Yet again, we prepare for Pesach in a world rent by war and uncertainty. Our Israeli loved ones continue to shelter from Iranian missiles, and here in Canada, we face a never ending onslaught of news of antisemitic violence both here, in the US, and around in the world, and news articles predicting more. Over March break, we watched Fiddler on the Roof here in our house, in preparation for seeing the Yiddish production in Toronto later this spring – a quintessential Jewish identity formation moment! Explaining pogroms and the tense relationship between the shtetl community and the Russian authorities reminded me of just how incessant this cycle is. We can tell a Jewish story in the style of Jewish historian Salo Baron’s “lachrymose conception of Jewish history.” It would be a story filled with truth – the violence, the hate, the suffering that our people has faced throughout history, and continues to face today – through war, through school board policies, through bullets fired at an empty synagogue that sends the message: It is not safe for you to pray here.
But Pesach calls us to tell a different story. The Mishnah (one of our foundational rabbinic texts, dating to approximately 200 CE) reminds us that one of the core themes of the Pesach seder is the trajectory “from degradation to praise.” The seder begins in the lowest place – our enslavement to Egypt. And we end with praise, with songs of hope, with the expression that next year, things will be better. Notably, when this phrase is first introduced in the Mishnah, it comes right after the section introducing the 4 Questions, and framing our children’s questions as a core part of the seder. This is how we move from degradation to praise – by opening ourselves to curiosity, to imagining a new way forward, to reminding ourselves – and the next generation – that the way things are and the way things have been, is not the way they must be.
Wishing you and your families a chag Pesach sameach – a joyful Passover holiday!
