studies.
Five minutes later, he waved a hand and there was silence.
“You didn’t travel thousands of miles to Israel,” he said, “to come hear me. You came here to study Talmud (a book of rabbinic teachings on Jewish law and tradition). So I decided that of the 15 minutes that they gave me, I would give you back five minutes. That way, you could do what you came here for.”
Have you ever heard of a speaker willingly giving up one third of his time, especially when he doesn’t get to speak in front of a big audience all that often? I never have, except for that one time when the humble rabbi ceded five minutes so we could study longer.
I’ll be thinking of the old rabbi Friday night, when, like millions of Jews around the world, my family will gather together and celebrate Passover.
Remarkably, the name of Moses, the leader of the Jewish people who led them out of Egypt, appears nowhere in the haggadah (the prayer book over 1,600 years old that lays out the Exodus story and guides the seder).
The omission of Moses’ name symbolizes what great results are possible when we can pocket our pride and demonstrate humility. The Bible calls Moses the most humble of men, and the fact that he receives no credit in the haggadah for the Exodus from Egypt recalls that unique level of humility.
Matzah, also known as poor man’s bread, references that same concept. It’s said that since matzah lacks yeast, it demonstrates the humility that bread, which puffs itself up with pride at its own deliciousness, could never understand.
As for me personally, the humble rabbi’s talk – five minutes shorter than it could have been – is the living embodiment of the Passover message.
All of us – no matter what our religion, or if we have no religion at all – are in bondage to something.
We may be slaves to our thoughts, the demands of our lives, our careers or other things. Passover offers each of us the opportunity to reflect on where we let our own egos ensnare us.
The holiday reminds us that humility – and inviting God into our lives – is the key to liberation from whatever holds us back.
