At this point in our national history, it may be a little difficult to consider, if not fully embrace, the concept of a life unconstrained by hardship and trying existential circumstances. But Passover is, after all, the holiday that marks the Israelites’ release from centuries of bondage in Egypt as they set out on their arduous odyssey to the Promised Land.
That story is central to the Haggadah as we gather round the Seder table and relate the tale of the Exodus, complemented by plenty of commentary and learned interpretation by sages of yesteryear such as Rabbi Akiva, Rabbi Tarfon, and Eleazar ben Azariah.
They had their individual takes on the importance of various passages and events. Indeed, if you are not a blinkered hardliner and follow the Numbers Rabbah midrash declaration that there are “70 faces to the Torah,” that leaves plenty of explanatory wiggle room for maneuver when it comes to opting for the best way to mark the holiday and conduct your Seder ritual.
Passover has several epithets associated with it, such as the Springtime Festival, which makes perfect seasonal sense. It is also known as the Festival of Freedom.
Dalia Marx certainly goes along with the latter notion. She has the credentials to seek her own informed pathway to achieving the personally tailored mode of celebratory behavior.
Besides being an ordained Reform rabbi, Marx is a professor of liturgy and midrash at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. She has a PhD from the Hebrew University, for which she researched Judaic early morning ritual.
'Feast of Freedom'
“For me, Passover is first and foremost the Feast of Freedom,” she says. That, she posits, comes straight from the Torah, with particular reference to the timing of the Exodus, in addition to finally breaking free of the chains of over 200 years of slavery.
“The first mitzvah the Children of Israel were given before they left Egypt was: ‘This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.’ That’s in Exodus Chapter 12,” Marx notes.
That wasn’t just a matter of neat scheduling. “They received a calendar, their time. When they were slaves, their time was not their own,” Marx points out. “They had no control over their time, what they did, their choices. So their transition from slavery to freedom is a departure into a world in which there is the possibility to make choices.”
Marx expounds at length on that theme in a book she wrote titled From Time to Time: Journeys in the Jewish Calendar.
Extemporization on tradition and customs is, Marx feels, intrinsic to religious practice and, in particular, to the way we celebrate Passover. She says there is an integral go-with-the-flow aspect to the celebratory venture.
“For me, the very act of taking part in the Seder night is elementally alternative. Even if you adhere to the most Orthodox or traditional Seder, you have a script; but, as in theater, you have the script, and you have what actually takes place. You have the way you actually read [the Haggadah], which sections you spend more time on, what you sing, and what comes up in discussion.”
All of which, Marx believes, adds up to an abundance of leeway within the Passover context.
“It is not that I conduct an alternative Seder night. Seder night is fundamentally alternative. Each family does it differently. Some take a new approach to various customs.”
The Marx family Seder arrangements feature at least one surprise. “We have an orange on the table,” she says. There is a distinctly feminist statement in there. “[American professor of Jewish studies] Susannah Heschel tells a story about a woman who goes to a rabbi. She asks him why women can be educators, professors, or attorneys, but they aren’t allowed to read from the Torah [in the synagogue]. The [male] rabbi replies by saying that a woman on the bima is like an orange on the Seder plate. Since then, a lot of people include an orange on the Seder plate.”
There are other post-Talmudic era practices around, including some gender equality-related initiatives. “[Late-12th, early-13th century Kabbalist and halachic scholar] Rabbi Eleazar of Worms suggested adding [to the Seder plate], in addition to the egg and shank bone, which represent Moses and Aaron, a fish to represent Miriam because Miriam is always associated with water.”
Marx returns to the improvisatory element of Passover. “The Seder night is alternative by definition. The whole family sits down to the Seder table, with all the members completely free of all their regular tasks and other errands.” It is an ongoing development. “The children eventually get married and have their own families and sustain their own individual customs and traditions, and new ideas come into play. That is a beautiful aspect of the Seder night,” she says.
New Jersey-born longtime Israeli citizen Rabbi Daniel Burstyn has been living at Kibbutz Lotan, around 50 km. north of Eilat, for over 35 years. He sticks to the tried-and-tested festive school of thought but says there will be plenty going on around him at Lotan as his fellow kibbutzniks engage in all kinds of pursuits to mark the spirit of the holiday as per their individual take.
“There is a woman here who accuses me of being too much of a Diaspora Jew,” Burstyn chuckles. “But there are lots of things happening here which I greatly appreciate.”
That covers the full age range of the members. “There is a longstanding tradition here whereby children take part in an ‘Exodus from Egypt.’ They split up into two or more tribes, depending on how many children there are, and go on a walk of several hundred meters as far as the date grove. They have all sorts of assignments to do along the way, and they set up camp there. Youth leaders also talk to them about what to take with them, and each tribe has its own flag.”
Sounds just the ticket to get the youngsters in on the Passover act, and a fun hands-on addition to reciting “Ma Nishtana?” and probing the adults around the Seder table for some explanations about the unusual accoutrements laid out, the glasses of wine, and protracted Haggadah recital, until they eventually get to tuck into the victuals.
Although Lotan is officially a Reform movement community, it seems the members have free rein when it comes to deciding how best to celebrate the religious holiday.
“We put together a kind of Seder night model, but there were people who felt it was too restrictive. They felt more comfortable having the Seder within the close family circle [as opposed to a communal event in the kibbutz dining hall]. Some wanted a less religious Seder, and others wanted a more religious Seder.”
That suits the “two Jews, three opinions” frequent state of affairs.
It is, says Burstyn, a matter of manageable scale. “If you have 50 people at the Seder in the dining hall, that’s doable. But if you have 80 or 100, you have to keep the children quiet instead of encouraging them to ask questions.” Good point.
There are also cultural identity issues to be taken into consideration. “I am American, and so I am a pure Ashkenazi,” Burstyn laughs. “But you have Sephardim who want to use a Sephardi Haggadah. There are some differences. And there are different tunes for some of the songs.”
Those are – albeit important and valued – more technical aspects of a religious event which, at the core, is about expressions of liberty, personal and collective. Burstyn says that for that to happen, there has to be open and respectful dialogue. He imbibed that accommodating mindset back in the States. “I am a disciple of the late Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, who founded the Jewish Renewal movement. He often talked about how the name Pessah (Passover) indicates peh sah, which means ‘the storytelling mouth.’”
The communal Lotan take on the holiday also involved some textual tweaking. “They compiled a special handmade Haggadah at the start of the kibbutz and, for example, changed beit habehira [a reference to the Temple in Jerusalem] in the song ‘Dayeinu’ to beit Lotan,” Burstyn recalls.
It is the spirit of the holiday, derived from the tale of the Exodus, that Burstyn feels should take pride of place in the ritual proceedings. “The story we relate at the Seder is the story of freedom, but you have to tell the story in a way that a child can take it on board and then pass it on to the next generation. For me, that is the most important part of Passover.”
Rabbi Michal Talya also goes for the core liberty ethos in her take on the holiday. “For me, Passover is an opportunity to take a timeout and remember that I have the possibility to live my life more freely than I do at this moment,” she posits. “That, for me, primarily means a matter of personal freedom.”
Talya, who also works as a clinical psychologist, and her like-minded close circle also prefer to go straight to the source rather than the Talmudic-era structured format.
“When I have Seder night with friends, in recent years we don’t read from the Haggadah. We read the story of the Exodus from Egypt from the Torah, from the first chapter of the Book of Exodus, normally through to the crossing of the Red Sea.”
Does that take her through to the point when Miriam sparks joyous celebrations as the sea drowns the chasing Egyptian army and the Children of Israel are finally safe? Apparently not. “What is meaningful is the start of the crossing of the seabed.”
Talya says she digs into customs of yore as part of her approach to the holiday and the Seder gathering. “We read the story of Passover in accordance with the original practice of the Hassidim, who related to the whole of the Torah as a mythological story with personal meanings, as a metaphor for the processes that take place within the human soul. There is the idea of searching for the Egypt within us, the Pharaoh within us. That has become more widespread in recent years.”
Like Burstyn, Talya believes it is about the spiritual core rather than ensuring that all the familiar traditional fittings are present and correct on the Seder table. “We may have the regular things on the plates, but it really depends on who is participating. It is nice as folklore, but it is not the crux of the event. The meaning is really in the learning – which is experiential – like workshop-style learning, not theoretical learning.”
Talya draws on a pivotal juncture in the Israelites’ odyssey across the Sinai Peninsula to the Promised Land, which, she feels, amplifies the faith-based philosophy. She cites the burning bush passage as a prime example of thinking out of the box.
“God eventually convinces Moses that he is capable of taking on the mission [of bringing the Children of Israel out of Egypt]. But, just before he leaves, Moses tells God that he will inform the Israelite sages that God says he will free us from Egypt. But, if they ask me who this God is that I spoke to, what is his name? What should I tell them? God told him: ‘I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ ‘I am who I am’ is a goldmine for interpretations. The Hassidim made much of this. God says I am not just another character, like other gods. I have no name. I am who I am at any given moment. When anybody wants to turn to the spiritual plane, they will encounter me.’”
Talya says that the spiritual, individual line applies regardless of physical or geographic circumstances.
I remarked that in years gone by, I, like many others, had spent Passover in the tranquil setting of the Sinai Peninsula, which, if you think about it, is the exact reverse of the biblical Exodus route.
Talya has also made the trek down south and sees no contradiction there. “When you get to the high mountain range there and you see all the pathways twisting down, it’s not hard to imagine the convoy of the Children of Israel making their way. That can help to connect with the story [of Passover], with the process. We read the story from the Torah, which means we read about the process [of liberation and change].”
She cites from a core event in the Exodus storyline. “The 10 plagues, that is about what takes place within the soul of the individual. Moses and Pharaoh are within me. There is dialogue between two forces. There is a force which believes in the possibility of change. That is Moses, who listens to a voice telling him, ‘You can’t stay as a slave; you can get out of this.’ And the same person has the Pharaoh part, which does not believe in the possibility of change.”
Encouraging words indeed as we endure yet another trying episode in our long, rich history.